Councilmember Avilés questions hotline usage increase and legal support center capacity

Thank you.

Thank you, chairs.

Thank you all for being here.

I have a couple of scattershot questions.

In terms of the immigration legal support hotline, if I recall, it sounds like the number of calls that you've received, that there have been a good number of improvements to the hotline.

Do you have a sense of what the increase is in usage from the prior fiscal year?

Yeah, I'm about to get these numbers, I know, because they're watching.

So I think 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.

And I think it was connected also to sort of the federal environment and things to that extent.

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 think, you know, our perpetual struggle is to make sure that these hotlines are as effective as possible.

And I think.

You know, want to recognize that there have been investments and work

to improve those things.

So I'm glad to see that, to hear that there are more languages incoming.

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.

Kind of leads me to my next question in terms of the legal support partners.

Obviously, they have, 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 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 from every direction.

And the contracts are stagnant and not increasing with the same level.

Obviously, it's not a one-to-one, we'd love that, but do you have a sense of how that is kind of metting out at the end of the day?

Yeah, I can, and I also just want to clarify

that referrals are made to the legal support centers, the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative, Knife Up, as well as we were able to also provide connections to iCare as well.

So there's a bit more support with that.

On the legal support center side, as you know,

Besides the three-year contracts, there's other providers as well who have a one-year contract, and as the commissioner mentioned, that funding has been renewed.

So there's a bit 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 an act stem to provide us with a real-time snapshot of what their capacity looks like

then that really helps our hotline counselors as well as the legal support center so it's not uniform that we're like we have to take a hundred people

we check in to see what their capacity is of that week and then we inform our hotline counselors in real time 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 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 being made to the coordination to just 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.

Great.

If I may add one thing, Councilmember.

The other note to make, just data-wise, is that the calls have, although we have received lesser calls, the call time and 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.

No, that's helpful.

And I think I'm heartened to hear about the capacity tracker because it is a concern, I think, where we can be more targeted and precise in our understanding where the gaps are.

In the field, then I think we'll be able to kind of build on that, right?

So I'm heartened to hear that.

If I may, one quick.