SANTA CRUZ COUNTY

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE COMMISSION

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT/ANNUAL REPORT COMMITTEE

MINUTES

12/19/02

1. The meeting was called to order at 10:27 am.

2. There were no additions or deletions to the Agenda.

3. There were no oral communications from the community.

4. The 12/5/02 minutes were approved as submitted.

5. The proposal that the R&D/AR Committee will submit to the DV Commission is attached. Action item #9 was re-worded to read, “Approve the R&D/AR Committee’s Proposal which includes funding of $4,800.”

6. There was a final review of the questionnaire.

a. DA: Alan was to check with Sylvia Nietto about the wording of the victim services question. The wording was changed to “How many domestic violence clients received assistance from the Victim Witness Center of the Office of the District Attorney this month:

i. By phone (non-duplicated)____

ii. In person (non-duplicated)____

b. Superior Court – Criminal:

i. Delete question 14. How many defendants were ordered into treatment programs this month?

ii. Delete question 19. How many domestic violence cases resulted in no conviction on any charges this month?

c. Alan was asked to talk with Christine or Mark to find out if the proposed action and the questionnaire could be sent out to the Commissioners with the minutes. He was also asked to contact District Attorney Elect Lee to determine whether he was in support of the questionnaire.

d. Laurie was asked to contact Erica Wood to understand if there was anything that we were overlooking re: setting up the computerized system.

e. Alan was asked to produce a copy of the questionnaire without page breaks for every agency and distribute this document to committee members and one copy for each Commissioner.

f. The Courts technical staff has reviewed the questionnaire and stated that the information was readily available. However, Lorraine Price in an email dated 12/18/02 stated “Since our discussion, in light of budget reductions, the Court is assessing our availability to produce ad hoc reports such as this to outside agencies. Therefore, at this time, I cannot commit to producing these reports for the Commission. This request and the Commission’s request for information from the Civil Division will be addressed by the Court Executive Officer or Presiding Judge.” Our committee agreed to ask the Commission how to handle this situation.

g. There was a discussion that the work of our committee will change. Instead of creating a questionnaire, we will be compiling the data, insuring timeliness of statistics, supporting agencies to collect accurate statistics, and ultimately creating an annual report from all the data collected. The report will include explanations of findings from the represented agencies, finalized by the committee. We will need new members.

h. The Battered Women’s Task Force, based upon discussions with Carol Casey, was deleted from the distribution list of organizations because though they are supportive of this project, their program does not possess a reliable data collection system nor do their clients want data collected.

7. There were no announcements.

8. The next meeting is scheduled for 1/16/03 from 10:30-12 pm at the CAO Conference Room 520, 701 Ocean Street.

9. Meeting was adjourned at 12:15 pm.