It’s only 10 a.m. and the Human Services Agency office in Daly City is bustling. Clients fill out paperwork on clipboards while young children play with toy trucks. It’s a typical day in the office for Alfredo Hernandez.
Sitting across the desk from Hernandez, a public service specialist, is an older woman with gray hair and red lipstick. Clutching a purse and in tears, she points to the papers scattered between them.
As she relays her troubles in Spanish, Hernandez listens intently while quietly sliding a tissue box to her. Responding in Spanish, he tells her she will get the help she needs and then asks her to wait to meet with a human services benefit analyst who can dive more into her case.
Now more relaxed, she silently moves to a chair to wait.
Hernandez hands her a few more tissues, smiles and calls up his next client.
Solving problems and simplifying complex processes is central to the work of public service specialists like Hernandez. They help county residents apply for state and federal assistance programs, including CalWORKs, CalFresh, Medi-Cal, EBT and more. If clients require more in-depth help, they are redirected to another Human Services Agency specialist.
Lilian Aguilar, a public service specialist in the agency’s Redwood City office, puts it this way: “We are the frontline workers, and we try to direct them to where they can get help.”
This article is part of an occasional series that seeks to help answer the question, "What does government do, actually?"
Everyone who walks in the door to meet with specialists like Hernandez and Aguilar are having trouble with forms, language access or other barriers. The stakes are high for many since missing a deadline or a form filled out with a minor mistake can cause a pause or delay in receiving benefits from programs like CalFresh, California’s food assistance program.
So public service specialists must be knowledgeable about federal and state assistance programs and County-specific resources and services. The county has five Human Services Agency offices, in Belmont, Redwood City, Daly City, San Carlos and East Palo Alto. Each office must meet the needs of its distinct communities, including assisting clients in their preferred languages.
For example, the Human Services Agency office in Redwood City serves a predominantly Spanish-speaking clientele in North Fair Oaks, where approximately 69 percent of residents speak a “language other than English at home,” according to the 2022 American Community Survey.
Aguilar says she speaks Spanish about “90 percent of the time” in the office and notices the difference it makes with her clients.
“You can see how someone relaxes and feels more at ease when you speak to them in their primary language after they walk in,” she said after helping a man in Spanish complete his application. “They’re more comfortable.”
Aguilar added, “I’ve had clients who mistakenly get papers sent in English and I print them out in Spanish for them. Even for something as small as that, they are still so grateful.”
The Redwood City office sees the most clients. In 2022, 24,266 clients visited the North Fair Oaks-based office, followed by Belmont with 19,564 and Daly City with 14,430 client visits. While these figures fluctuate yearly, the Redwood City and Belmont Human Services Agency offices remain the busiest in the county.
The most common needs? Food assistance, followed closely by health coverage.
In 2022, 24,708 clients submitted applications for CalFresh, and 22,847 applications were submitted for Medi-Cal, which offers low-cost health coverage for eligible California residents.
With such great need, many clients also come into the Human Services Agency office feeling stressed, anxious or frustrated about the application process. Public service specialists help to reassure clients and de-escalate challenging situations.
Hernandez believes that understanding that some clients are at a low point of their lives helps him stay patient.
“I try to tell them what I can do and outline steps to alleviate their situation,” he said, “I say to them, ‘This is what we are going to do for you. We’ll get someone to talk to you.’”
Often, people don’t know where to turn for answers or are confused by the application process, leading to frustration. “If we give them the right information, they’re going to feel better and more in control of whatever their situation is,” Hernandez said.
To help employees better handle difficult encounters, the Human Services Agency provides workplace mental health resources and provides yearly training on how to de-escalate difficult situations. Training sessions equip staff to identify, respond to and intervene in violent and non-violent crises. Staff learn communication strategies and “safety intervention” techniques.
For Adan Carta, a specialist in the Belmont office, the training was helpful and necessary — especially during the pandemic when the offices saw more clients and emotions were high.
During COVID, many office transactions were moved online, which dropped the number of client visits by thousands due to health and safety guidelines. Since then, many clients prefer to call for assistance with their applications and questions rather than visit offices in person, as the Human Services Agency offices now receive 10,000 more calls than in previous years.
Aguilar, Carta and Hernandez didn’t initially plan on working at the County’s Human Services Agency offices. Each had a completely different career path in mind.
Aguilar, a Half Moon Bay resident, worked in child care for nearly a decade before leaving to have her son, Enzo.
“My friend from one of the offices actually told me about this office and I applied,” she said.
Before becoming a public service specialist, Aguilar worked as a greeter for a few months — the front desk position where staff answer clients’ initial questions and hand out necessary paperwork. She credits that experience with helping her understand all the support programs and motivating her to become a public service specialist.
“There is a lot of room for growth here since there are so many branches and there are so many departments and people to meet,” Aguilar shared.
With promotion opportunities, many specialists often move up into supervisor and administrative positions.
Like Aguilar, Carta wanted a more stable job to support his family. He had previously worked as a contract videogame artist — as evidenced by the hand-drawn Batman cartoon taped to his computer. However, he has found a second “family” with his team in his office.
“The people I work with are what make this experience a lot more fun than it would be somewhere else,” he said.
Carta says his team is so close in how they “work together” that they even understand miniscule looks and signals from each other.
“We’re a big family and that means something,” he said.
Hernandez also worked in the private sector but was dissatisfied. So, his family suggested he apply for a position in local government, specifically in his community of South San Francisco. He has worked as a specialist for a year.
“The best thing is helping the community that I live in and feeling like at the end of the day that you are making a difference,” he said.
“Here, the goal is helping people. If we help people, we have done our job.”
Michelle Durand
Chief Communications Officer
mdurand@smcgov.org