Matthew Swan

As an ambassador at site 10, The City's largest shelter at that time, I became a full-time floater and worked hand-in-hand with Supervisors, Site Director, and Assistant Directors to facilitate operations and provide support to almost 400 of The City's most vulnerable people. Floaters must be competent at all positions, able to cover and support any other Ambassadors on the Team. I excelled in that role, learning to anticipate and adapt to any situation which might arise. I took particular pride in my ability to respond to medical emergencies, which we experienced on a more than daily basis. I am proud to say that I was directly involved in numerous overdose reversals and other life-saving interventions. I prided myself on knowing what to do, how to do it, and how to communicate it to other Team members. I also developed the skill of role delegation in situations of crisis. Although I moved on to a different area of service within the organization, I still look back with pride on the role that I played there.

My hard work and dedication to the folx we serve was recognized by Five Keys, and in Oct of 2021, I was promoted to Care Coordinator. My first assignment in that role was at Site 10 (Next Door Shelter), the largest congregate shelter in SF. I worked with our amazing Five Keys Team, and an interdisciplinary team of providers, including SFDPH Shelter Health, Street Medicine, and clinic-based providers, ECS Behavioral Health, and various other agencies. This level of collaboration was critical to provide needed care. I became adept at identifying the needs of my clients, and assembling care teams to address them. After several months, I was asked to cover Care Coordination at Artmar, a Transitional Age Youth housing site and Five Keys's first PSH site, while also maintaining a full care load at Site S. During that time, I managed diverse care loads of up to 110 clients. In that role, I found that my unique life experiences and personal attributes allowed me to form special connections with the people we served. Coming from a background of addiction, poverty, trauma, child abuse, and justice-involvement, I was easily able to empathize with issues faced by the people in our care. Extensive and intimate familiarity with mental illness in my family and personal life provided me a unique context. During my time in that position, I continued my training and education in those areas. Through online courses and professional instruction, combined with ongoing experience in the field, I became adept at recognizing and assessing symptoms of mental illness, substance use, and trauma. This allowed me to connect people to the providers they needed, and to collaborate extensively with those providers. The clinicians I worked with told me this was unique, and valuable to them- to have well-trained eyes on the ground in the natural environments of their patients. Beginning in March of 2022, for the next 25 months, I worked almost exclusively at Artmar, the first PSH site in the growing portfolio of Five Keys. PSH involves an entirely different spectrum of providers and services. I took pride in helping to forge the path for our Team, problem-solving the issues of Care Coordination in PSH, and passing that knowledge on to the Team members who came behind me. Many of the templates and documents I created became the standards for the rest of Five Keys's PSH sites. For a period of approximately 3 months, I maintained full case loads at both Site S and Artmar. In order to continue providing a high level of support for so many, I became highly organized and efficient. In addition to my responsibilites as Care Coordinator (CC), I have been happy and proud to help train new CCs as needed. I'll also add that Artmar is a site without a full-time property manager; it's been a great opportunity for me to assist Director Brandi Marshall with tasks which typically fall outside the scope of CC.

In June of 2024, I was honored to join SFDPH, expanding the scope of my work to include the entire unhoused and underserved populations of San Francisco. I was assigned to the Alcohol Sobering Center, which was just beginning a pilot called SCOPE (Sobering Center Overdose Prevention and Engagement). This program was designed as a partnership with DPH's POET (Post Overdose Engagement Team) and SF Fire Department's Community Paramedic Teams, particularly SORT (Street Overdose Response Team). Very quickly, our SCOPE program became the primary focus of my job role. Intersectionality with POET, SORT, and RESTORE brought me into deeply collaborative roles with those Teams. I spent about one month working at RESTORE, during a period of time when they experienced staff shortages. Soon thereafter, I was permitted to outreach daily with POET, in communities throughout the City. I worked with POET and the rest of Street Medicine on a daily basis, out of the Maria X Martinez Health Resource Center (MXM Urgent Care Clinic), for about 4 months. The purpose of this was to help to build up our SCOPE pilot, during its infancy, which was accomplished, to good effect. It also afforded me the opportunity to form great relationships with all of our street teams, the providers and administrators at MXM, shelters and navigation centers throughout the City, and gain more valuable familiarity with systems of care. Outreach brought me tremendous joy, and I am honored to have participated in some remarkable success in connecting patients to treatment. As the SCOPE pilot expanded and began to produce tremendous results, my daily work with the street teams and MXM ended. I have, however, remained in strong connection with both of them and still collaborate extensively. Around this time, I was also added to the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP) Team, working specifically with the Mobile AUD Team, who cover former patients of the residential MAP program who now are living independently in supportive housing. This work has also provided me great gratification, and a valuable, 1st-hand view of the unique work of managing and treating individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). One constant throughout my work with DPH has been collaboration with all the SFFD Community Paramedic teams - SORT, SCRT, EMS6. I have worked very closely with all of them and have formed good relationships with many individual CPs and Captains in their division. Another constant throughout the work in all of my various job roles has been my focus on connecting patients and clients with treatment for Mental Health, Substance and Alcohol Use Disorders. I have successfully placed dozens of patients in residential treatment or withdrawal management programs, and connected many more to Psychiatric and other modalities of Behavioral Health treatment. I have extensive knowledge of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) and have played a principle role in connecting many folx to various forms of MAT. As a person with a history of addiction, it brings me great joy to support others in their journeys to recovery. I have developed a thorough knowledge of these treatment systems, and beneficial relationships with well-placed providers throughout the spectrum of care.