COUNTYWIDE : $25,000 Sought for Outreach Campaign

The Ventura County Health Care Agency will ask the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday for $25,000 to fund a Latino migrant alcohol and drug abuse outreach campaign.

The county Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs has proposed an “information and education blitz” about drug and alcohol abuse for the migrant, Spanish-speaking population, said Stephen Kaplan, administrator of the department.

In addition, the department hopes to come up with an effective plan for fighting alcohol and drug abuse in the Latino community. “This isn’t a treatment program,” he said.

The department would contract the project out to El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, “an advocacy group for the Hispanic community, which has served as kind of an umbrella for other Latino human services agencies,” Kaplan said.

The proposed drive follows a series of countywide public forums in which residents testified about the need for various drug and alcohol programs in the county, Kaplan said. He said language and cultural barriers were consistently cited as problems with present programs.

The effort would be concentrated over the summer, with posters and pamphlets distributed in Latino communities and interviews being conducted with workers at health and law enforcement agencies.