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SAMHSA Report Number 4

Project Information
Project Name: South County Wraparound Project for Latino Children and Youth
Project Number: 1 KDI SM54383-01
Project Director: Jerry Endres, Institute for Community Collaborative Studies (ICCS)
California State University, Monterey Bay
Date of Report: May 31, 2003
Municipality: Monterey CA
Staff-hired and on-job: Jerry Endres, Project Director; Brad Richardson, Evaluator; Patty Mora, Consumer Facilitator, Adriana Gallegos, student assistant, Jon Sagen, Expert Consultant / Design Wraparound continuum.
Funds expended to-date: Performance objectives and expenditures are on target. Extension through March 2004. CSUMB Foundation accounting is processing fund expenditures and making online reporting.

South County Wraparound Project for Latino Children and Youth

Progress Report to-date

The Institute for Community Collaborative Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, in collaboration the Gilroy Family Resource Center (GFRC), Resources for Families and Communities (RFC), is a Phase I Community Action Grant Program site in the Southern area (aka: South County) of Santa Clara County, California. The Phase - I Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant was developed through discussions and meetings with consumers, providers and other key stakeholders in the South County. It is intended to engage the community in a consensus building and planning process to evaluate the feasibility of implementing an exemplary, culturally-appropriate Wraparound practice for predominantly Latino children and adolescents with co-occurring severe mental disorders and substance abuse disorders while protecting and including the target population in the planning process.

Wraparound has been initially identified as a nationally recognized program that has earned recognition as an exemplary practice as evidenced by research that has demonstrated the program's effectiveness. The South County community of Gilroy and surrounding communities wish to build consensus for Wraparound as an exemplary practice model for as many as possible of the programs serving South County.

Beginning in May 2002, the consensus building process in Phase I facilitated by the Institute for Community Collaborative Studies at CSUMB (ICCS) was begun. A representative group of consumers and stakeholders has since developed Wraparound model standards for culturally-appropriate family and community support. (See attached documents) The predominantly Latino community members and county agency representatives began building a foundation that Wraparound is an exemplary practice that could benefit at-risk families and that funding this program should become a reality to ensure sustainability. They will also ensure that the program implementation (phase 2) will be consistent with the community, cultural and professional standards they developed in the consensus building process.

Key Stakeholders: Collaboration among stakeholders and target population for an exemplary practice
The following agencies: Gilroy Family Resource Center, Resources for Families and Communities, Assemblyman Simon Salinas, Mexican American Community Services Association, Santa Clara County Public Health Department, Santa Clara County Department of Social Services Family and Children Services and Family Conferencing, Rebeckah’s Children Services, Economic Services Organization (OEO), Santa Clara County Department Alcohol and Drug Abuse,and Santa Clara County Department of Mental Health are current members of a stakeholder group who provide guidance and input to this project. They along with consumer participation (17 predominantly -Latino family members, clients, and youth members) and 75 agencies belonging to the South County Collaborative have reached consensus for implementing the expansion of the Wraparound model for the South County area.

ICCS continues to facilitate the consensus building and design process providing monetary support for costs to ensure participation by clients, ex-clients, family members and youth. Stipends and childcare for consumers have been activated ensuring their involvement. We’ve conducted meetings with consumers and stakeholders on August 8th, September 25th, and October 23rd. The consensus meeting was conducted on February 25, 2003. (See attached documents) Simon Salinas, state assemblyman, chaired the meeting at the Gilroy Family Resource Center. We presented and discussed the work to-date and our plan for for extending wraparound practices to community and agency programs in the south county.

We adapted the Rebekah wraparound model (Rebekah’s Children Services is a member of stakeholder committee) and presented it to consumers and stakeholders for their input. A systems- mapping process was employed by ICCS to graphically display how the Wraparound practices will address the community and agency consensus standards identified, and how the integration of existing services into a wraparound continuum model for service providers would work, and how the exemplary practice will be deployed in both a family and community context.

Subsequent to the Consensus Meeting, a meeting with key agency administrators was held to discuss the leadership roles for Phase – 2 funding and application. We decided to maintain ICCS as the lead agency, and Rebekahs Childrens Services and Gilroy Family Resource Center serve as “anchor” wraparound agencies.

From February through May 2003, ICCS then had discussions with the agencies in the South County Collaborative to develop an adoption protocol for the wraparound continuum and standards. ,ICCS has also contacted the Family Partnership Institute in Santa Clara County to assist with the training plan. This organization has extensive experience providing a wraparound curriculum for county agencies across California.

ICCS along with partnering agencies will apply for funding to implement a pilot study of wraparound practices for the south county. With Phase - 2 funding we hope to begin offering training to agencies and community organizations serving South County in 2003-2004.

Through coordination between the Gilroy Family Resource Center, ICCS, and the University of Iowa (project evaluation) we have accomplished a baseline assessment of collaboration across key agencies in the south county area. Brad Richardson, Project Evaluator, has presented results from the collaboration survey to our working group. The final survey results will be contained in the evaluation report.

Instrumentation
Attachments with aforementioned items is included in this report.

Lessons Learned
There is very strong support across the county to expand wraparound practices to children and families who are in danger of out of home placement and suffering the effects of substance abuse and mental health issues. We have a consensus with key county-wide programs that the culturally appropriate, community-based standards developed in this project should be adopted to enable predominantly Latino families to gain the support needed to obtain services needed to maintain family cohesion. There is strong support for expanding wraparound practices toward an early intervention model…exactly what this project has achieved and is ready to pilot in south county.