Juvenile Justice Panel Adds 6 Members

After several months of operating with vacancies in its ranks, the Ventura County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission has added six new members, according to Chairman H. Lawrence Fick.

The 13-member commission is funded by the county Corrections Services Agency.

“We are responsible for inquiring into the administration of juvenile justice programs in Ventura County,” said Fick of Simi Valley.

“We had some resignations and we’d fallen short over the last few months. We felt it was important to get the commission back up to where we wanted it,” he said.

Every county in the state has such a commission, which monitors and inspects the institutions and facilities used by the county for the detention of minors, he said.

The Ventura County commission will also be more involved in the inspection of group and foster-care homes, according to Fick. “I do not want to see a child get out of a bad environment and then go into a worse predicament,” he said. “The juvenile justice system is an opportunity for children to turn themselves around before it’s too late.”

The commission meets once a month with the district attorney, public defender, juvenile court judges, corrections and social services officials.

Commission members are paid $30 per meeting. Thirty people applied for the six four-year seats.

The new members are: James Forgata of Santa Paula, officer with the Santa Paula Police Department; William Haney of Camarillo, Pepperdine University law professor; Rose Hayden-Smith of Ventura, director of University of California Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Program; Kim O’Meara of Thousand Oaks, marriage and family, child counselor; Phillip Settle of Ventura, retired corrections service manager, and Victoria Velasco of Santa Paula, college student and intern with the Ventura County Public Social Services Agency.