Gang-Prevention Agency Shot Down by Lack of Funds

In a year when Orange County’s gang violence has escalated to a record level, one of the county’s most respected gang prevention programs has gone out of business.

Lack of money forced the 15-year-old Turning Point Family Services Inc. to close its doors last week after the agency had spent 3 1/2 years battling gang problems in central Orange County.

Turning Point had maintained a number of programs to help families and children--among them the Amparo Youth Shelter in Garden Grove for troubled and runaway children and teen-agers and an alcohol and drug abuse counseling service.

These will survive by being absorbed by other agencies. But Turning Point’s well respected gang counseling service will not.

The program provided low-cost individual and group counseling of gang members who had been referred by police and probation officials or by residents of gang-plagued communities.

“They were really the only game in town for us for that type of service,” said Colleene Hodges, supervisor of the county Probation Department’s gang violence suppression unit.

Gus Frias, manager of the county Department of Education’s Operation Safe Schools program, agreed.

“We are very limited in terms of our resources here at the department and any help that we could get from them was very welcome. What they did in terms of working with schools will be missed.”

The Orange County Youth and Family Services will take over Amparo Youth Shelter and will re-create Turning Point’s alcohol and drug abuse counseling program in a new location with a fraction of the staff and funding.

But gang counseling, unique to Turning Point, will cease.

“I’ve never known another agency I could refer to that did counseling for gang kids,” said counselor Jim Head as he reflected on the program last week in his bare office.

“It’s just really sad, depressing, there’s all these emotions that come from seeing something you’ve worked on all these years go down the drain,” Head said. “I’m not a pessimist. . . . I’m sure somebody will come up with a program, but right now it kind of leaves a void.”

Michelle Castillo, 19, was one of the program’s success stories. Three and a half years ago, she was in juvenile hall, a gang member and heavy drug user.

Working with Head taught her about positive options and helped her turn her life around, she said. Last week, Castillo graduated from high school and she plans to begin college in the fall. She will study psychology with hopes of becoming a gang counselor herself.

“I think it’s stupid,” Castillo said of Turning Point’s demise. “A lot of people I knew went to Turning Point and they helped them, too. They need that place.”

Head said that private counseling is too expensive for most youths in gangs.

“You have to have insurance,” Head said. “Very few people are wealthy enough to pay for counseling and we’re talking about a population that is at the poverty level.”

Although Head is out of a job along with more than 30 other Turning Point employees, he said his main concern is the youths.

“We were doing a little bit more to eradicate the gang problem,” he said. “You can’t do too much when it comes to this problem because it’s pretty monumental. . . . There’s a lot of kids getting killed and I hate it when I pick up the paper and read about some 16-year-old getting blown away in L.A. or Orange County or wherever.”

Turning Point leaders approached Orange County Youth and Family Services about the possibility of a merger early this year.

The idea seemed ideal: Turning Point had plenty of programs and not enough funding. Orange County Youth and Family Services, a nonprofit agency that has operated “halfway houses” for 15 years, was financially healthy and trying to expand its programs.

But attorneys advised that a merger would bring Turning Point’s liabilities--its debt and programs that were losing money--as well as its assets, said Kevin Meehan, director of Orange County Youth and Family Services. So a decision was made by both groups in May to dissolve Turning Point and absorb some of its programs into the other agency.

“It’s not a shutdown of (Turning Point),” said Dennis Catron, president of Turning Point’s board of directors. “It’s just a change of name.” Meanwhile, Tony Borbon, the widely respected director of Turning Point’s gang prevention program, has signed on with CSP (Community Service Program) where he will work to create a new gang program.