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TO: BOARD OF SUPERVISORS COUNTY
FROM: Family & Human Services Committee
DATE: August 14, 2001
SUBJECT: Status Report on SafeFutures
SPECIFIC REQUEST(S) OR RECOMMENDATION(S) & BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION
RECOMMENDATION(S):
ACCEPT the attached status report on SafeFutures.
BACKGROUND/REASON(S) FOR RECOMMENDATION(S):
On April 23, 2001, the Family and Human Services Committee requested updated information on
the SafeFutures evaluation and funding continuation efforts. On May 15, 2001, the Board of
Supervisors referred to the Family and Human Services Committee review of progress reports on
program funding sustainment efforts during July 2001.
On July 23, 2001 the Family and Human Services Committee considered a report from Mark
Morris, SafeFutures Program Manager, on the future of the SafeFutures project.
On-going funding has been secured for Ranch aftercare, Summit Center and Volunteers in
Probation. Staff and consultants are developing a funding approach to sustain the work in West
County. Funding has not yet been identified for employment services for gang and high-risk
youth in West County. The Families First mentoring program for adolescent girls will be rolled
into the SafeFutures program.
Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier thanked Mr. Morris for the SafeFutures efforts and requested that he
report to the Board of Supervisors on the status of funding the SafeFutures program.
CONTINUED ON ATTACHMENT: _YES SIGNATUIkE:�
RECOMMENDATION OF COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR_RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE
APPROVE —OTHER
SIGNATURE(S): MARK DESAULNIER DEkAP6 4LOVER
ACTION OF BOARD ON APPROVED AS RECOMMENDED OTHER
VOTE OF SUPERVISORS
I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THIS IS A
UNANIMOUS(ABSENT ) TRUE AND CORRECT COPY OF AN
AYES: NOES: ACTION TAKEN AND ENTERED
ABSENT: ABSTAIN: ON MINUTES OF THE BOARD OF
SUPERVISORS ON THE DATE SHOWN.
Contact:Dorothy Sansoe,335-1009
ATTESTED
JO SWEETEN,CLERK OF
THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
AND COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR
cc: CAO
Steve Bautista,Probation Officer
Mark Moms BY PUTY
JSPAC(via Probation)
Contra Costa County SafeFutures
County Administrator's Office
651 Pine Street, 6`h Floor
Martinez, CA 94553
TO: Family and Human Service Committee
Board of Supervisors
FROM: Mark Morris
Project Director, SafeFutures
DATE: July 17, 2001
SUBJECT: Status Report on SafeFutures
Recommendations:
ACCEPT the following report on SafeFutures status
RECEIVE additional information on program evaluation and on-going funding in
September 2001.
As requested in the April 2001 SafeFutures meeting with the Committee, following is
updated information on the SafeFutures evaluation and funding continuation efforts.
Evaluation:
Initial evaluation results, comparing outcomes with SafeFutures clients with a matched
comparison group, are now available. A summary of the outcomes evaluation data
available so far is attached. Overall, these results are very favorable.
❑ Recidivism data for the Summit Center,the "Ranch Aftercare"program,
and the interagency "Core Team" program for gang youth, all show
substantial and lasting reductions in new law violations.
❑ Mentoring programs for older youth also showed positive, although less
marked, results.
❑ The "Ranch Aftercare" and gang intervention("Core Team") programs
also showed strong success in keeping youth in school, as did the
elementary school prevention program in Richmond.
❑ Outcomes related to school performance, as measured by STAR test
results, were mixed, although generally modestly favorable. As the
evaluators note, studies nationwide show that it is more difficult to
improve school achievement that school attendance.
On-going funding:
On-going funding has been secured for several SafeFutures components, and planning is
well underway for the other components. In addition, we anticipate that we will be able
to carry over unexpended funds from prior years, enabling us to keep key community-
based activities funded through December 2001.
❑ CPA 2000 will pay for(expanded) Ranch aftercare,the SafeFutures
portion of the Summit Center, and the Volunteers in Probation program.
❑ Staff and consultants are developing a funding approach, entailing a
combination of MediCal funds and other funds (including grants) to
sustain the work in West County through the Youth Service Bureau.
Using MediCal,the SafeFutures carryover funds, some contributions from
Healthy Start and other grants with the schools and the city of Richmond,
and other potential grants under discussion, we hope to not only sustain
existing efforts but also create a new partnership between community and
county agencies in the funding and delivery of services.
❑ We are still seeking funding include employment services for gang and
high-risk youth in West County.
❑ We are also still looking for on-going funding for the Families First
mentoring program for adolescent girls. As a fallback strategy, we are
exploring the potential for integrating the Families First mentoring
program into Probation's Volunteers in Probation.
Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis
1. •. • of this Report
In the fall of 2000, Contra Costa County's Board of Supervisors contracted with
Resource Development Associates (RDA) to provide a program evaluation of the Contra
Costa County SafeFutures Program. The purpose of this evaluation is to examine
activities and outcomes of the SafeFutures Program and to lay the groundwork for
sustaining the successful elements of the service continuum.
This document is one of a series of reports RDA is preparing for the SafeFutures
Program. In this report, we link information about SafeFutures services and clients to
data obtained from the management information systems of the Contra Costa County
Probation Department and the West Contra Costa Unified School District to address two
key outcomes questions:
• Do SafeFutures Programs have an impact on the educational performance of
SafeFutures clients?
• Do SafeFutures Programs have an impact on juvenile delinquency?
11. Background
Under the SafeFutures Initiatives, the United States Department of Justice, Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides approximately $1.4
million a year for five years to each of six communities. SafeFutures assists those com-
munities with existing collaboration efforts to reduce youth violence and delinquency.
SafeFutures also seeks to improve the service delivery system by creating a contimsum of
care that is responsive to the needs of youth and their families at any point that they have
contact with the program. This coordinated approach of prevention, intervention and
treatment is based on the needs and assets of the targeted youth in each community. It
involves both public and private sector agencies, including health, mental health, child
welfare, education, police, probation, courts and corrections.
The Contra Costa SafeFutures initiative, managed by the Contra Costa County Board
of Supervisors and advised by a SafeFutures steering committee and the Juvenile Systems
Planning Advisory Committee, was built on community-wide planning efforts that began
in Contra Costa County as early as 1979. Contra Costa County SafeFutures program
components include:
1. Mentoring Programs: Safe Futures funds three mentoring programs.
• MIND;
• Families First/Stand Up and Lead; and
• Volunteers in Probation
2. The Schools, Families and Communities (SFC Program: The SFC Program provides
counseling, case management, and family support to at-risk youth at six school-based
program sites in West County:
7
Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program y.
Retrospective Outcome Analysis—Draft
• Coronado Elementary;
• Lincoln Elementary;
• Nystrom Elementary;
• Portola Middle School;
• El Cerrito High School; and
• Kennedy High School
3. Orin Allen Youth Rehabilitation Facilit�(O 4 M Aftercare: This program provides
youth with intensive supervision and services for 45 days following release from the
Boys Ranch to the community;
4. Summit Center: Summit Center is a residential/ day treatment center for male
juvenile offenders with serious emotional difficulties, staffed jointly by the Probation
Department and Children's Mental Health Services; and
5. The Core Team: The Core Team is an interagency approach to identifying and
serving gang-involved youth in West County.
In all of these specific programmatic activities, SafeFutures is intended to contribute
to systems change, to better interagency collaboration, and to a full continuum of
sanctions in the juvenile justice system.
111. Program Services and Youthful Recidivism
For this analysis, RDA attempted to match each youth served by a SafeFutures
program with a comparison youth who was matched on the following variables:
• Same gender;
• Same ethnicity;
• Same age;
• Same number of probation referrals (±1) within the 12 months prior to the
experimental youth entering the SafeFutures Program;
Data for identifying the comparison sample was obtained from a download of
juvenile probation referrals from the Contra Costa County Probation Department MIS
system. Since it was our objective to study the long-term impact of Safe Futures
programs on juvenile recidivism, we excluded youth who were 18 or older at the time of
intervention, since they would "age out" of the system before the end of our follow-up
period. Because comparison youth were matched on age, 18 year olds were also
excluded from our comparison sample.
Table 1, below, presents the results of an analysis of the level of offending for
Summit Center, OAYRF Aftercare, the Core Team, and the Mentoring Programs' for
three time-periods:
The other SafeFutures component, the YFC Counseling Program is a program focusing on elementary school
students and had an inadequate number of youth with probation records(7)to be included in this analysis.
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Contra Costa County SateFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis-Draft
• The 12 months immediately before the youth entered the SafeFutures Program
• The 6 months after the youth entered the SafeFutures Program
• The period from 7-18 months after the youth entered the SafeFutures Program.
Because we were interested in examining recidivism rates, we included in our analysis
only probation referrals that were the result of a new offense. Our reasoning was that
youth who were under intensive supervision might be expected to have a higher level of
violations for procedural issues such as probation violations, failure to report, etc.
However, this type of offending could be seen as a natural consequence of the enhanced
service level, rather than as an 'indication of delinquent behavior. Consequently, these
types of offenses were excluded for both the experimental and the comparison groups.
Table 1: Probation Referrals:
SafeFutures Clients v. matched comparison group
12 months prior 6 months after 7-18 months after
tointake intake intake
ummltC�ter..t�. g�•.. . . .. . : . ,�,,.:,.:.: �; �:•�-- w�:�.
Experimental Group Total Referrals 157 31 30
Mean 2.49 0.49 0.48
St Dev. 2.35 0.97 1.30
Comparison Total Referrals 136 32 76
Mean 2.16 0.51 1.21
St Dev. 2.34 0.81 1.67
22
Experimental
Experimental Group Total Referrals 885 174 166
Mean 2.03 0.40 0.38
St Dev. 1.81 0.72 0.90
Comparison Total Referrals 779 264 372
Mean 1.79 0.61 0.86
St Dev. 1.85 1.13 1.57
mow..' .. ...<:`..::.!,i. .. '.::.:' :.4., MNi:.'i':)ipC^n 4.:)i$.: ii:i.i..:. :'i�T•.^W
'-m--- - ra•'"-.u_'.ex�:•"••,�a,:.r..,,.. w::.' ::xea.Y.,yti...-..i=.F_-;::7":'li"°_..��` a. e:d�^_S_::�er.L:'4."�..w`="!�:
Experimental Group Total Referrals _ 31 16 10
Mean 0.44 0.23 0.14
St Dev. 0.69 0.56 0.35
Comparison Total Referrals 19 11 21
Mean 0.27 0.16 0.30
St Dev. 0.58 0.44 0.78
4"
..}...4.. :•x:::" >.d.:+,,py¢? t�:S:s,.:.,,L, Oi�a;4:s... ` '%::"'r..i' 'a'"�i• .9i,K::"t
Experimental Group Total Referrals 18 10 13
Mean 0.55 0.30 0.39
St Dev. 0.61 0.58 0.78
Comparison Total Referrals 7 1 10
Mean 0.21 0.03 0.30
St. Dev. 0.48 0.17 0.94
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Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis—Draft
At this Table indicates, participants in each of these programs showed a reduction in
recidivism in the six months after program entry.2 Even more encouraging, these gains
appear to be sustained throughout the subsequent 12-month period. Results were most
positive for the Summit Center and Aftercare Programs.
Table 2 provides a (one-tailed) Z test of change in frequency of offending over time. All
changes were in the direction of a reduced level of recidivism over time. Summit Center
and the Aftercare Program manifested extremely significant reductions between the
baseline period (12 months prior to program entry) and both the intervention period (six
months after program entry), and the subsequent 12 months (months 7-18 after program
entry). The Core Team showed a significant decrease between baseline and the
subsequent 12 months. Mentoring, although showing a positive result, did not reach the
level of statistical significance.
Table 2:Z test of within-group o ending over time
b to ti to to t2
Z a Z a
Summit Center -5.100108 <.0001 -2.7.02044 0.003
Aftercare -14.173306 «.0001 -14.058076 «.0001
Core Team 0.242510 0.405 -3.849849 <.0001
Mentoring OF.6505951 0.258 0.7598941 0.227
to–Mean offenses in 12 months prior to intervention
ti–Mean offenses in 6 months after commencement of intervention
t2–Mean offenses 7-18 months after commencement of intervention
Statistically significant results are in bold. Because t, was a six month period whereas to and t2 were 12
month periods,the mean for t,was actually doubled in calculating the Z score.
Program • Educational Outcomes
We next attempted to link both experimental and comparison groups to their school
records. To accomplish this, we used a download of data from the management
information system of the West Contra Costa Unified School District covering the five-
year period from the 1995-96 school year through the 1999-2000 school year. There were
a number of limitations that precluded us from making a 100% match:
• Although SafeFutures Programs have tended to focus on the area served by the
West Contra Costa Unified School District, some clients attend schools in other
districts and some are drop-outs.
• For elementary school students (the bulk of those served by the FSC Program),
we did not have attendance data. Although we did have STAR test data for
elementary school students, this test was not administered until 1997-98.
Moreover, rates of participation in the test were relatively low for the schools
served by the SafeFutures programs.
Z Unfortunately, a quirk of the design of the original data collection system does not allow us to track the
length of program participation of participants. We have used the"six months after intake"analysis period
as an estimate of the actual intervention period.
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Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis—Draft
• Inadequacies in the data collection and data entry process—on both sides—made
it difficult to establish secure links between the data sets.
Due to the difficulty of matching and linking records, we present in Tables 3 and 4 below
our interim results for three of the SafeFutures programs: Aftercare, Core Team, and
YFC. Work on linking and analyzing data for the Mentoring Program and Summit
Center, and for the comparison groups for all programs is still ongoing and will be
presented in a subsequent report.
Because of school data was aggregated by year, we were compelled to utilize
different analysis periods than in the previous section. Periods utilized for this analysis
were:
1. Baseline Year: the school year prior to the client's entry into the SafeFutures
Program
2. Intervention Year: The school year in which the client entered the SafeFutures
Program
3. Post-intervention Year: The school year after the client's entry into the
SafeFutures Program.
As Table 3 indicates, clients in each of the programs show a decrease over time in
percentage of days absent from school, percentage of days with unexcused absences, and
percentage of days suspended or expelled. The Aftercare Program shows particularly
dramatic results in this regard. In both the intervention and the post-intervention periods,
percentage of days absent was reduced to less than one-third the pre-intervention level,
while truancy and suspensions showed declines that were nearly as dramatic. This
program has had a particular focus on school enrollment and school attendance that has
clearly born fruit. This is a program approach that would clearly be well to replicate not
only throughout SafeFutures, but in other Probation Department programs as well.
Table 4, unfortunately, shows that educational achievement (at least as measured by
standardized test scores) is a more difficult issue than school attendance. In none of the
components presented are there significant improvements (or declines) in the national
percentile rankings of SafeFutures clients during either the intervention or the post-
intervention periods. This finding is consistent with the results of juvenile offender
programs nationwide, who have found that improving educational performance is a much
more difficult task than improving attendance, requiring sustained attention and resource
allocation over a period of years in order to achieve significant gains.
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Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis—Draft
Table 3:School Attendance of Safel'utures Clients
by Program Component
. » '.;::�" ");'.rt.' .tc':,Yf`':v+ •rEr. lr R1%�:uf4aic e:v�+�+-4.., .'. ....s
r .9.T`r. �7�.YSs+'�':ter: 1k4� � ?��;'L'�^4:p':�y'fit eras',.."'.•-d'.!�'1
School Year School Year
Prior to School Yearof After
Intervention Intervention Intervention
Absences as%of total days
enrolled 20.6% 6.3% 6.6%
Unexcused absences as%of total
days enrolled 10.0% 3.6% 4.6%
Days suspened or expelled as%of
total days 10.0°x6 3.6°x6 4.6%
`>••:'ka - i=Ji' - rY�- :':�a'4r. .`..3-"%' .v!'�'i~l a:i� �:S.s:i
}�►tee..,�Win.';. "`:
School Year School Year
Prior to School Year of After
Intervention Intervention Intervention
Absences as%of total days
enrolled 11.2% 9.4% 6.0%
Unexcused absences as%of total.
days enrolled 3.4% 3.5% 2.1%
Days suspened or expelled as%of
total days 3.4% 3.5% 2.1%
>3.: .,.... S ..:x ..v..a-.- %t':s it'ii•�'-"'yam -'�'` -
�.:er."�';.-r.,,;.e. .,.:.�1 ,.:t..-. i4..;A'f••_,,/;;p,:-r,xxir "x-�•?,:r:: - � ,f..rr'xz:ir�`,.'^tri. `.ti A..y .:,�Y
:
School Year School Year
Prior to School Year of After
Intervention Intervention Intervention
Absences as%of total days
enrolled 6.3% 5.8% 2.0%
Unexcused absences as%of total
days enrolled 1.3% 1.5% 0.8°x6
Days suspened or expelled as%of
total days 1.3% 1.5% 0.8%
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Contra Costa County SafeFutures Program
Retrospective Outcome Analysis—Draft
Table IV: STAR Test Scores of SafeFutures Clients
Prior Year Intervention Next Year
Year
Math percentile 25.5 23.5 34.0
Language percentile 18.8 20.5 19.0
Reading percentile 25.31 21.4 32.5
Prior Year Intervention Next Year
Year
Math percentile 29.2 26.9 2758-
-Language Percentile 30.4 30.5 31.2
Reading percentile 26.4 26.0 26.3
!W
Prior Year Intervention Next Year
Year
Math percentile 24.1 20.0 34.6
Language percentile 23.5 20.7 23.3
Reading percentile 18.21 15.51 20.4
Prepared by:
Robert Bennett, Principal
David Turner, Research Associate
Resource Development Associates
3685 Mt. Diablo Blvd. - Ste 203
Lafayette, CA 94549
925-299-7729
FAX 925-299-7728
rdassoc@earthlink.net
www.resourcedevelopment.net
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