Interface Celebrates 20th Anniversary

Marty Bolton remembers that the plight of a family she was trying to help looked discouraging.

The daughter, then 13, kept running away from home, was experimenting with drugs and was otherwise rebellious with her mother and stepfather. As crisis services director for Interface, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, Bolton oversaw the girl’s placement in a “cooling-off” home several times over the past two years.

By the third time the girl had been in the Cool Home program--where the nonprofit social service agency’s volunteers offer to let troubled teen-agers stay in their homeswhile battles at home die down--the teen-ager’s parents were ready to abandon her, Bolton said.

Instead, with Interface’s help, the whole family entered therapy.

The stepfather is learning how to manage his anger and the mother and her daughter are both receiving counseling.

The family will soon be reunited and Bolton said they now stand a good chance of making it work.

It is cases like this family’s (they did not want to be identified) that underscore what Interface has tried to do over the past 20 years, said Chris Rutter, the agency’s executive director.

“We try to bring fragmented families back together again,” she said. “We don’t just treat an individual problem and then let it go. We try to help the whole family.”

Interface celebrated its 20th anniversary in gala fashion at a posh dinner Friday at the Doubletree Hotel in Ventura. Besides honoring longtime members of the agency’s advisory council, including philanthropist Alfrida Teague and banker A.A. Milligan, the dinner included individual lighted birthday cakes at each table and a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

As Interface enters its third decade the focus is the thousands of Ventura County residents it has helped, Rutter said. When the group started in 1973, its sole focus was to work with youths with drug problems, Rutter said.

The agency’s caseload 20 years ago was about 100; last year, Interface helped 79,000 county residents through 16 specialized programs, she said.

Among them are the Youth Crisis hot line, monitored 24 hours a day to help teen-agers and families by offering counseling and shelter; Domestic Violence services, offering crisis intervention for battered women; and McAvoy House, dedicated to providing shelter and treatment for mentally, physically and sexually abused children.

“We have just grown and evolved as the community has grown,” Rutter said.