Minutes of the Virtual Meeting with OFVP and Berwyn-Cicero Cluster, September 22, 2022

Thursday, 2:00-3:00pm

Meeting recording

Attendees:

1. Jesenia Latorre - SGA Youth & Family Services
2. Elizabeth Delgado - SGA Youth & Family Services
3. Vanessa Melgoza - Corazon Community Services
4. Briani Shorter - Youth Crossroads
5. Edgar Montiel - Cicero Boys Club
6. Taeveon Johnson - LAC Member
7. Josephine DiCesare - LAC Member
8. Audrey Woodley - LAC Member
9. Susan Grazzini - LAC Member
10. Hector Villagrana - COS, Office of Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez
11. Luisa - Office of Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez
12. Mauricio Jimenez - Office of Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez
13. Mike Porfirio - Office of Senator Steven Landek
14. Dr. Stephany Rose Spaulding - Office of Rep. LaShawn Ford
15. Christopher Patterson - IDHS
16. Dana Kelly - IDHS
17. Awisi Bustos - IDHS

Minutes

1. Opening/RPSA Progress Overview
   • Assistant Secretary Christopher Patterson opened the meeting and welcomed everybody.
   • He started by mentioning the signing of the Reimagine Public Safety Act (RPSA) by Governor Pritzker which is the precursor of the event at present. RPSA called for the creation of the Office of Violence Prevention (OFVP) and made a historic commitment towards investing $250 million dollars with the goal of firearm violence reduction. Assistant Secretary said that this goal will be done thru different measures such as deepening relationships, measures within the youth development funding and also enhancing violence prevention protocols and programs in communities such as Berwyn and Cicero.
   • The next topic that Assistant Secretary discussed was the allocation of the $250 million dollars that have gone out as a whole. A little over $61 million dollars have been allocated to RPSA. There's a long history of funding youth development programming in general and so a little over $152 million dollars have gone to those initiatives. He mentioned the CPS "Back to our Future" funding which people in the Chicago area may have noticed already. The CPS funding is for reengaging young students, get them back into an education environment and give a wrap-around support for them and their families.
   • For the $62 million dollars that have gone out for RPSA, there are 48 Violence Prevention grantees in Chicago, 30 Youth Development grantees statewide, six Technical Assistance grantees statewide, 4 High Risk Youth Intervention grantees in Chicago, and 21 conveners in 26 Chicago communities. Assistant Secretary shared that the OFVP has decided that every organization or provider that is funded will have a dedicated technical assistance and training entity attached to it. This is to ensure accountability, but also support in real time. He added that the best measures of violence reduction, best practices are being exercised in every step of the way. He also added that the community convener positions are the eyes and the ears from the community directly to this office. They would be the convening body for all the RPSA funded organizations as well as organizations not funded under RPSA.
   • Assistant Secretary also mentioned the 14 additional applications that are under review which gives an idea of the amount and scope of applications that are coming in for both Youth Development and Violence Prevention. He added that part of OFVP's work is to make sure that the word gets out to potential providers in the environment.
2. Local Advisory Council Process
   • Dana Kelly, Chief Policy Officer of IDHS started by sharing that she has been working on the Local Advisory Council (LAC) initiative for the last nine months, working to stand up funding across the State. She thanked all those involved in the LACs. She said that some of the information that will be shared today is a little bit of repeat, but she emphasized that the focus of the meeting is how this impacts Greater Illinois.
   • A lot of the information reviewed by Assistant Secretary in the previous slide is funding that IDHS has been able to distribute in the Chicago area a little bit sooner because the statute required IDHS to do so. And this was done thru the inputs from the Local Advisory Councils. Ms. Kelly shared that they are excited because there's plenty of funding opportunities in Greater Illinois. She stressed that LACs are really utilized to help inform how IDHS distribute funding in Greater Illinois areas.
   • The OFVP per the Reimagine Public Safety Act has convened 16 Local Advisory Councils, one per municipality that's eligible for funding. This includes an overall 150 members across the State of Illinois that have been convened to make recommendations to OFVP on how to allocate violence prevention resources. The OFVP has provided as much information as it could on local law enforcement and other available data and then each LAC met in May 2022 and came up with a set of recommendations for activities, most needed in their respective local area to reduce firearm violence. Ms. Kelly added that they are happy to have received recommendations from the Berwyn-Cicero LAC group.
   • The recommendations from the LACs were summarized and compiled into a broader strategy for how to fund Greater Illinois services. The results can be found in the OFVP website IDHS: RPSA Local Advisory Council Summer 2022 Recommendations (state.il.us) and IDHS: Greater Illinois Funding Strategy (state.il.us). The first one shows the recommendations received across Greater Illinois and the second one is the strategy built off the recommendations. The next few slides will talk about the recommendations and what OFVP is doing in terms of strategy which is where the attendees are strongly encouraged to participate. Ms. Kelly mentioned that even though the recommendations were from across the State, the were obviously different feedback from every municipality but the salient things that stretched across the municipalities was the desire for a more comprehensive violence prevention services that include street outreach, victim services and case management. There was a desire to have a flexible source of youth intervention funding that would target a broad age range of youth, most at risk of being involved in community violence. This is a little different than what IDHS has been offering over time and have been able to offer as a youth development model that really focused on school engaged youth and had some pretty specific requirements.
   • Another finding is the need for additional trauma informed behavioral health supports that target those individuals, most at risk of being involved in community violence. And the final primary finding is continued investment in traditional models of youth development like those that IDHS have already deployed in Greater Illinois that focuses on engaging school involved youth.
   • Other findings that came up was the need for resources to address racism and historical disinvestment in communities of color, financial stability and mobility, and family violence; the need for technical assistance and capacity building resources that will allow small organizations to succeed; and then support for community collaboration inclusive of schools, police and other institutions. Ms. Kelly stated that some of that community operation has already been happening at the Local Advisory Council level and the need is for support for that ongoing collaboration and providing some level of capacity to keep that going in terms of funding.
   • According to Ms. Kelly, what OFVP did was took those recommendations, and the first priority was to build some service offerings that reflected the recommendations, thus the creation of the Notice of Funding Opportunity or NOFOs for Greater Illinois. The first one is Youth Development that opened as early as February 2022 but a recent open application was available in May and closed in September 8th. Second is the Violence Prevention NOFO which is new to Greater Illinois and includes street intervention, victim services and case management. This was released in August and just closed September 16th. She said that they are starting to review applications, there are about 20.
   • The next NOFO is the Youth Intervention for Greater Illinois which is a more flexible, youth focused application that includes mentoring, employment skills, life skills, development, et cetera. It's targeted at high-risk youth ages 11 to 24, and they do not need to be engaged in school to be a target for those services. Ms. Kelly added that it is a really a much broader and more flexible application that was released in August and recently closed in September 19. She shared that 30 applications were received statewide for this NOFO.
   • The final application, which is a reflection of all the feedback received is the trauma informed behavioral health services that includes mental and behavioral health interventions to address trauma recovery. This was released on September 9th and is open until October. It's currently open and available at the IDHS website.
   • Ms. Kelly encouraged Berwyn and Cicero attendees to apply for all the direct service offerings that she enumerated.
   • The next topic that Ms. Kelly discussed was the two other service offerings that are not direct service offerings but support offerings that will be offered in Greater Illinois. She shared that they are finalizing these nodes and hope to have them out in the following week. The first support offering NOFO is the Technical Assistance, Training and Capacity Building NOFO. She mentioned that IDHS has technical assistance and training already deployed in Greater Illinois but are specifically around youth intervention and trauma informed behavioral health. This NOFO that will be released will be for other organizations that can provide training and related level of support to grantees of direct service offerings NOFOs in Greater Illinois. This will be available soon.
   • Ms. Kelly continued on to the next NOFO. She specifically mentioned those involved in the Local Advisory Councils (LACs) and said that the model found out to be successful and that IDHS wants to leverage successful collaboration efforts that were started by the LACs by expanding and making permanent their role on the community. Ms. Kelly thinks that funding is needed in order to do that. And so, IDHS will be issuing a NOFO to select a lead agency per community that can continue convening and then also serving in a convener role to help organize either grantee organizations or other community organizations to respond when violent incidents occur. The model will be a little bit similar to the Chicago convener model. The NOFO will be released hopefully in a week.
   • Another topic discussed by Ms. Kelly was the IDHS' response to the other feedback related to accessing social determinant resources. The root causes of violence are often related to things like economic opportunity, racial discrimination, housing, family violence, things that IDHS and its partner agencies in the State have the resources to support or address. However, a lot of people doing work in the communities either don't have the capacity to access that funding or don't know how to connect clients to those resources and so what IDHS are trying to do is provide a lot of technical assistance around how to navigate additional resources that impact those areas. She added that those things will be rolling out progressively over the next several months.
   • In summary, Ms. Kelly said that the funding has been put through a strategy that is according to the inputs and feedback received from the community. There is a total of $100 million to give out to Greater Illinois through the NOFOs discussed and IDHS is engaging in a 1st round strategy that is focused on assessing provider capacity. The NOFOs have been released to communities and IDHS is trying to get everybody who can apply for funding to apply right now because the time is limited. She said that IDHS does recognize that there is a need to assess area need over time but right now, IDHS wants to fund certain municipalities that have higher rates of firearm violence incidents than others and also to see wat kind of and where the gaps are between the applications that will be received in this first round. If there are few applications from a particular community that has a very high level of need, there will be a need to do groundwork to build capacity in that community.
   • On Capacity Building, the first round of funding will be used to really assess where the communities are, what their abilities to respond to these services are and at the same time, to revisit the capacity of agencies for those organizations that are not able to apply right now. IDHS is working with consultants, Ernst and Young, and providing technical assistance, training on data and other grant requirements that will allow folks to actually apply in future rounds of funding. IDHS is trying to build up that capacity and at the same time soliciting folks who are ready to apply right now.
   • To reiterate, the 1st round of funding will focus on building, assessing capacity and building that capacity. The second round will look to ensure that funds allocated across the municipalities is aligned with how great the need is in each community and so IDHS do plan to release many of these NOFOs again for a 2nd round. Possibly not in all communities depending on if the right mix of applicants are received. But these opportunities will be definitely available in the future.
   • Thus, Ms. Kelly said that one of the things IDHS needs from the attendees of the meeting is to release, spread the word on these applications. She mentioned the deadlines for the NOFOs. She also said there are tool kits to get the word out. She also said that one of the purposes of the meeting is to really hear from the attendees about what capacity does Berwyn and Cicero have to step up to apply for the fundings discussed; what are the gaps and which area could they use support so that they may help other organizations.
3. NEXT STEPS
   • Ms. Kelly enumerated the next steps to be taken after the meeting. The first one was already mentioned, to spread the word about all the funding opportunities available and encourage eligible organizations to apply. Next is to figure out how to ramp up capacity building efforts in the communities of Berwyn and Cicero. Ms. Kelly said that feedbacks are welcome on where IDHS can support the capacity building. Another step to take is for the LAC to complete their community asset mapping if it's not done yet and to continue to hold meetings and keep OFVP abreast of any changes or things as they arise.
4. QUESTION and ANSWER
   • Assistant Secretary Patterson opened the table by encouraging providers and other attendees present in the meeting who may know other providers doing violence prevention work or youth development programming to pass along the information and the links to the application. He reiterated that OFVP is encouraging providers to apply for the funding and also making sure that full support are given to individuals who are applying.
   • Mr. Hector Villagrana, Chief of Staff at the office of Representative Elizabeth Hernandez asked about the interaction of OFVP with the grantees. He knows that Representative Hernandez's office granted some organizations with violence prevention money so he asked if OFVP is coordinated with that grant.
   • Assistant Secretary affirmed and added that OFVP has created an intergovernmental body together with Director Delrice Adams of ICJIA, himself, folks on the meeting and the Cook County in Chicago. He said that coordination is happening and that they are cognizant and keeping track of providers who are funded through as well as funders who are funded through Firearm Violence. He added that they still encourage providers even if they are being funded already to still apply if they feel that the work they're doing is the scope of work that IDHS is asking for.
   • Ms. Josephine DiCesare, member of Berwyn-Cicero LAC and Executive Director of Youth Crossroads asked about the future of granting and funding looking like. A lot of the grants are with 12 months, 18 months, 19 months period and so she asked if these will be renewed after that period.
   • Assistant Secretary Patterson said that the funding from the Reimagined Public Safety Act will have an exit date at the end of 24. However, because IDHS has a robust funding method for youth development, they anticipate continuing the funding for youth development and violence prevention. He added that this is the first time that the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago and Cook County have invested violence prevention funding and resources of this magnitude. They believe, especially the Governor, that this is a working model that will continue to live forward. For Assistant Secretary, it is a matter of showing by the numbers, as many nonprofit organizations have, that the model is effective in creating safer communities by working on the front end and complementing the work law enforcement does on the back end. He shared that they are excited to prove that point and thus, they want to get strong partners up front and scale up further the work that they have been doing.
5. As there were no other questions, Assistant Secretary closed and adjourned the meeting by reminding the attendees that OFVP is an open and listening office and feedbacks on the work that OFVP is doing are always welcome.