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Beyond Chron
HEADLINE: Meltdown in Juvenile Probation, Part 1

DATE: July 18‚ 2006
By Randy Shaw

At-risk kids to lose community-based services due to Department's muddled funding process

On June 28th, three days before the start of the new fiscal year, 54 community-based organizations (CBOs) turned up at a meeting in front of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission to learn the fate of their contracts with the Juvenile Probation Department (JPD). San Francisco's Chief Probation Officer William P. Siffermann issued a memo at the meeting outlining his funding recommendations. His memo, like the strange process he had initiated, was received with little pleasure and raised serious questions about the Department's management.

San Francisco's JPD maintains contracts with many local CBOs to ensure that youth under the Department's supervision have ample access to community resources. For more than a decade, the city and its probation department have understood that youth on probation will fare better when involved in programs that provide a broad array of social services. Over the last ten years, CBOs have assumed a broader role in the providing services to high risk youths under the probation department's jurisdiction. The working relationship between JPD and local CBOs has resulted in a substantial decline in the recidivism rate of kids who participate in CBO programs.

Typically, a child on probation is contacted once or twice a month by her probation officer. But when a child is enrolled in a CBO program for intensive home-based supervision, the child becomes the focus of a case manager's diligent care. The case manager-part mentor, part social worker, part advocate, part family friend-will work with the youth and his family to arrange education, health care, family support, vocational training, and any other care that may be necessary. In addition, a case manager will call the youth everyday, visit the family, support positive decision-making and run interference should any crisis arise.

This broad approach to care ensures that a kid is in the right place at the right time, learning new skills, following curfew and establishing trusting relationships in his or her family, school, and community. CBOs recognize that the probation officer assigned to the child's case will remain the primary case manager, and are responsive to any probation requests for services, meetings or information. Because they share a common goal, CBOs and the probation officer cooperate to ensure that a child will succeed outside of detention. The probation officer may direct and follow the progress of the each case, but the full spectrum of services a probation kid needs comes from the CBO who works under contract with JPD.

This year, the JPD's Request for Proposals was issued on April 28. It was late in coming; the RFP's contract period was anticipated to start on July 1. The RFP required applications to be submitted three weeks later, on May 19 and asserted that funding decisions would be returned in June. Once funding decisions were made, the JPD said, agencies would be required to meet with them to refine their goals and outcomes based on the amount of funding available to them. To many CBOs currently funded, the biggest surprise came with the announcement that contract terms would change significantly.

CBOs who had been funded to provide alternatives to detention or full spectrum social services noticed that the JPD had dismantled the funding into a narrow spectrum of 6 specific service areas. CBOs could apply to provide family support, education, life skills development, employment, girls' services or detention-based enrichment programs - but only in those categories. Organizations like who have provided intensive home-based supervision programs to the JPD for years didn't know where their programs would fit, since the case management they provide incorporates all of the areas now to be treated in isolation. Some of the organizations in fear of this forced restructuring have been contracting with JPD to provide services for over 10 years.

One such organization is Community Youth Center, whose Executive Director Sarah Wan says will have to substantially alter their current program to mesh with the JPD's restructuring.

"Before, we were truly helping youth through the entire process, as the court advocate for the child, as well as helping with the families," said Wan. "But now, we have to focus on 'life skills development.'"

Many CBOs at the initial bidder's conference questioned the JPD's apparent disregard for successful long term programs that featured home-based detention. These groups know that a probation youth treated by 5 different organizations is not going to succeed like a kid who can access all services through a single case manager. After confirming with JPD that proposals addressing all five service areas would be accepted, many CBOs prepared grant proposals that anticipated the opportunity to continue their broad programs. Despite JPD's assurances, CBOs discovered on May 19 that the proposal could only be dropped into one of six boxes. For CBOs, choosing among the different service areas they daily provide to their kids was an inane exercise that they hoped would be of little consequence.

Once the applications were delivered, the CBOs had nothing to do but work with their current caseloads and wait. Because kids do not conduct themselves in accordance with the fiscal calendar or the structure of the JPD's grant process, the CBOs contracting with the JPD continued to accept new cases despite the absence of any promise for emergency funding or transitional plan in the event of delay or denial.

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