THE ARC SAN FRANCISCO

LIFELONG LEARNING The Arc San Francisco's Lifelong Learning team continued their comprehensive onsite services during 2024 and 2025 while ensuring a broad array of remote and hybrid services for individuals preferring to be served from home. To adapt our programming to the wants and needs of our client base, Lifelong Learning conducted our Participant Survey in 2025 receiving an overwhelmingly positive response: 100 participants responded and 95% of them were happy with their program goals. In response to participants' needs, we offer six participant-led classes in our courses to meet their expressed interests. The newest course is Calvin's Movement Club. Calvin and his group reserved a room for the class, selected music, learned dance moves, recruited co-teachers, created flyers, and drafted class guidelines. Last year's client led writing and self-publishing class, resulted in an anthology of clients' work which was published this year. The is titled "The Dances Within: Empowering Unheard Voicesis now available for sale on Amazon. The anthology was also selected for LitCrawl, a part of the annual San Francisco Litquake event. Clients read their work for the audience at a local cafe, and many of their peers joined them to cheer them on. In addition to our daytime services, The Arc San Francisco offers a popular Social and Recreational program for 230 Participants who attended in 2024 and 2025 and continue to benefit from opportunities to build peer relationships and inclusion in our community. Based on client interest there are both online and in-person programming. The successful Peer Mentor program culminated in a celebration featuring speeches and multi-media presentations created by the mentor/mentee pairs. Our remote team facilitated learning classes weekly, providing continued engagement to 24 Tailored Day Services participants through consistent and high-quality programming. Our arts program collaborated with the Lifelong Learning CAC (Client Advocacy Group) for a 2-part fundraising project designed by the clients of the CAC. The first part was an art contest open to all Arc SF participants. The CAC designed the contest rules and allocated funds for prizes. The top four winners went on to learn hand printing technique to print their designs on T-shirts. These t-shirts were very popular at the Holiday sale. A demonstration of hand printing techniques was also done at the sale. The Holiday sale was especially festive this year since the art program partnered with CCSF (City College- San Francisco) to present a theater program written and performed by Arc clients. Plans were made to bring the hand printing project back next year with new designs. Our Tailored Day Services (TDS) model program got its own service design and program team starting in September of 2025. We refer to our TDS branch of Lifelong Learning, Independent Services. Since September, we have been able to hire 6 new TDS employees and increase our TDS caseload. By Feb 2026, we had enough new employees and participants, we were able to hire a new Service Manager. Growth in TDS has been very encouraging and freeing up participants on our waitlist. 356 participants took part in Lifelong Learning 332 come on site 24 are remote 230 Unique participants attended FLM/Social Rec 78 TDS participants (includes "Day Program TDS"TDS" 6 client led classes 17 Self Advocates 100 participants shared their input in the survey 80% of respondents were from LL 95% stated they were happy with their goals. 30 classes in the hub (including FLM) Employment Services Employment Services continued to provide Employment/Internship support and Job Coaching services, which have all been primarily in-person. Our managers and job coaches continue to be a steady presence in our participants' lives in the workforce but also on a personal level. At our participants' respective job sites there was some turnover during the pandemic with site supervisors and staff departing. Our managers and coaches did a great job of providing insight and trainings regarding our services. This also helped new staff with how to work with the IDD community and ensure that our participants feel supported and included by their peers in the workplace. The Employment department had participants begin working with new partners, e.g.- Beacon Grand Hotel and Saluhall. We also began partnering with Hines Facilities Management as they became the vendor at AirBnB, which employees four of our participants. They have been a tremendous ally and made the transition for our participants seamless. We hope to expand our partnership with them in the future. We continue to look for new internship opportunities in addition to our long-standing internships at California Academy of Sciences as well as our Arc caf. We partnered with Salesforce and their Health & Safety department for a pilot program in which one of our participants was selected as their first intern (who did an excellent job). We also solidified an internship partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks department, which will ideally host six interns in their home offices, senior center, and in the parks themselves. This new internship will give our participants the opportunity to learn new skills in an office setting, and also develop skills in customer service and agricultural endeavors. They strongly promote and value internal growth in their program so we hope that our interns there will have the opportunity to pursue a career within the SF Rec and Parks department once they complete the internship. The Employment team is hopeful that 2026 will bring new opportunities and growth but also realize there will be challenges that our participants may face. We are prepared as a team to always stand by them and support them in every possible way we can. Job Development Our Job Development Department continued to find creative ways of providing job development and employment support services. Employment Specialists conducted assessments, employment planning meetings, Personal, Vocational and Social Adjustments, and Mock interviews both virtually and in-person. The Employment Roundtable class series prepared job seekers to be employment-ready with an 8-week curriculum of job readiness lessons. The Transition-Aged Youth (TAY) class, funded by San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Families, will also be resuming. The job market trends have changed, and we see more employment opportunities in retail, customer service and food services industries. 187 Employed and in career development 166 interns/employed 21 participants received job development 109 Employer partners 20 Graduates 41 Transition aged youth participated in employment workshops 4 New Employer Partners Participant Experience Advocacy Opportunities Many Arc participants attended Capitol Action Day in Sacramento. They joined other advocates throughout California to ask lawmakers for funding to maintain vital support and services for people with developmental disabilities. Two Arc SF participants gave a presentation on friendship at the Statewide Self-Advocacy Conference in Sacramento. Three Arc SF participants planned and facilitated part one of the Advocacy in Action Speakers' Series. The audience learned how to advocate for themselves and other participants at The Arc. A participant was awarded a SARTAC fellowship. She developed and taught a creative writing and self-publishing class. The writing from this class will be published in an anthology.

Residential The Arc Residential team has continued the ongoing relationship with Mercy Housing with The Arc Mercy property on Page and Masonic. Victor Scaggs (Service Manager) continues to work as the onsite coordinator. He continues to help support Arc and non-Arc tenants with tenant issues throughout the year. These issues included problem solving neighbor disagreements, removal of non-tenant individuals doing untoward activities, and fire alarm issues. Throughout 2024/2025, The Arc and Bill Sorro Management worked together to try to find activities our DSPs could support them with. We worked a little with helping them during their weekly food drive. Our Wellness Team set up a booth in the common area on the first floor of the Bill Sorro building. The support offered was not utilized by tenants, and our DSPs would often sit around waiting for someone to support. After much discussion, in 2025 The Arc and Bill Sorro Management Teams decided to end our current MOU. The Arc Residential Team continued to serve our participants in SLS/ILS throughout 2025. There were many unique post-pandemic issues we helped our participants navigate, such as reconnecting with worksites and day programs, routine doctor appointments, budgeting and bill paying, shopping for groceries and personal items, preparing and cooking breakfast, lunches and dinners, laundry, housekeeping and other tasks as laid out based on participant need. The Arc Residential Team continued to work through the different challenges our participants faced throughout 2024/2025. Keeping people enrolled in the EBT program had become an issue. We found multiple participants we served had issues with being kicked off the EBT program for a myriad of reasons. We were able to get everyone back enrolled in the program and have not noticed that happening again. We were also able to help several participants save money to go on traveling vacations. Our other priorities concerned helping participants visit their doctor, investigate and purchase special tech tools, recover from surgery, and other duties as needed. The Arc is currently serving 18 participants in Independent/Supported Living Skills services and housing advocacy. 22 Adult services received 18ILS 4SLS 38 supported housing units provided stable homes.