
Within the larger City and County of San Francisco, the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families has established anEquity Committee that actively participates in, presents on, and develops policy in consideration of Racial Equity, IntersectionalEquity and Trauma Informed Systems. WE have worked with the National Equity Project to jump start the department’s DREAM plan (DCYF’s Racial Equity Action Map) and include monthly meetings with all of our staff to learn about historical, institutional and current equity issues and how it impacts our work, our communities and our community based organizations that we serve. TheEquity Committee also sends representatives to the City-wide Racial Equity Working group (CREW), largely based on GARE, but amore informal format that engages discussions at a City scale that impact individual departments and agencies. The Committee has varying levels of participation, based on roles, in the Trauma Informed Systems (TIS) work that the Department of PublicHealth (SF) conducts in coordination with Trauma Transformed and we are currently in the process of conducting a TIS self study to evaluate and review our policies, practices and outcomes. I am the co-leader of these efforts, as well as the policy wirther and workforce development manager for the department, so I feel that GARE will help guide me through the process of developing and revising policies, leading the Equity Committee and being strategic in recruiting and connecting with our community.