Carter Batey, newly elected chair of the Social Services Advisory Board Photo by Vernon Miles.
Everyone on the Social Services Advisory Board was there for different reasons, and most have concerns related to a specific human services need. For Deb Riley, it’s a son with a disability and seeing Alexandria through that lens on a daily basis. For Susan Newell, it was working as an attorney and dealing with cases of child abuse, as well as a hope that work on a board like this could help with child abuse on a more strategic level. With so many human services needs in Alexandria, this 10-member board met on July 20 to focus on key issues in the city before the City Council starts up again in the fall.
The board represents social welfare issues for Alexandria and advises city officials on public welfare issues. The board also lobbies for funding to the Alexandria Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS). Carter Batey, elected chair of the board in June, said the purpose of the board was to speak for underrepresented groups in Alexandria at City Council. According to Batey, demographics like older Alexandrians tend to have a more powerful voice in the city government because they come from a larger voting demographic.
“We’ll hold the council and the mayor’s feet to the fire on the budget,” said Batey. “We represent a portion of the population that does not organically speak for themselves …. The folks served by DCHS do not vote as much, so it’s up to us to serve as their voice.”
In representing Alexandrians living in poverty alone, the board speaks for a sizeable portion of the city. According to a local Department of Social Services Report for 2014, released to the board by Suzanne Chis, the executive deputy director for the Department of Community and Human Services, 12,916 Alexandrians, or 9 percent of the local population live in poverty in Alexandria. 3,921 children, 15 percent of children in Alexandria, live in poverty. While this is slightly lower than the 15.7 percent of children across the state living in poverty, it’s much higher than the 9.6 percent throughout Northern Virginia.
In addition, Batey and other members of the board hope to bring more outside speakers and policy makers to come to the meetings. While Batey says his group does their best to argue their case before the City Council, there’s nothing that could replace a member of the council being present during the back and forth discussion or listening to the data about poverty in the city as it’s being delivered.
However, Jason Dechant noted that even within DCHS there are problems with communication. Dechant noted what he called the “dysfunctional relationship” between their board and Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA), a public agency that provides housing to low income Alexandrians.
“The fact that there is a dysfunctional relationship between DCHS and ARHA is a big problem,” said Batey. “There’s an enormous amount of overlap [between these groups].”
Chis said the board needs to work on streamlining the DCHS process.
“There is a whole scope of people [that work with] the department,” said Chis. “We want to make sure there is no wrong door when you come in for help.”
Batey said the board needs to have an increased reliance on its committee structure:
“Each one of us need to come together with experiences and reports from outside the board.”
In various roles, Batey worked on social change at a national and state level, focusing in particular on food and urban poverty. But Batey says this work is more fulfilling the more local it gets.
Susan Newell, chair of the board before Batey, led the group in an exercise focused around narrowing down the group’s ambitions to a few specific issues for which they can lobby funding from council. Housing was identified as a consistent top priority in Alexandria.
“If you don’t have housing, you can’t access other services,” said Deena Disraelly, noting that some youth who can’t get housing often wind up staying at home with a part time job and can’t advance their careers.
More specifically though, Chis said the group’s affordable housing lobbying needs to focus on the lowest income level in Alexandria rather than some of the higher echelons of affordable housing geared or programs that allow seniors to age in place.
“The Commission on Aging and Disabilities will likely bring up housing for those groups,” said Chis. “We need to focus on the poorest level.”
One of the other issues brought forward by the group was Medicaid reform, but there was some disagreement on whether it was a topic the board should advocate for. While there was universal agreement that there needs to be reform, the group was unsure about how effective the board would be.
“We can’t move the needle on Medicaid reform at a council level,” said Batey, “Sometimes something’s worth saying, even if we’re beating a dead horse.”
Del Riley said the City Council, the mayor, even the governor of Virginia has already expressed their belief that Medicaid needed expansion, and that now that fight was up at the state level.
The group will meet again in September to review the “alphabet soup” of groups and organizations related to public welfare in Alexandria.