VisionQuest Gets Support in Assembly

Despite opposition from probation officers, a bill allowing the controversial VisionQuest juvenile rehabilitation program to operate in California was narrowly approved Monday by the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

The bill by Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) now advances to the Ways and Means Committee, after getting the minimum four votes needed for approval.

The private, Arizona-based program, which already operates “wilderness . . . outdoor living experience” programs in Arizona, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, had been denied a license to operate in California earlier this year.

But Stirling said the state Social Services Department, which denied the license and had earlier opposed his bill, became neutral after the measure was amended.

Key amendments require that minimum standards governing program operations, procedures and staff qualifications be written by the California Youth Authority. Such standards would be necessary before VisionQuest could open the camps it plans in San Diego and three other sites in the state.

Probation officers opposing the bill did not appear at Monday’s hearing. Several had attended a committee hearing last week, when the measure was postponed.

But several parents of California youngsters who have been sent to VisionQuest programs in other states testified in favor of the program. They said that wayward youths are better motivated and re-directed in the VisionQuest program than when committed to programs operated by the Youth Authority.

In February, a Chula Vista couple, Gerardo and Elisa Cano, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the program and the San Diego Juvenile Court authorities who sent their son to the program’s minimum-security camp near Silver Spring, N.M. Sixteen-year-old Mario Cano died four days after arriving at the facility. A New Mexico grand jury cleared the program of criminal intent.