Greetings, Union Sisters and Brothers. On July 26, 2024, your UPE bargaining team met with CPS management regarding their proposal to eliminate the above.
The department is of the mindset that the Facilitator position would be better off being done by an outside agency; with the department moving forward with their Kin First culture, they believe time would be better spent family finding. The department also informed us that PCFT’s are not mandated by the state, as if all the department does is follow state mandates.
When UPE asked the department, multiple times, what is it they think the current Facilitator does, they had no idea. We asked them what criteria they outlined when looking at vendors to facilitate the PCFTs and they stated they did not have it written down but there was a meeting that took place and it was provided in the Request for Proposal (RFP), which was published. UPE requested to see the RFP and, suddenly, they cannot find it, it’s no longer public, they don’t have the link, etc.
UPE reminded them that the Facilitator does not merely facilitate, but in fact does bring the families (including NREFM’s) together in attempts to keep youth out of the physical care of Sacramento County; we all know they are failing miserably at that. The current Facilitator is finding out what barriers exist within families and how those barriers can be overcome to keep the youth with their families. Facilitators cool off participants and assist in keeping families on track as to why they are meeting among other things, and they are familiar with the needs of the youth as well as the families and complete paperwork at the conclusion of the PCFT.
At the conclusion of the meeting, UPE urged the department to reconsider the contracting out of this work as it is NOT BROKEN and it is, in fact, keeping youth with their families and out of the care of the County! DCFAS is supposed to be about keeping families together (whenever possible) from the start, not ripping them apart and then attempting to put them back together again.
We asked what will happen to the Facilitator and Scheduler to which the department responded; they will do their best to attempt give them preference should they want to be reassigned to another unit.
We will meet on this again once the County has all their ducks in a row. STAY TUNED!
THANK YOU TO THE ADVOCATES,
Eric Booker, Deanna Green, Robert Shorter, and Sarah Singleton