Racial Equity and Social Justice

Summary of objective implementation status (achievements or progress over last year; significant delays or issues, etc.)

Initial timelines were pushed back by almost a year, while the Office of Equity (OOE) secured funding and staff capacity to implement this work, through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The OOE hired a full-time Department Analyst to manage this project in Spring of 2023. Since then, progress is as follows:

• The ARPA-funded Department Analyst has continued in this role since April 2023, providing consistency in partnership and building institutional knowledge on emergency response, economic recovery and resiliency planning efforts.
• The Department Analyst continued to build on ARPA work group’s community partnerships and strengthen community relationships.
• Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD), which now includes 80 member organizations, expanded asset mapping to include tracking member organizations’ Service Focus Areas, Disaster Services and Facilities and Leadership contacts
• Replication of COAD asset mapping ongoing with Faith-Based organizations.
• Continued partnership and communication protocol with internal departments, the COAD, and Access and Functional Needs (AFN) lead in the EOC to coordinate equity and AFN efforts during disaster planning and response.
• Protocol in place for administering $1.1 M of the remaining Immediate Needs Funds through the Disaster Emergency Financial Assistance contracts.
• The ARPA Culturally Responsive Disaster project was granted an extension at the Nov 5, 2024 Board meeting.
• In 2025, engagement with 100+ community residents will be done, including clients from COAD member organizations, faith-based organizations, and CURA, to gather information about strengths and weaknesses in county disaster preparedness, and response and recovery efforts.

Key milestone update (include relevant metrics, if applicable)

• Created policies and procedures for delivering Disaster Emergency Financial Assistance.
• Facilitated two contracts for disbursement of Disaster Emergency Financial Assistance with the Child-Parent Institute, and COAD (CAP Sonoma – fiscal lead), approved by BOS in February 2024.
• Implemented the Universal Disaster Intake Process (UDIP), which includes an extensive demographic data collection initiative (race/ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender, disability etc.).
• Designed a Disaster Emergency Financial Assistance element to the UDIP to facilitate eligibility scoring, assessment, and data tracking.
• Collaborated with DEM to conduct a UDIP training with 30 community partners.
• Developed and delivered (in November 2024) a Racial Equity in Disaster Training to support partner strategic planning in its ARPA-funded Culturally Response Disaster Response project.

Coordination and partnership update

• Partnerships have been ongoing with community-based partners and faith-based organizations to leverage their contact with the public, especially in target communities. Many community-based partners focus their work in diverse geographic areas of the County, facilitating our need to reach all residents.
• The OOE took the lead in in creating the Disaster Emergency Financial Assistance Request for Proposals, and then collaborated with the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) and the Human Services Department (HSD) to award the contracts. HSD holds the contracts for administration of funds, but the OOE Department Analyst works with the awardees for training and communication.
• The OOE Department Analyst attends the County’s monthly AFN (Access and Functional Needs) committee meetings, COAD’s general membership meetings, and COAD’s long-term recovery meetings to continue strengthening partnerships. Additionally, the Department Analyst is the OOE representative at the monthly Sonoma County Shelter Council meetings.
• DEM invited the Department Analyst to be on the planning committee for the development of the County’s Recovery Operations Plan, which is a yearlong process that began in the Summer of 2024. In this partnership, the OOE is working to ensure equity principles and frameworks are brought to the broader Recovery Operations Plan work.

Community, equity and climate update

• This goal and related objectives are focused on community and equity. The public has been and will continue to be engaged both virtually and in person through staff and community-based and faith-based organizations.
• The success and effectiveness of the emergency response project will be measured by subsequent community assessment surveys and by other methods including the Portrait of Sonoma, Clear Impact Scorecard, interviews/focus groups/surveys with CURA clients, etc.
• Racial equity principles are applied in the development and implementation of the goals, by centering communities most impacted by disasters, throughout the process and including community-based and faith-based organizations at all steps. Centering communities most impacted is essential in decision-making processes.
• Also important is to geographically identify partners in all areas so that the engagement and information is disseminated in the broadest manner possible.
• Where possible, we ensure that climate impacts are considered in meetings and information sharing, including holding virtual meetings, limiting printing of collateral, and offering other ways of providing useful information.

If this objective received Strategic Plan funding, please provide amount spent to date for non-position related funding.

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