Adult Services Division contract requirements and definitions

Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy (VSHSL)

• Caregiver: A person who, without pay, cares for or supervises another person who requires such care or supervision due to disability, chronic illness, or, in the case of a senior, age-related decline. Government-provided benefits or financial assistance provided directly to a person for being a caregiver are not considered pay within this definition.
  
• Domestic Violence: a pattern of power and control that objectifies the person experiencing the pattern of control (survivor), limits their choices and impacts their safety.
• Implementation Plan: Adopted by the King County Council on July 16, 2018, the VSHSL Implementation Plan  describes the expenditure of levy proceeds (2019 - 2023) to achieve outcomes related to healthy living, housing stability, financial stability, social engagement, and service system access for veterans and military servicemembers and their respective families, seniors and their caregivers, and vulnerable populations.
• Military Servicemember: A person currently serving in a branch of the military, including the National Guard and reservists for any branch of the military.
• Resilient Communities: Persons or communities that are susceptible to reduced health, housing, financial or social stability or outcomes because of current experience of or historical exposure to trauma, violence, poverty, isolation, bias, racism, stigma, discrimination, disability or chronic illness. Resilient communities have or continue to experience racism and social inequities and actively and strategically develop ways to combat these systems of oppression. Examples of resilient communities include, communities of color, immigrant and refugee communities, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+. Resilient communities continue to thrive despite these harms - flourishing, supporting each other, enriching our region, and growing.
• Senior: A person who is at least fifty-five years old.
• Senior Hub: A Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy (VSHSL) funded Senior Hub is a senior center, or set of partnering senior centers, with the staffing, programmatic, and systems capacity to serve as the recognized resource center on aging services and supports for a focused geographic area and/or specific cultural group(s), including, but not limited to, the focus population outlined for that specific contract. If the Senior Hub consists of partnering senior centers, the times and locations of services may be spread between the partnering centers in order to achieve the level of access required to be considered a senior hub. Services need not be equal at each partner and may be structured so as to capitalize on the strengths that each partner brings to the partnership as well as on the needs of the portion of the focus population each partner seeks to serve. VSHSL-funded Senior Hubs can be found here.
• Sexual Violence: An umbrella term referring to a broad range of violence, including, but not limited to, sexual assault, rape, sexual coercion, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.
• Small Organization: An organization with fewer than 20 full-time staff equivalents and an operating budget of less than $4M in the fiscal year prior to the year of application for VSHSL funding under a specific VSHSL strategy or program.
• Technical Assistance & Capacity Building: Funding, training or other support provided by the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy that enables or facilitates small organizations, partnerships and groups to provide regional health and human services and capital facilities funded by levy proceeds. Assistance may include, but is not limited to, providing or funding legal, accounting, human resources and leadership development services and support; translation services; assistance in responding to requests for proposals; data development and improving levy-funded program performance.
  
• Transition Plan: Adopted by the King County Council on Dec. 5, 2017, the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy (VSHSL) Transition Plan governed expenditures of the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy proceeds in 2018. 
• Veteran: A person who has served as either an active duty or a reservist member in any of the armed forces recognized by the United States Department of Defense.
• Veteran Family: A family unit consists of one or more cohabitating adults over the age of 18 in combination with other adults or children, regardless of relationship. Those who are away from home due to family instability or placement in foster care are considered family members. A family unit includes sheltered or unsheltered non-cohabitating veterans or veteran family members who have cohabitated within the past year and have relied on each other for mutual support and stability.
• Vulnerable Population: Those persons or communities that are susceptible to reduced health, housing, financial or social stability outcomes because of current experience of or historical exposure to trauma, violence, poverty, isolation, bias, racism, stigma, discrimination, disability or chronic illness. (See King County Ordinance 18555, Section 1.J for an illustrative list of persons or communities included within the definition of “vulnerable population.")

Veterans Relief Fund (RCW 73.08)

Veteran: A Veteran includes every person, who at the time he or she seeks the benefits of RCW 73.08 services meets the following criteria:

•  A person who served in the active military, naval, or air service; a member of the women's air forces service pilots during World War II; a United States documented merchant mariner with service aboard an oceangoing vessel operated by the war shipping administration; the office of defense transportation, or their agents, from December 7, 1941, through December 31, 1946; or a civil service crewmember with service aboard a United States army transport service or United States naval transportation service vessel in oceangoing service from December 7, 1941, through December 31, 1946; who meets one of the following criteria: Served on active duty for at least one hundred eighty days and who was released with an honorable discharge; Received an honorable or general under honorable characterization of service with a medical reason for separation for a condition listed as non-existed prior to service, regardless of number of days served; or Received an honorable discharge and has received a rating for a service connected disability from the United States department of veterans affairs regardless of number of days served;

• A current member honorably serving in the armed forces reserve or national guard who has been activated by presidential call up for purposes other than training;
• A former member of the armed forces reserve or national guard who has fulfilled his or her initial military service obligation and was released with an honorable discharge;
• A former member of the armed forces reserve or national guard who does not have over one hundred seventy-nine days of active duty service, but meets the federal definition of a veteran having completed twenty years of service.