Chair Stevens Questions Legal Support Hotline Call Volume and Complexity

Yeah um I'm about to get these numbers I know because they're watching um so um I think we've we've talked a little bit about this in years past but there was actually a decrease in some of the calls during the last administration um and I think it it was connected also to sort of the federal environment and things to that extent um um but that's just overall I know that now we have seen an increase in calls in other languages Haitian Creole to be one that is very different and that change really began January of this year.

But I'll try to get you a number because I know that you might be interested in that.

Yeah no I I think you know our perpetual struggles to make sure that these hotlines are as effective as possible and I think you know, we want to recognize that there have been investments and work to improve those things.

So I'm I'm glad to see that to hear that there are more languages incoming um that's a good sign.

I think I was also heartened to hear about, I mean, the 12,000 of the 19,000 being particularly referrals for legal support, um, kind of leads me to my next question in terms of the legal support partners.

Obviously, they have um they have they're they're bound by contracts with certain outcomes, and the improvement in the hotline will potentially mean more volume for the legal support centers who are bound by specific contracts and service limits.

Is there a consideration to um adjust support to the legal centers as that volume increases in referrals?

Because I guess what I'm getting at here is that I feel like the volume of referrals probably coming to the legal support centers has increased it uh from every direction, and uh the contracts are stagnant and not increasing with the same level.

Obviously, it's not a one-to-one.

We'd love that.

Um, but do you have a sense of how that is kind of metting out at the end of the day?

Yeah, I can um and I also just want to clarify that um referrals are made to the legal support centers, the rapid response to your collaborative knife up, as well as um we were able to um also provide connections to ICAR as well.

So there's a bit more support with that.

Um on the legal support center side, as you know, um besides the three-year contracts, there's other providers as well who have a one-year contract, and as a commissioner mentioned, that funding has been renewed.

So there's a bit of a of an expanded.

But what we have done internally is we've created a capacity tracker as a centralized tool to support the hotline referrals and the legal support centers.

So we're not just like sending people without consulting with the legal support centers.

Weekly, we send out and ask them to provide us with a real-time snapshot of what their capacity looks like.

So they have that as well.

And part of our sort of ongoing work with the hotline and because we also recognize that you know we've been doing a ton of outreach and are about to roll out more outreach and with this hotline number, what does that mean for capacity?

I think part of the improvements that we have with Catholic charities and and some of our legal service providers is understanding better how do we what does the flow of information look like?

How should legal service providers be receiving those calls?

I think that there's been improvements, improvements being made to the coordination to just host also address the capacity concern.

Our intention is not to flood the legal service providers with all calls, but screen them so the appropriate calls are being sent to the appropriate organizations.

If I may add one thing, Councilmember, um the other note to make, just data-wise, is that the calls have, although we have received lesser calls, the call time and like duration of the call has increased.

So from FY25, when the average was about four minutes, and FY26, it's about seven, which talks about just the complexity of the calls that we're getting as well.

So just wanted to add that as well.