♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Thank you for joining us. Well, that clock is different than my clock, so I'll wait for that clock to turn one. Okay. I will now call to order the June 3rd, 2025 meeting of Social Services and Public Safety Committee, and I want to thank everyone for being here. The first item that we have on our agenda is to approve the minutes of, the committee summary of the April 15th, 2025 committee meeting. Are there any, well, I guess, I'll entertain a motion to approve. Move to approve. Second. Are there any additions or corrections? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Next, what we have on our agenda is a presentation about substance use disorder and intervention update, and our first presenter today is Carmen Combs Marks. She is the coordinator for this program in the Department of Social Services and will give us this update, and we're so excited to hear about researching for information about substance use, addiction, and treatment services. So thank you for joining us and giving us this update today. You're welcome. Thanks for putting me on the agenda. So I know most of you, my name is Carmen Combs Marks. I'm the substance use disorder and intervention coordinator for our Substance Use Disorder Intervention Program here in Social Services. I just want to start off by saying what our program does. We are an intervention program that's a resource for individuals needing information for substance use, addiction, and treatment services. So with that being said, we provide education and outreach as well as refer to other organizations for those needing assistance and whatever support that we are able to do. Our current funding comes from SAMHSA. Well, most of our current funding, $499,997, comes from SAMHSA. It's a grant that we utilize to administer Narcan in the community or distribute Narcan in the community. We also do the RSLA program, which is the Resident's Living Assistance Program, the Recovery Living Assistance Program, and that is a program where we help to provide additional funds for those that are in sober living homes that may need that boost or in between jobs. That's usually about $125 a week, so that's a program that we help those individuals in our certified homes. We coordinate the Mayor's Substance Use Disorder Advisory Committee and, of course, the one that you all are looking to hear answers for, the Opioid Abatement Commission, so it's a big one. Our four-year grant has been with SAMHSA. We've had it since 2022. We are approaching our last year, which is our fourth year, and that grant cycle will start in October. We still have not heard if we will receive that funding because of all of the changes coming down from the top, so we're in hopes that we will get everything that we need to continue running our program as we have been. We continue our partnership with the Lexington and Fayette County Health Department through their harm reduction program, so that's a great partnership. We're able to reach several hundreds of people utilizing those partnerships to distribute naloxone and help to refer them to other agencies for treatment and services. Our first goal is to provide naloxone and administration training to community members through the Lexington and Fayette County Health Department Syringe Service Program. We have an outreach coordinator, Scott Lou Allen. He goes and does that every week with John Moses at the health department, so we have a great partnership with the health department. Goal two, we provide naloxone training and overdose education to first responders. That's how the grant started initially. As paramedicine has grown, they have been able to get kind of like their own team, so we're still seeking to provide those services. I know most recently I went over to the SVU section of the social units of the police department and trained some officers as well as their advocates over there, so we're still trying to have that as a partnership, but it's just as we've grown, that's a good thing, right? Paramedicine has grown, and so it's changed a little bit, changed the narrative a little bit. Goal three is to provide service navigation to substance use treatment, recovery services, and harm reduction for community members who are at risk for opioid overdose. Our outreach coordinator, he continues to try to do a non-traditional approach, meeting people where they are, going into the communities, into barbershops, beauty shops. You've heard this before, those of you that are on the council, just different entertainment venues. Again, meet people where they are. We want to put Naloxone in the hands of the people that will be able to help to save a life, so just taking a different approach because it affects everyone indirectly, okay? We have great news. We've had a 32% decrease in overdose deaths since 2023, so that's great news. I don't know that it's directly related to our program. I'd like to say yes, but it's great work with us and all of the other partners that we have here in the community, from the hospitals to, you know, the Hope Center, to Voices of Hope, to just there's so many to name. So I think it's very important that we continue to increase those partnerships and be that leader in the community when it comes to providing these resources. Again, we implement the outreach through also the sober living homes. I wanted to touch base on that. We make sure that those sober living homes that are known, that we know of in the community, also have access to those resources, Naloxone too. They are in communities all over the county, and so our outreach coordinator goes and myself to those homes to make sure those individuals are educated and that they have Narcan available there in their homes as well. The RSLA program that I mentioned earlier, I don't even know why I always forget what it stands for. That's crazy. Recovery Supportive Living Assistance Program. It started in 2020, before my time here. It was a piloted program to assist individuals entering into the recovery space. It initially started at a lower amount, but as things increased, we were able to go up to $500 in assistance. It's a one-time payment, so some people think that it's something that they can receive every month. People on the outside looking in, but it's a one-time payment for individuals that may need some little extra boost. So we are grateful for that. Right now, it's coming out of, well, it's going to be coming out of general funds, and so we've had to explore just different options of where that would come from and what that will look like, and if it will grow, if we'll keep the program exactly the same, especially if we were to get an ordinance. Will we have a reserve of just money, just in case people would have to move suddenly? So there's different options that we're looking to explore to expand and to do things that would best suit the people in the community that actually need this. This is just a chart that shows, it's kind of hard to see, the naloxone kits distributed by this quarter. The white is our, the lighter color is, I think it's actually light blue, but it appears to be white. It's the SUTI program itself, so myself and Scott, and then the middle one is the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, and then the third one you'll see nalox boxes. Those are the little red boxes that some agencies ask for us to put up. Some hotels have them. Most of the schools have them, and they are just like, it's almost like a first aid kit that you can put the Narcan doses in, the kits in. And this is the breakdown of the number of referrals by quarter. So you see that we just don't stop at giving the Narcan. So there are many times that Scott, myself, have received calls, I'm like, what do we do next? We're in the hospital, or we're here, we're there, and we want to become sober, we need to be into a program. And so this is a way that we also provide resources to connect those individuals that need services. The Bayer Substance Use Disorder Advisory Council, the main purpose of that group was to provide guidance on both the Lexington Outreach Hour Program, as well as other services here in the community. How can we continue to partner with resources? How can we revamp what we have going on and just add to what we're doing here in the community? That meets once a quarter. And so that is an open meeting, and that's something that we continue to do and have presentations and address issues that are at hand. The National Opioid Litigation Funds, those were funds that we received based on a lawsuit filed in 2017. To date, we have not spent any money. We have a little over $7 million. And we also received, most recently, $197,000 from Kroger Settlement, and we will actually receive $197,000 more. It has two payments of $197,000. The Opioid Abatement Commission meets every week or every month, the first, second Friday of the month, and that, too, is an open meeting. Everybody is welcome to come and to present. If you want to present, you can get on our website. There is a link for a call to presentation, and then you can upload your presentation, and we'll allow you to present there during the meeting. This is just a breakdown of the settlement, and you can see there $7,600,000, and I can't see. My eyes are over 40, but, yes, almost $8 million. To date, we've had several activities in the community. We are now a recovery-ready community, and that is something that came from the governor. I think there's maybe 17 counties in Kentucky that have become recovery-ready. We did an assessment, or they did an assessment, to identify what we have going on in terms of prevention, treatment, and recovery support, and so we scored pretty high, meaning that we came together. They identified our resources that we have here in the community, so it just lets individuals know that we are here to support and help those suffering from substance use disorder. One of the areas that we did score the lowest in was prevention, and so we are particularly interested with the Opioid Abatement Commission on what we can do to create a more robust, some interventions as it relates to prevention, and maybe even partnering with Fayette County Public Schools or whoever need be to get those things together. We've had community town halls, and we will plan to have some more of those in the near future, and we are actually, we just had a meeting yesterday to discuss recommendations. We are in that phase to where we will be submitting final recommendations within the next couple of weeks to our mayor on how we would like to see the funds spent. Again, you're welcome to attend those meetings. They're the second Friday of every month at 10 o'clock right here, and the next meeting is next Friday, and it's actually at 1030. Any questions? Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Marks, for your presentation. One of the first things I did as council member when I was elected back last term, I held a town hall on the opioid crisis in the African-American community that was held at Consolidated Baptist Church. I did that in partnership with the state opioid abatement commission there, and one of the things that we spoke about was the narrative that in the black community that it's not spoken about. We are the highest number of those who, at least according to the data, we are the black males, actually, are the number one that are dying of opioid overdoses. So my question to you is with the disbursement of the, what do you call it? Mitigation funds? No, with the Naloxone? Yes. How are we strategically ensuring that those communities that are with higher number of African-American males are receiving these drugs? So at one point in time, yes, you're absolutely right. Even though the numbers were decreasing, they were still increasing amongst those males of color. In the last year, we've seen a decrease across the board. So African-American males, the decrease was half, so that's a good thing. We have tried to be intentional about just being visible and being out there at different community festivals and things of that nature, the Roots and Heritage Festival, whatever avenue that we have. We're trying to continue to go into the faith-based world organizations, all denominations, so that we can touch everybody as well. So if you have any suggestions or any concerns or places that you see that we should need to touch base, we're more than happy to entertain that conversation so that we can do so. Excellent. Thank you. And also you mentioned boxes, I guess, that are located, did you say hotels or did you say the schools? They're called Nalox boxes. They're like a red box about this big, almost like a first aid kit, and they hold three doses of the Naloxone. So do you have information, I guess, that you can provide to my colleagues and myself about the location of those boxes? Is that readily available? I can get that to you. Thank you. And I have a whole list of questions. I'm sorry, I've got a whole list of answers. I know you do. So how can, what do you say is the biggest barrier for preventing individuals from accessing Narcan? Well, I think stigma plays a huge role because we've been trying to get out into several areas and we've had pushback. Some of our very own areas that you would think that would want to accept those resources. I think just trying to overcome that this is a disease. It's not necessarily just, oh, I want to get high. It's a disease. So I think just trying to break the stigma into, I think it's very important to build relationships. You can't just expect somebody to want to change because you want them to change or to provide a resource because you think they should have it. So meeting people where they are, creating those relationships, and then going from there. Love it. And I am in agreement with you about building relationships. That's how most things get done, by building that one-on-one relationship somehow. So how can my colleagues and myself support a broader implementation of the RSLA or similar financial support programs? I think just being present. Being present at all of our meetings. I think that in being a voice, not just on these days, but being present because we want to be inclusive to everybody. We don't want to wait until it seems like it's a problem. We want everybody to be a part of the problem. We want everybody to be a part of the solution. So I think just when you have something that you see is going on. We're not everywhere. There's only two of us in our program, so we can't see everything that you see. I know there's a lot of concerns about sober living homes. I see it coming out of Councilmember Morton's mouth already. And so I know that there's a lot of concerns, but I think we have to work together as a team. There's just two of us, and we need all of you to help our team. Thank you. I'm not going to have enough time for my other questions. I'll come back. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Morton. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Just first, and it's definitely coming, but just first, you mentioned that the SAMHSA grant is in question. If this was to get pulled, do we plan to request funding from the Opioid Abatement Commission? If not, what is the plan? Yes, sir, that's our plan. We have asked or considered. We have not put that into a formal request, but we have discussed making that a part of the request to fund our program and to even increase efforts when it comes to programming and the ability to do more in the community. That works. That works. And then just lastly, there's so many questions tied to sober living, but one that I always tend to get is tied to the funding and who pays for individuals to reside in recovery residence. So outside of the RSLA program, are these the only dollars that the city provides to help access recovery residents? Yes, sir. And then can you just talk a little bit about that criteria within that? Yes. So most recently we have decided we've revamped it a little bit so that we are able to support those homes that are at least in the process of trying to be compliant with NARS or with the CHI-R certification. That's where they have to meet certain standards. And if they are and they apply, then we will do our best. It's a random selection. And, again, those individuals, it's a one-time payment. They can receive the payment again, but it's like a two-year span. So that's the only pot of funding that we use. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Marks, for the presentation. And my questions are about the Recovery Supportive Living Assistance Program. Have we always given the $500 stipend for rent? Has it always been the same amount? No, ma'am. It was, I believe, $425 when I first started. And when things kind of went up in terms of the rent for everybody, not just at sober living homes, but we just kind of took a look at it because it was still leaving a balance for individuals. The $425 didn't quite cover it. So we went up to $500 so that we could cover more individuals and cover the entire amount for about a month. With prices continuing to increase, are you all thinking about upping that amount in the future or near future? I think one of the discussions that we have had is with the opioid litigation funds is our program as a whole, and that was taken into consideration, not necessarily the amount but just how we do it so that we can make sure that we serve the people that need it. Okay, great. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair, and thank you again, Ms. Marks. And Commissioner. So regarding the disbursement of the funds from the opioid, by the way, are we expecting any more judgments to come? Yeah, that will trinkle in. We don't really have a timeline as to how or when, I guess you could say, but yes. Okay. I thought so. Because right now the city has not disbursed any funding to anyone. First of all, one of the issues that when I had the town hall that many people voiced was that many of these sober living facilities or, I guess, makeshift, I guess many of them were makeshift recovery, they're not regulated right now. So I believe that was something that on the state level they were going to work on, going to work on. That's what CHI-R is that requires them to have certain, like, I mean, they have to have so many bathrooms, so many square footage, so much square footage. There's certain regulations, but you just have to be careful because this class of folks are protected by the American Disability and Fair Housing. So that's something that I do believe has been taken into consideration with the ordinance and that's still in draft phases. So the legal, our legal division as well as CHI-R are working together to make sure that there's a uniformed message for those sober living owner and operators. Wonderful. Because that was, at the time, that was a major issue that was voiced during the town hall. But lastly, last question. What steps are being taken to ensure equitable distribution of the funds, of the settlement funds from the opioid litigation? We're going to, with what we're considering, I think it's kind of early to answer that completely because we're not exactly sure what recommendations will be accepted. But when looking at all of the needs in the community, we want to make sure we are able to put that towards prevention, treatment, and recovery, which I think would be one of the most fair and equitable ways. And then one of the things, it will be open up for, we're recommending grant opportunities that would be available for individuals at all different levels. So it's fair and equitable. Well, thank you, and thank you again for all the work that you do in our community. Thank you. I don't see any other comments from my colleagues. I want to say that you all are a small but mighty team, and you're doing a lot of work, and we really appreciate you and all the hard work. And it's pretty impressive that our overdose numbers have gone down substantially. So thank you for being a part of that as well. Thank you. When it comes to prevention, kind of like you were just mentioning, if we were to look, what do we wish we could do in that arena that maybe we don't have the manpower or the money or the resources to do right now? There's been some discussion around how we would do it if we were able to partner and get into Fayette County Public Schools. One of the things that we actually just kind of tossed up this morning was if we could add on to perhaps our substance use program instead of trying to put everything else on the frisk or somebody at a school, that we would have an individual in the substance use program that would just be over the school age or education for the school age children. So just being able to, I think, extend our program would help us to be able to get curriculum into the school and do the things that we need on the prevention side. So you feel like prevention should be oriented around youth and school age? Yes, school age, after school activities, that kind of thing. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. And we appreciate your time. All right, thanks. Thank you so much. Next, we have the Empath Center update. We have a presentation from them, and this is Council Member Sheehan's item and committee. She sponsored it, so I will turn it over to her for any opening remarks and introductions. Thank you, Chair. As you said, today's presentation is on the Empath Center. We have Dr. Jasinski and Dr. Woods here from Eastern State Hospital and UK Health Care to tell us about the program. A simple definition of this and the way I think about it is a mental health emergency room, and they'll give us all of the details of what that looks like, but for me it is just so exemplary of compassionate care for our community, which is just amazing the work that they do. Some of us had the opportunity to tour the center before it opened, but now they've been open for almost a year now, so I'm glad to have them here to share their progress and see where their program is headed for the future. So I'll turn it over to you all. Fantastic. What a great presentation. We thank you for that, Council Member Sheehan. Yeah, so my name is Mark Woods. I'm the Chief Nursing Officer at UK Health Care, Eastern State Hospital, Empath, and I'll be along with Dr. Jasinski, who is the Chief Administrative Officer at UK Health Care, Eastern State Hospital, and Empath. We're super happy to talk about this. We feel like this has been a labor of love for us for the last couple of years putting this, there's no couple, it was four. Let's be clear, it was four years. And to be able to see it manifest and come to existence and to see the acceptance by our community, by Lexington, by Fayette County, and beyond, and you'll hear a little bit about that, has just been just a wonderful experience. You don't always get a chance to see that in behavioral health, for sure. So Empath, as Council Member Sheehan had said, it stands for Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment, and Healing. I'm going to try to be a good steward of our time, so I'm going to skip a lot of things. But if you have questions, obviously, at the end we'll be happy to fill in the gaps. But, yeah, it's essentially an emergency room for psychiatric crisis. And the great news about that is we say that our patients that come in, they define the crisis. So we don't say you're too sick and send you somewhere else. We don't say you're not sick enough, that's silly, you shouldn't be here, anxiety, depression. You can go get care somewhere else. We don't do that. We don't say that we don't take care of patients that have IDD or maybe they're intoxicated at the time. We say, come here, this is where we want you to start. And then we will set up, we will speak with you, start treatment, we'll create a treatment plan for you. And maybe, yeah, maybe we will transfer you and take you to a residential substance use disorder facility. Or maybe this, maybe you get to go home after spending, you know, 15 hours with us. You sleep overnight, you get treated, you get some connections made. You go home and then tomorrow morning you're hooked up with somebody in a capacity of a therapist sort of thing. So you get into that system. We started this, as Councilmember Shannon said, back in July 30th, actually. So almost August of last year. And at that time we were the 30th in the country. First in Kentucky, for sure, and super proud to be able to say that we did this right here in Lexington. And it is a Joint Commission recognized sort of best practice. This is a busy slide, but this slide is really dedicated to kind of explaining why it's different than an ED, a traditional ED. Which is where people with behavioral health emergencies typically go. They go to the emergency room. What we know about, I'm not going to exhaust you by going in depth, but I would tell you this. The setting is infinitely different. If you're in a behavioral health crisis, they put you in the back of the ED. We love our ED, by the way. We've got one of the best, probably the best in the country, we'll say. But you get put in the back. You are in a room that's sort of like all the way in the back. You're given a sitter, somebody that sits and watches you nonstop, robs you of your privacy. If you go to the bathroom, they've got to go to the bathroom with you to watch you to make sure you're safe. You will spend umpteen hours in that emergency room before you get seen by anybody from the behavioral health sort of consultation. A lot of your liberties are taken away from you. You have to change into a gown, strip out and change into a gown. If you want something to drink or eat, you've got to walk out of your room and ask somebody for something to drink or eat. That's the total opposite of what happens at Empath. When you show up at Empath, you don't have to call us. You don't have to reserve a seat. You don't have to be assessed by other individuals. You just have to say, I want some care, and I'm driving up, and I'm going to walk up into that. And you'll be seen by a psychiatrist or an advanced practice provider within 30 minutes, oftentimes within 10 minutes. And then they start the plan of care. And you'll hear more about what's involved in the Empath. I won't belabor all that. But we treat you, and we've got up to 23 hours to do that. And because we treat you first before making a decision on where you should go, you know, in other words, should you be admitted or do you go home, because of that, the majority of these patients go home. They go home. I'll let Lindsay share with you all the other pieces. This is a picture of the therapeutic environment. Instead of rooms, you're given a chair. And the reason for that is we want to be able to see everybody sort of collectively. But what happens is people take that chair. It's a super big, sturdy chair that they can sleep in if they want. But people will choose parts of the unit to place their chairs, right, to give them as much or as little privacy as they would like. The bottom corner is our outside space for some of those patients or those individuals that just want to go out, breathe the air in, hear the birds. If it's raining, feel the rain. They can do that. And they don't have to ask to be let in there. They just get up, walk out, and go over to that area. And then, as we said, July 30th is when we opened up. Lots of fanfare. And we've done lots of tours. And the reason for it is that we want this model to be replicated across the state, across the country. And it's actually happening. I think we learned at a recent conference that we were at that July 30th, we were the 30th. Today, there are 60 of these across the country. And so, it is proliferating. So, all right. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about kind of where we are today. So, we opened with 12 chairs. We knew that this was going to be busy. It has been very busy. We now have increased that to 16 chairs that we have available. And we're working on getting up to 24 chair capacity. One of the things that's really important that we point out is this is very low barrier. And what we mean, we just went to a national empath conference a couple of weeks ago. The vast majority of empaths actually require that you go to the ED first, get medical clearance, and then go to empath. We're different because why would we need to, the vast majority of people do not need medical clearance. There's nothing that you get from that other than a delay in access to behavioral health treatment. And so, we take everyone. We take everyone. It does not matter why they come to us. We provide voluntary treatment. We can do a hold for involuntary care if we need to. But it is designed to be a wide open, let's fill the gaps in our system. If you are having a behavioral health crisis or your family member is, it's not I got to decide do they need this or do they need this thing. It's just come in and we will help figure that out. And we are located on Eastern State Campus, which is several miles from the ED, which is also unique. But we do all that medical treatment and clearance in the facility. We've worked with Lex Fire and they know who to bring to us. They know who might need additional monitoring. For example, if they've ingested medications or things like that. But it's a very close relationship with many of our community partners, with some of our shelters, with lots of different treatment providers so that we can make sure that people get access to care easily. This is kind of our team. You have this in your packet so you can see. One thing I want to say is that a lot of facilities that provide emergency behavioral health services do that via telehealth. We have an in-person provider. They are seeing someone face-to-face at 24 hours a day. We then have nurses. One thing I do want to highlight, we have social workers, all of that. One thing I do want to highlight is we use peer support specialists and they are critical to our mission. It is someone who says I've been where you are and I know that this can get better. And that delivery of hope is so huge. We also have transportation. So when someone comes to us, we know that transportation is a major challenge. And so we drive folks home. We drive them to residential substance use treatment or to their sober living house or wherever it might be that they're going next. To make sure that the reason they aren't getting care isn't because of another transportation-related issue. So this is slightly outdated because we did these slides a little while ago. We've seen in 10 months over 4,000 patients in 12 to 16 chairs. We've been very busy. A lot of those are not repeat folks. What was interesting is the first couple months we were looking at some of this data. These were folks who had not been seen before in our emergency rooms for behavioral health needs. So it's not that we just took everybody that was already coming in and moved them to empath. This was actually filling a gap in the community in that we were serving people who said, I don't know that I want to go to the emergency department for this behavioral health crisis. I feel like I might be judged or there's stigma. So I'm now willing to seek care because it's a different model of care. We're seeing about half males, half females. Our average age is late 20s, early 30s. But we've seen everyone from, we serve 18 and over. We've seen a couple of teenagers who have come to us and we've gotten them to pediatric services. But we've seen folks in their 90s. So really run that age range. We see them for about 16 hours and 60 to 65% of folks who come to us are coming because of suicide. In Kentucky, suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10 to 34-year-olds. And we're capturing that population. We have also reduced hospitalization significantly. So 75 to 80% of people that come to us don't go into the hospital. We can stabilize them and move them right into outpatient services. 93% of the people, so people have said to us, well, it's on Eastern State campus. You're just going to take everyone at Empath and put them into Eastern State. Only 7% of the people that come to Empath go into Eastern State. And it's because their level of need is that high. One thing on the bottom that I want to point out is pre-Empath, about 29% of our patients that left the hospital made that next follow-up appointment, right, which is abysmal. But it's fairly common in behavioral health. We've now increased that to 65% of people make it to that next appointment. And that next appointment is typically with New Vista, who we're working with here locally. And they see them within 24 to 48 hours. So it's not here's an appointment for three weeks out. We hope you'll be okay between now and then. We're going to see you tomorrow, and we're going to check in and make sure you're still doing okay. And what else do we need to do? One of the things that we also heard a lot of is, well, you're just going to be restraining people. You're going to have all these safety issues, things like that. We have had about 11 incidents where we've had to escalate and use some additional safety measures with a patient out of 4,000 visits. It's a very safe, effective model. What's interesting is we've also seen people using Empath and the ED less. So we looked at the six months pre-Empath, and on average, our patient population came in five and a half times to the ED for a behavioral health emergency, right? So they're coming in about once a month saying, I need help. We've reduced that now to 0.4 visits per patient in six months. So a 92% reduction in people going into the ED for behavioral health services. A lot of people say, well, they must just be coming back to Empath more. They're not. So we've reduced that to two visits in six months at Empath rather than five and a half to six visits at what it was before. Which tells us that we're moving people into the community, getting them connected to services. We have lots of things on the horizon. We're opening some opportunities for long-acting injectables, which are medications that keep people stable longer in the community. We are going to be implementing a focal suicide intervention. So CAMS is an evidence-based, single-session suicide intervention that we're going to be adding in. We actually have the Narcan distribution boxes at two places in Empath. So folks can take it as they're leaving, or families can do that. So we're excited about that. And I won't belabor this, but the atmosphere and the culture is so different. The patient experience is so different at Empath. And that's something that we're really proud of, is we're helping to change the system to say, we can do behavioral health differently and more effectively so that people will get services. And then we actually are really, really proud. We won the National Empath of the Year Award two weeks ago. This was, of the 60 that are open, there were five of us that were finalists. And we actually won the award against several that have been open for seven or eight years. So very thankful for our community support and the way we've been able to operationalize this. It's just been wonderful. Happy to take any questions. Thank you so much, colleagues, on retaining questions. Council Member Morton. Thank you. One, thank you for the presentation, and thank you all for all the amazing work and hard work that you're doing. So I actually come from the health care field, and I have been emphasizing the importance of folks receiving the correct, but also on-time care. It's very important. So can you just speak to the importance of individuals receiving on-time care, that is specifically tailored to the needs of individuals who are experiencing mental health conditions, please? Yeah. Historically, our culture around behavioral health care has been, we've accepted long lengths of time to wait. If you call today, you might get a hold of someone, or you might say, we'll get you in in six months, right? And we've always just sort of operated that way. Post-pandemic, what we know is the needs have increased significantly. Our Eastern State Hospital census has doubled since pre-pandemic. I mean, we've just seen a significant growth in needs. And what that means is we've got to get our system better at saying, here's how you access care. Here's the different ways in which we do that. So when somebody walks into Empath, it's not, let's sit and wait, we'll get you a consult, we'll have you, you know, just hang out for a while, which isn't always possible with someone who's anxious and overwhelmed and stressed. We're saying, we're going to start treatment right now. We're going to start medications, because the sooner we start treatment, the better your outcome is going to be. And we know that across multiple ways, multiple avenues of healthcare. But in behavioral health, we haven't always pushed this model to meet the needs and meet patients where they are. We've also, crisis stabilization units have existed in Kentucky and elsewhere for a long time. The challenge with those is they have very strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. So you have to meet X, Y, and Z to be eligible to get services there. The challenge is there's too many gaps in our system. And until we have these wide open criteria with Empath, we can't meet everybody's needs. And we're asking the community to figure out our system. With this, we have an entry point into the system, and we can then help facilitate that. Thank you. And then also just kind of in that same tune, what are some barriers that have been identified tied to individuals who may not have seeked service? Yeah, we can talk for days on that. You're talking about stigma. It's stigma. And I think what we can recognize as a society is things have actually improved, believe it or not. It's improved, but it's still got so much further to go. It's a comfortableness in saying that I need some help and actually going to get that help. And that's why it's so important for your previous question that when someone recognizes they need that help, we have to make it really easy for them to do it. And we've done that because we allow them to define the crisis. We don't put a bunch of barriers in front of them, and you make it happen. The first night we opened up, Dr. Dziedzinski and I were there nearly all night long, and it was a long day. And we'll never forget, there was an elderly couple that brought their daughter in. It may have even been her granddaughter, but whatever it was, they said this was a blessing to us because she wouldn't go to the ED. She was nervous. She was embarrassed. And when we opened this up, they said it was like a gift from above. And so they were super happy to be able to come in and be greeted with people that weren't going to be judgmental and see them as a checklist and say, how are you doing? Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink? Let's go talk. And then just connect. So that's super important. I think stigma has improved. One of the ways that we've improved stigma is that by telling our story. It's the single most effective way to break down stigma is to tell your story. And some of it may be individuals up on the podiums here. It may be a loved one or a family member. But it's having that bravery to share your story with other people, and that's how we break down stigma. Thank you. And thank you all for the presentation. Thank you. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for your presentation. Also, thank you for inviting, I guess, some of us. We had an opportunity last year. All the years run together at this point. We had a tour of your facility, and I was just blown away by how different it is. from typical places where we do our 72-hour holder, where we have individuals who go to the emergency, to the hospital. So it's a welcoming atmosphere, which is something that is desperately needed, because it's a scary thing. And as you did just speak about the stigma as being the biggest barrier. So in your facility, is there, because the location without the connection of Citation and all those other things right there, how easy is it for residents to get to you all? I mean, it's right off Newtown Pike and on Citation, so. Yeah, I mean, it really is meant to be accessible. So we've tried to label so folks know where it is, but we're on a bus stop line. So we've had folks take a bus to get to us. It is a little bit harder to walk to, but we've had situations where somebody has called us and said, we have someone, how do we get them to you? You have transportation, so yes. Yes, well, we can't bring them to us, right? Because of restrictions around ensuring that they get the emergency care, right? So that's a little bit difficult, but we rely heavily on our paramedicine colleagues to help us in those situations. We've had really good working relationships with police and Lex Fire, our paramedicine team. And we've had times we've reached out to them and said, hey, can you help us here? This person needs to get here, we'll work with you. So we've used partnerships to make some of those things happen. Yeah, we've worked with our judges. We're working with mental health court. If somebody's in crisis, we can get them right from mental health court to us. And we have a monthly community partners meeting that we have tons of folks show up to. And that's where we problem solve a lot of this. Okay, what are we seeing? Are people having challenges getting to us? Are there challenges when they get to us? How do we help facilitate some of those relationships and ensuring people get access to care? And you just answered one of my other questions regarding you mentioned the paramedicine and you mentioned our police and our, I guess fire as well. So, but moving on since you answered that. Thank you, without knowing. So with our local nonprofits that deal with mental health, how are you all working with them? Many of them are part of our community partners group. We work with them that we have, we've hosted 50 tours of Empath and we still host those today. So if anyone's interested, we're happy to show folks around. But if somebody, if we know of somebody or we have connections with folks, we have them come visit Empath. We talk about how can we make sure that their folks can get to us and our folks can get to them to access those services. And we rely heavily on our social work team to help us facilitate all of those. But we have, I mean, we have residential substance use facilities that actually will come pick folks up from us. And all of the places that folks go are preference driven for that patient. So whatever they want, we'll help them get there. So that's always their choice, right? We don't say you have to go here, you have to go here. It's a collaboration and a partnership to get them where they need to be. Well, yeah. One thing I would add is we are also in the process of developing our programming. I think, and part of that programming will involve people in our community. So Voices of Hope, NAMILEX, where they're coming in and actually doing some of the groups in the evenings. So the people, as they're getting ready to leave, they're exposed to some of these resources that are out in our community. So in some ways, we're trying to pull all of those resources to sort of see this as, this is their empath center, as it is Lexington's. We've worked, as Lindsay said, we've worked with so many people, Chief Weathers, sending Lieutenant Martin, I'm trying to think, Chief Cruz, we meet with the fire and the police. We meet with them on a weekly basis to try to get this right. That is just, that's wonderful to know. And to see that we're actually tackling this major issue. And I know, as a reformed educator, from working with students, of what unchecked mental health issues look like. So I appreciate all the work that you do, and I'm hoping that more people learn about the empath facility, because it's a game changer. So thank you, and thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me since I don't serve on this committee. I just wanted to say thank you so much for bringing this presentation before us, and for all of the work that you do. I also want to say thank you to Council Member Sheehan for introducing this into committee, because I think this is an important discussion for us to be having. As some folks around the horseshoe might know, at one point in my life, I experienced intense suicidal ideation, and had to seek mental health services in an emergency manner. And I don't know if anybody else here has gone through the experience of that clinical evaluation, at least the way it was done about a decade ago, but it was very cold, it was very clinical. It was very much, I mean, I remember at the time saying to my friend who had gone with me that the evaluation itself was worse than the distress that I had been experiencing, and it felt like I was treated with such hostility. And when we talk about compassionate care, and when we talk about how we meet people where we're at, I think that you all are doing an excellent job of modeling that dealing with a mental health crisis or emergency is a very different, but no less serious reality than dealing with a physical health emergency. The question that I have for you comes from my background working in direct action within the LGBTQ community. A lot of folks, especially the trans community and trans youth we know are at a statistically insane number. We have folks, I believe it's 42% of trans folks at some point in their life will attempt suicide, and more than 80% will experience suicidal ideation. So when we're talking about this compassionate care, and I already know the answer to this, but I just wanna speak to y'all about this in a public forum. If somebody is trans or queer or just a member of the LGBTQ community and they come to you to seek services, something that y'all do is consider that as part of your evaluation and do not treat their orientation or their gender as a mental illness itself, correct? Correct, absolutely not. In fact, we embrace that and we understand that's part of their identity and that's so, so important for them as a whole person. And we're looking at that whole person. We have many of our staff that identify in some of those groups as well. And this is something that we really do strive to be compassionate and inclusive. And I think that's really important part of our care. I think also oftentimes it's our, as Lindsay said, we embrace it, but we make sure that it's a part of their treatment plan in that if they so choose, they are connected to LGBTQ friendly clinicians and providers and all of that, so. Yeah. Thank you so much. And I can't overstate just how important that is and how appreciative I am. And I hope that all of our community partners and all of the folks that we're working with to provide mental health services can follow that model as well. So thank you for being here today. And I'm gonna reach out with my office because I'd love to come have a tour and see what y'all are doing firsthand and how we can be better partners to you. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. So you talked about how you've already expanded from 12 to 16 chairs. How often are you reaching full capacity with the 16? So I would say we've probably had 10 to 12 times where we've actually had to say we can't take anyone else right now, but here's what I would say. That has created so much discomfort for us because we don't wanna turn anyone away, that we have pushed our staff who are uncomfortable saying we've had up to 21 patients in the facility at one point in time, and we are pushing to get away from ever having to divert away from the facility. It's specialty care that's not available elsewhere. And we need to have processes where we can safely take care of that many people, but we continue to push our staff to get there so that we can provide that additional care. And part of that too is our ability to get really efficient with this. So we've got some internal opportunities sometimes, I think. And so, yeah, I mean, we've had those moments, very short periods of time, usually about three o'clock in the morning to five when we're talking on the phone. But sometimes what we've recognized is that there's some ability for us to internally become more efficient. So we feel, honestly, we've got more beds where we, or beds, that's usually how you talk. We've got more chairs that we can expand to, but we just, we wanna be very planful about it. And yeah, so. Yeah, and how often, and I could see this being a regional resource. So how often are you seeing clients or patients coming from outside of our county? Often. So the vast majority of the 4,000 people that we've seen are Fayette County. They're here local. But we have now seen patients from 28 states, and we've had folks drive in from West Virginia, from Ohio, from lots of other places, and say, we can't access cares, we need to. We've met with close to 45 different organizations, including the Canadian Ministry. We did a video for them on Empath. So this is something that's spreading widely. I would love to see more of these in Kentucky. We need more. I don't wanna run them all. I want other places to run them. And so we meet with organizations constantly and say, this is doable, here's how. We've written a manual on how to do it. We're happy to hand that off to folks. Well, it's incredible that you have become a model for how to do this and are helping to train other organizations for how to get this started. Because I really can see the capacity to grow with this, and how it influences all of our other healthcare systems and how this kind of offsets there. So I think this is a valuable resource, and I appreciate all the work and care that you have put into this, so thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I am extremely impressed with this model. I have a few technical questions. So if someone comes in and they're already under the psychiatric care of someone else, they are already on meds, but they're in a crisis, do you have to say, like other EDs, we're not going to change your meds, we're not gonna do anything, or are you able to make a change right there? We make changes, and our providers do that in a therapeutic way. So what I mean is, we're not saying, let's slowly titrate your medications, and we're gonna wait, and then you can see your provider. We're saying, we're gonna change your medications and get you to an effective dose. And we can adjust those, but then we work with that other provider in the community to say, here's what we saw, here's what we're recommending, this person needs to continue to follow up with you. That's great, so they don't have to sit there and just wait it out until they can get into their psychiatrist or their doctor. We've got roughly 23 hours, and so we want to make good use of that. And we know that most crises, oftentimes will resolve themselves over the course of being around comforting, supportive people, and maybe even a good night's sleep, or a reasonable night's sleep, anyway. And you wake up the next morning, and things are a little different. And so, yeah, to Lindsey's point, I think oftentimes we're aggressively trying to treat someone. But what that doesn't mean necessarily is that we're gonna completely change your medications. It may warrant us to do that, but that's not always the case. That's great, and like I said, that's a big deviation from the typical ED model, which is problematic when someone comes in in crisis, and they need a change, because obviously whatever's happening right now is not working. So I think that's wonderful. Over 10 years ago, when I was pregnant, I found myself in a horrible place. And there was nobody that wanted to treat me because I was pregnant. Are you able to treat pregnant women? We do all the time. All the time? Yep. We actually, and believe it or not, we have a breast pump. So if someone comes in postpartum, because that is a vulnerable time for women in particular, they can continue to pump, and we'll facilitate making sure that baby gets milk so that they can continue to do all of those things, but still get behavioral health care. But we treat pregnant women often. If they need something related to pregnancy, we'll use our colleagues at UK to help us support that, but we do that regularly. Well, I think that's amazing. I had to go to Louisville to find anybody that was even willing to work with me. And so I just think this is such an important asset to our community, and I want to thank you all for having this vision and making it happen. And also thank you to my colleague, Council Member Sheehan, for bringing this forward. I think that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Next, we are going to have an update on the HOPE Center expansion project. And so I am going to turn it over to Council Member Lynch, who is the sponsor of this item, for any background information and remarks that you might have. Thank you, Chair. I'm excited to bring up Jeff Crook, who is the CEO of the HOPE Center, to give the presentation about their expansion project. If you've driven down Loudoun, you've seen it. It's up, and so I'm looking forward to finding out more details about the project for the future. So thank you, Mr. Crook. The floor is yours. I'm Jeff Crook. I'm the CEO of the HOPE Center. The project we're looking at is the Quantrell Jones Center, new expansion on the property where the emergency shelter is. I wanted to go ahead and show you a few things about the location here at the beginning, and then get into more of the details after we look at that. This is a shot of it, the new building in front of the existing shelter from the Loudoun Avenue Street. If you look at this, you can see the blue and green portion. It's sort of in the middle part of an upside-down F, capital F there. That's the new portion. The other outside L shape is the existing emergency shelter. So the two buildings do touch. You can't walk between the buildings, but they do touch by the roof, and it's a really tight squeeze on the property, as you can kind of tell with the property line that goes right across the front there. Loudoun Avenue would be at the top of the screen there. We had to move the entrance to the emergency shelter. It used to be in the middle of that big L, and we had to move it down to the side so that it would be off the main parking lot, and so that we could get easy access for emergency vehicles because, unfortunately, we have many calls to the EMS for our clients. So we had to move the opening, or the entrance to the shelter. It's taken a substantial amount of funding just for that particular move. This is what the building looks like with the veterans housing entrance right off the main parking lot. You can see this is pulled back a little bit further. In the past, when I came here to present, we used a rendering. Now we actually can see what it looks like from the outside. We're still working on this project. Unfortunately, we thought we were in the homestretch before, but we had a burst pipe that knocked us backwards three months, and so I'll talk about that in just a minute. In terms of the building details, the new building is 18,674 square feet over two floors. There's 72 beds, 32 for veterans, 40 for supportive transitional housing. The funding for the building, we had two million in LFUCG ARPA funds, 1.5 million in veterans capital funding, and then the help center has raised 3.3 million for the 6.8 million expense for the building. The timeframe for the opening was originally April 1st. We had a pipe burst in the building in the middle of the night on 320. Unfortunately, damages are more than a million dollars from that. We've been working on that since then. The insurance will cover all the repairs and replacement, but it's pushed our grand opening back to the 1st of July, and that might be a little bit optimistic. In terms of the services being provided there, we have veterans transitional housing, which we have 20 single units with private bathrooms. We have one eight-bed unit with private bathroom, and we have a four-person unit with common area and private bathroom. We provide bridge housing for veterans who are waiting to move in a permanent unit or who are in the process of working with the VA housing. We also have service-intensive programs for veterans who may need higher levels of mental health employment or substance abuse services while working towards their housing. Up on the second floor, we have our supportive transitional housing, and that's where we can provide housing support for the emergency shelter, which is assistance with housing documentation, searching and applying for housing, life skills education focused on independent living and maintaining housing, ongoing case management. We have mental health services that you can see there, as well as substance abuse services, and these are all things that we would want to provide in the new facility. I've got David Shedd, our chief programs officer here with me, so he could answer detailed questions about the services if you have any. Any questions? Council Member Martin. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. I just have, I guess, a couple quick questions, and this is more so just for public transparency due to questions I've received. So out of the, so we mentioned 72 beds. There's 32 reserved for veterans. Are any of those contracted, or those are just open to any veteran in Lexington? I'm sorry? The 32 beds for the veterans, are any of those contracted, or are they open for any veterans within Lexington? You have to fit within their capital grant and per diem grant that we have with them, so you have to qualify for those. Okay, so I guess more so, what is the process for a veteran getting into those beds then? Essentially what we do, so when a veteran presents, either to the homeless shelter, to the local VA, or any number of other resources, our street outreach teams, then we have a staff person who contacts the VA, checks benefit eligibility, checks to see what programs they may qualify for. And if they qualify for grant per diem housing through the VA, then they're able to move into our transitional program. Our transitional housing program with the VA is for 30 beds, so you do see there is an ability for people who are not being served through that particular project to still be able to be housed. And typically we have not seen capacity, so we have run 20, 25 veterans who run the per diem, but we do have other veterans who are currently in the shelter who still receive veteran services. They just don't typically qualify because of their discharge status. But we try to provide services regardless of that. We can actually help upgrade discharge so that they may qualify for benefits. A lot of what we're doing is applying for health benefits of the VA, so I can submit an application to see if they qualify. If they do, connect them with mental health services there, connect them with some of the resources the VA has. They have a lot of employment resources. And of course, probably in the housing world, that is the fastest avenue to housing for homeless men is if they qualify for VA housing, just because of availability. Okay, and then in the same kind of tune, so the next 40, what's the process for getting to those 40 beds? Our staff will, currently as it stands, our shelter staff, they meet with all of the men who come into the facility. So as it stands now, we refer those individuals for service. So if they come in needing employment, we refer for a caseworker to work with employment for housing. So what we'll do is have those, we do weekly staffing, so we will discuss clients and whether or not they are appropriate for this type of transitional housing. The thing with this housing is we want to make sure that everyone that is in transitional housing is actually transitioning to something. We don't want it to be just another shelter bed. What we want is for this to be a place for our guys to work on housing, to focus on what they're trying to achieve. We're gonna help them establish goals. We're gonna help them connect with other resources so they're able to receive that intensive care. So it will be a combination of their interest in the program and our staff assessing to make sure that they are appropriate. I have a couple more, but I'll ask this last one and then come back. So, and I guess, so it's fair to say that the transitional housing model is gonna free up some space in your emergency shelter. Absolutely. So currently our Veterans Per Diem program takes up 30 beds. Although, you know, that space can accommodate more because many of our veterans are disabled. They're not able to get in bunk beds. So a lot of those are single units when we typically have bunk beds in the shelter. So you could potentially free up probably 40-ish beds back there. But as people move from the shelter into transitional housing, that frees up that bed in the shelter as well. So yes. Thank you. That's a lot of words to say yes, but. Are you through? Council Member. Okay, thank you. Council Member Gray. Council Member, you sure you don't wanna ask your question? Okay, I'll go. Well, thank you, Chair. I will take the time since you're gonna come back, right? So thank you for your presentation. My, I have several questions. First, what are your contingency plans? What contingency plans are in place for future facility issues? Because right here I see you have the flooding that caused $1 million worth of damage. So what plans do you all have going forward to remedy the situation or have a plan in action? Well, we, if you're asking in terms of insurance, we have insurance on our facility. No, I'm sure all of our, because you work with LFECG where we actually own it, but I'm saying what is your plan? We all assume that you have insurance. You have to have insurance. So what is your facilities? What is the HOPE Center's plan and how to, what is your plan for these situations such as this going forward? Flooding, if it floods again, what is your plan? I'll do exact, I'll do. I think we have, we're very fortunate and blessed to have approximately nine facilities right now. And some of those facilities have some flexibility with them in the sense that you could, if we needed to provide some emergency housing, we could use some of those facilities. We have a cafeteria that's not designed to house people to sleep, but in theory we could in an emergency. We've wondered about that in the past when we've had an ice storm and we've lost power at some of our facilities. Even though most of our facilities are on Loudon Avenue, we do have three facilities off of Versailles Road. So we have looked at moving people so that they would have heat in the middle of that kind of situation. We don't have specified things to anticipate every possible scenario, but we do have. I'm hoping that perhaps you all would consider putting together a plan because if you don't plan, I believe you're a plan to fail. Yeah, each of those scenarios are kind of likely violations of the number of clients allowed in a specific place. So it would sort of have to be an emergency situation. We do have people on our board who are very generous and very giving. We do have a foundation that has a significant amount of money that could assist us in times of need. We were aware when COVID hit that we had to find more space. And so we went out and found Transylvania University who was willing to allow us to use their practice gyms so that we could have the social distancing required for our shelter clients. And we basically took one shelter worth of people and split them into two different shelter areas as a result. So we could absolutely come up with scenarios that we could go through and things of that nature that we had to do in a hurry for COVID. We could absolutely do that in the future, but likely we could have a hundred scenarios and still have to create a new one. But I think it's a good idea to have a plan, a certain level of plan that we could maybe adjust one way or the other. So I think that's a good point. I'm just hopeful going forward that there will be a plan that the Hope Center does put together for such situations. But so how are residents being prepared to transition into permanent housing from your facility? Typically that's based on the individual. So everyone has a varying level of need. And so our staff, as I said, they meet with all the men coming into the shelter and develop a plan of action. So that's one of the things we've really focused on over the last couple of years is being more proactive in establishing that plan as our guys are coming in and working with them on whatever level they are. Some people don't need a lot of help, to be honest. They just need us to point them in the right direction. They're able to make the phone calls on their own. They're able to go out and look at apartments on their own. But not everyone is. There are some that we have to accompany to appointments or assist with filling out applications or assist with applying for birth certificates or identification. So it varies. It varies greatly depending on the person, but we will work with each individual, assess their needs, and then try to direct them to the right resources for their income level, their support of housing needs. And so we begin that discussion at intake, but it continues through their time with us. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And I want to thank Jeff and Chris in the back for giving me a tour last Thursday of the facility. I think you are being a little anxious or to think that's going to be open on July 1st, but I'm hoping that you're going to be there. It looks with the, unfortunately, that pipe bursting, I know, put you all back, but it's going to be a really nice facility. Unfortunately, I think this only is not going to be the end of it, just because we're going to be hearing a presentation in the work session about how many more beds are needed in this community for homelessness by what the last count showed, and then where we're headed by 2030. So thank you all for what you do, and I think the council needs to really look at where we're going to work going forward with the homelessness issue, because we're going to need more beds. Just looking at what the stat, I was on with other council members this past year when we did the count, and it's amazing how many homelessness we have in the community and what we need to be prepared for in the future. But thank you all, and it's a really nice facility. I like how you have made the individual rooms there and the way that you have the system set up now with the different areas in between those. I think it's going to be nice. And then also the way that you go about with the transition when we're talking about that is you kind of have to show that you've earned that. And I think that's a great system, but we all want to, at some point, go from that system and get to permanent housing. So it's a slow progression, but I like how you're all moving forward. And thanks again for giving me the tour. I learned a lot and look forward to the ribbon cutting, hopefully July 1st. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Morton. Thank you. And I just had a couple of quick ones. So more so on a pivot towards outreach. Can you just talk about how many outreach teams we currently have, just for my knowledge? We currently have, I have to count because we have some like half people. We're staffed from seven in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. So we essentially have, on Monday through Friday, we have some emergency on call on the weekend. So we have two staff that are out in the mornings, two that are in the evenings. We have a couple of part-time peers that work with them. And also we have a clinician that works halftime with the team. So we also have our Hope Mobile, which goes out. It's more of a static outreach unit. It goes to local churches and parks and hands out meals and resources. So our goal over the next year is to make that a more active part of our outreach team and actually add a second shift to the Hope Mobile as well. So. Okay, but so I guess, are they like a unit, like I guess just from, so from my, so I can picture it, is it, how many different units do we have? How many different bands or different cars do we have that are going out to outreach? How many different units? One, two, three? We have two different vehicles that we use. We have the capacity to have three teams out at one time. So we can pull in some transportation from another location if needed. But typically, typically two on any given day. And then can you just provide like kind of an overview, when you, you kind of gave a synopsis of one of them, the overview of the other, just the other outreach that you didn't mention that that's not handing out the food and. Yeah, yeah. Our outreach team, we started this, gosh, I don't know. It seems like a long time ago, but we started with like maybe one and a half people. Maybe actually we started with Charlie and me. But we've developed into having a more robust team. And what they do is work with individuals who are unhoused. They go into encampments. They take referrals. Many of their referrals come from you all. They come from police. They come from fire, paramedicine, just citizens. And so we go out and we respond to those calls. We look for people who are in encampments. We try to provide them with resources to either get into shelter, get into treatment. We've seen a lot of referrals to sober living houses over the past year or so. Trying to connect with mental health services or medical services. So our team is essentially doing a variety of things. We're connecting with these men and women in the community. We're trying to get them off the streets and into at least some temporary shelter. But long-term, we're also working on housing. Just this morning, I signed some rental assistance checks to help a lady move into permanent housing. So it's very, it's a wide range of services, but essentially tailored to whatever they specifically need. But we're going to them. So we're going to the encampments and we will respond to any email or any phone call trying to say, hey, can you come check on this person? If we can find them, we will try to help them. And then, is that fully funded by the city? Yes. The street outreach team is. We do receive some other funding, some private donations for the Hope Mobile. So it is not funded there. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Graham. Thank you, Chair. And continuing on with my questions. So last time you were over here, I asked questions regarding women. And you did send me an email eventually with the information. So we're talking mainly right now about Loudoun. So in this new facility, do we have a facility that is similar for the women? We have, the only women's program that we have, we have our women's recovery program and we also have some women's permanent housing. We, many years ago when we had a part of our grant per diem was allocated towards women, we had beds that were allocated at the Bursells Road Women's Recovery Program. And that is the only facility that we currently house women. So, and as women are 51%, actually majority of the population is, and in the report that we're receiving that will be given later on today to the council members regarding our, the lack thereof of shelters and I guess transitional housing for our population is that women are not considered or actually, and so your HOPE Center on, your facility on Bursells Road does not do anything with sheltering women. Is that correct? Oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. It is not, there is not a homeless requirement. That's not to say that there are women there who are unhoused, but it does not require, it is not a shelter, so it is a substance use program. And so to my colleagues, I believe that we're at a compliance constitutionally in that we are overly supporting the male population regarding housing and that there should be equal representation with our, with anything our local government does and to ensure that our entire population is receiving the same thing. Right now, like with this facility, it is male, male-centered, which I think is a flaw and I hopefully, I'm hopeful that we as a council will look into this to see how we can get better services for our entire population. That is all, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking all our questions. Thank you. When it comes to, this is the question that we're all asking everyone, right? Federal funds, if federal funding was to be cut or severely cut, what programs would that cut for you all or what other options would you have to try to find funding, or do you have a plan? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Right now, we have two federal grants right now. We have the SAMHSA grant that we're in the third year. It's a grant for men and women to provide medication-assisted treatment. So we're in the third year of a five-year grant, actually our second grant cycle there. The other one is sort of a pass-through, is a path project for mental health services for individuals who are living on the streets. So we have a small amount of money through that. We have had some expired grants over the last year. And essentially what we do, we're very active in pursuing new grant opportunities. So we have, Jeff is great at that, and we have a person who works on grants for us who looks to identify new grant opportunities. So we're constantly applying for more diverse resources. And as much as possible, we do try to diversify. We have Chris Peck back here who's gonna bug people to give us money. So we will also increase our fundraising efforts should that be, our goal is to not have to lose services because of a lack of federal funding. Now, if you see things like massive Medicaid cuts, I think that has an effect on the whole homeless community that will, I was around, I worked at the shelter back before we had affordable care. And I think that is a significant impact that will definitely change the way all of us are able to provide service. But essentially just losing the federal grants, we would aim to continue providing those services in whatever capacity that we're able to, hopefully the same capacity or better, regardless, just pursuing other funding opportunities. Okay, thank you so much. And once again, thank you for coming and for your time and expertise. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And now colleagues, we are going to turn to the items referred to committee list, please. And I am going to go through each item in the top list and ask the status. So if you are sponsoring an item, please pay close attention. All right, the first one is crime reduction technology. Council Member Baxter, is that something that you would like to leave in at this time or remove? I'm happy to do either. We had kind of kept it in committee just as a placeholder for anything that came up, but it's new. That's fine, we can leave it in. I just wanted to make sure. Number two is the assessment and enforcement of the noise ordinance. Councilwoman Gray, is that something that you would like to remove from committee at this time? I'm still working on a few things. So I may pass this on. So as of right now, we're holding ground. Okay, so circle back up with me on that. That would be great, thank you. Three is eviction, diversion, and right to counsel. And Vice Mayor Wu is not here, so we will skip that one. The next one is the comprehensive review of code enforcement. I know we're going to have another update in a few months. Is that correct? Yes, I'm on the schedule for our August meeting. Okay, perfect, thank you. And I'm scheduled to present the rest of it. There was a portion that, I'm still waiting for feedback from two of the colleagues. So I'm just, I'm still waiting. So I think I'm supposed to address it in October, but. Okay, I know you were going to do your portion. Yes, I'm going to do my portion in August. In August, okay. So this is regarding the ordinance that was written by law. That recall to you? Yes, okay. All right, I will check on that, thank you. Let's see, Council Member Sheehan, coordinated victim response plan. This is in progress, so I'm going to leave it for now. Okay, let's see. The villages model initiatives for Lexington, I know that we've already had a presentation on that. Is that something you want to leave in, or? We are scheduled to present on October. Perfect, at the committee meeting. And then Youth Council, Councilwoman Gray. Yes, and I guess I will talk with you about setting up a date. To have it at committee? Okay, yes, that's good. We should have some time towards the end of the year. Calendar year. And then that's my item I'm going to leave in. It's actually talking about street outreach, which we were talking about a second ago. The next one is the review of the Fayette County Sheriff's Office. I know we already had a presentation in April. Do you want to leave that in, or? I would like to remove that. Okay. Unless you feel it should stay. Nope, that's fine. Thank you. Motion second, all those in favor? Aye. All right, anyone opposed? Thank you, we're, we'll move number nine. We'll skip CASA update. Councilmember Sheehan, after today, do you want to leave in committee the Impast Center update, or would you like to remove it? This one can be removed, but I can't make the motion because I'm not on the committee. I'd like to remove it. Second. There was a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that comes out. We know, Councilmember Morton, the review of sober living ordinance, that's coming back up shortly, so. You can speak on it. I mean, I don't have much. We just have, we, myself and other CMs are working on it, which are three other CMs, have an internal meeting set to discuss next step, a possible timeline, and then, as you mentioned, bring that back up for a presentation, and for adoption for an effective and strong recovery residence ordinance, so. Perfect, thank you. And then, we have the Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. Councilwoman Gray, we had that presentation. Is that something you wanted to leave in committee? Yes, ma'am. All right, thank you. And then, the strategic growth plan for the Lexington Fire Department. Councilmember Morton, you're still working on that? I can speak towards that. So, yeah, just from the last email change, Councilmember Hale, which is on his item, as well, it looks that we'll be presenting in the fall, early fall. Great. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. That takes care of that list. We're not gonna go through the annual updates, because most of them are gonna stand there. Councilmember Lynch, did you have something? Yes, since the HOPE Center gave their update today on the expansion project, and the committee item is just on the expansion project, and they plan to open this year, I don't see a need to keep it in committee, so I'll move to remove item 21, HOPE Center expansion project update. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And that item is removed. That's perfect. Thank you very much. Any other items on that list that anyone wanted to, that anyone wanted to remove from the annual list, since I wasn't going down it? Okay. I think that's everything, colleagues. I really appreciate your time and attention. I know that we will have a meeting coming up in July, so if you can stay in town for that, great. If not, let me know, and if we don't have quorum, we will have to cancel it. So I know it's right before our break. So thank you very much, and we are adjourned. Thank you.