District 1 Family Summit
DCYF hosted the We are the City: District 1 Family Summit on Saturday, October 26, 2019 at the Richmond Recreation Center. Youth and families from the Richmond, Vista del Mar, Lone Mountain, Lincoln Park and neighboring communities spent their Saturday afternoon with us. They shared their personal stories, perspectives and experiences to help make San Francisco a great place to grow up. Here are some of the key themes highlighted in the District 1 Family Summit.
The school assignment process and transportation to and from school was a major theme across all break-out groups.
Transportation issues specific to the Richmond, include unsafe crosswalks on Geary, the indiscriminate placement of stop signs and poor signage/crosswalk markings. Parents want their children to be able to walk to school on their own.
Youth spoke about housing affordability, job training, and a lack of healthy food at schools. Chinese immigrant youth reported that their parents are working all the time to stay in San Francisco.
Grandparents take care of their grandchildren for summer, school breaks, and holidays; they suggested that DCYF expand programs for children during school breaks and holidays.
Families spoke about out-of-school time care, the need for better use of public spaces and the lack of child centered communication about services and programming coming from the schools.
Providers emphasized that rising inequality is also showing up in the demand for after care programs and the displacement of foster care youth out of San Francisco, out of the Bay Area, and increasingly out of state due to a lack of available resource families in the city.
The We Are The City Family Summits are places for City residents to make their voices heard. The stories we collect at the Summits will play a critical role in our five year planning process, ultimately guiding how the City will invest in programs and services for our children, youth and young people (ages 0-24).
Shout out to the youth and families along with Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer and Angelina Yu for joining us. Shout out to Mestiza Catering for the delicious food spread. Shout out to Richmond Y for providing childcare. Shout out to the Intergraphics team for providing in language facilitation. And a special shout out to the staff of DCYF and Bright Research Group.
