Provides. I ask you to consider the individuals you are affecting before making changes. That will have a negative impact on the more helpless clients. Displacing the Mental Health and taking their home are not the solution to the homeless issues. Lets address the facility issues and Work Together to solve them so we can all retain our beds and continue to serve the members of the community. Thank you so much. [applause. ] thank you. I am Theresa Palmer a long time san franciscan. Usually i talk about longterm care. This whole thing is extremely upsetting, and my hope is the department of Public Health can improve from the fallout of this fiasco. Keeping longterm care beds empty because of what amounts to dphs lack of will to fill them is unacceptable. I cant help having the paranoid thoughts the mayor wanted to gain political points by keeping beds empty to say she could offer navigation beds then in the coverup. I may be off on that but that is what it looks like. This disregard for
Health services. A brief review of the history includes that the facility first opened in 1996 as the Mental Health rehabilitation facility called the merf. It was then a 147 bed psychiatric Skilled Nursing facility. Then in the early 2000s as the environment in San Francisco began to shift toward the need for more lower level residential beds, in 2003 the mayor of San Francisco established a Blue Ribbon Committee for a new design for the services provided. That process resulted in 2004, thmerf moving to a three program mixed use facility consisting of a 47 bed secure and locked Mental Health Rehabilitation Center on the third floor. A 59 bed psychiatric on the second. 41 bed residential facility. In 2005 the adult residential facility was licensed by the state Community Care licensing and began receiving first admissions. That leads us to what we have today, which is again on the third floor a 47 bed merk also called institute for mental disease, locked subacute Mental Health unit. On
I dont think they should close it down. That is my place of living. I have been there for five years along with my other clients there. I feel that the arf shouldnt be closed down. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Allen. Good afternoon. I am a Mental Health worker at the facility also known as arf. I want to thank you. Thank you so much. I dont have anything to say because supervisor ronen said everything i will agree with what he is saying. I is agree with her. I came to the arf to the Mental Health and living en independeny in the community. It is in the hopes of enabling them to get back into the community. Some clients are able to move to lesser care. Unfortunately, a majority of clients are in need of Constant Care and attention. The ones that need the most care received eviction on august 19. We have an established program serving the needs of San Francisco adult Mental Health population for the last 14 years. Instead of building on the program and increasing beds, the program has been
We could move forward to operate all 55 of the arf beds. In addition to these factors, the redevelopment of empty unused beds in the arf could be repurposed to provide additional beds for homeless clients in need of Behavioral Services by expanding the humming bird psychiatric respite program. I would like to talk about hummingbird and why its expansion is important. A background. Hummingbird first opened in 2017 with 15 beds, which as i said before were always full. Then it expanded by 14 beds in february over 2019. Those beds were the result of the beds we asked to go to suspension to use the beds for hummingbird h bird. To date it serves 500 clients. It is a primary discharge for those discharged from zucker bird San Francisco. 30 are from the psychiatric services. This is a safe place to be other than is on the streets where they are the opportunity to engage with staff and be offered services and hopefully willing to accept the services at some point. Next i will review the commun
Of management. They have been languishing in jail. When their public defender got fed up and said this is ridiculous, i cant get answers, i am going to sub the department of Public Health. All eight are in beds out of jail. Some lang winninged for 8 months. This is a scandal of the highest proportion. People are waiting in jail so desperately i ll we cant find a bed for nine months until they come to Court Everything i am angry. This is the most humane i have seen. All i have seenence i called the mayors office. We it is by our plan. We have staffing issues and blame the workers. It is not good enough. We have got to do something to get those beds up and running. We are talking about hiring 12 more workers. In two years the department of Public Health doesnt have that capacity so that mentality i ll people can get the care they need. Is that the department we are running in the city these days . I have brought copiesna i introduced when this was happening. Directs the department of Pub