County Shares Youth Problems but Not Solutions : Family: Pilot program seeks to clear way for children to receive health, educational and social services.

The future of any community is its children, and unfortunately a growing number of San Diego children are not developing to their full potential. Millions of children and their families face circumstances that threaten their immediate well-being and put them at risk of long-term disadvantage and a bleak future.

This society cannot afford from either an ethical or economic perspective to ignore this situation.

In the American dream, education has always been seen as a pathway to success, a good job and a fulfilling life. But today, for many children and their families, the path is filled with obstacles. Poverty, substance abuse, inadequate health care and lack of affordable housing confront many families.

In San Diego County, the Department of Social Services spends $1 billion a year for public assistance programs to help many of these families at risk. This is more than the combined operating budgets of the region’s 18 cities.

Yet, professionals in the service-delivery agencies do not have an adequate system for sharing ideas or coordinating information. They are often trained in narrowly focused disciplines. They lack the systems for follow-up on the outcome of services they deliver. The result is a fragmented system that is not accountable for the total child and the family.

An ever-increasing growth in caseload further compounds the problem. In the Department of Social Services’ Childrens Services Bureau alone, there has been more than a 250% increase in cases in the last eight years. Funds to handle this growth have increased by less than 185%. With caseloads and demands for service growing faster than funds, a need for change has never been more critical.

Administrators and other staff throughout the educational, welfare, health and social services agencies are well aware of the growing gap between the complex problems facing today’s families and what our current systems are designed to do. Schools alone cannot compensate for the disadvantage created by our troubled homes and communities.

To have an impact on the problems of poverty and to help recapture the dream, the various systems must change both the way they operate and the way they relate to one another.

One such response to this challenge is a program called “New Beginnings.” Initiated in the spring of 1988, New Beginnings includes top executives from the county, the city of San Diego, the San Diego Community College District and the San Diego Unified School District. These four agencies share common clients and are serving children and adolescents with very limited budgets.

It was decided that in order to better serve these clients, each agency must understand the services and resources of the other agencies. They must also work together to identify the expectations of their clients, gaps in services, and services that are being duplicated. These discussions have already resulted in several improvements. For example, determining student eligibility for a free lunch program has been a cumbersome project for school officials. Information already on file in the Department of Social Services will allow that agency to conduct this verification for the schools on a pilot basis.

The goals of New Beginnings are to improve services, to develop new methods of responding to client/community needs and to work together to change policies and institutions that may be barriers to services. In other words, New Beginnings is attempting to see that all children and families receive the necessary health, educational, social and other services that they are entitled to.

New Beginnings has obtained a seed grant from the Stuart Foundations to accomplish these goals. A pilot project is focusing on Hamilton Elementary School in the mid-city area. Hamilton was chosen because of its ethnic diversity, with 21 different languages being spoken by its students, its high student-mobility rate, low student-achievement rate and a large number of families receiving services from the various agencies. The densely populated community is also confronted with high rates of crime and child abuse.

The study will seek to find out the significant needs of the families and will look at areas where one or more agency may be duplicating services. For example, a student with a mental health problem may be simultaneously receiving services from a school counselor, a mental health specialist and a child protective services worker. And each of these professionals may be unaware of the efforts of the others. Finally, the study will identify barriers to service within the families and the agencies and come up with ways to remove these barriers.

While other collaborative efforts have been implemented throughout the nation, New Beginnings is unique because all critical institutions are involved and because the top-level executives are committed to allowing decisions for change to be made.

The challenge that New Beginnings faces is indeed an enormous one. Only by working as a team can we hope to break down existing barriers and meet this challenge. School administrators will become more knowledgeable of health, social service and other programs that the county and city can offer their students and families. County and city personnel will similarly become more familiar with the services these families need.

New Beginnings can serve as the bridge to forge new partnerships that provide better services, more effectively, to the youth and families of San Diego and make the American Dream a reality.