Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 10222013 - C.71RECOMMENDATION(S): Accept a report on the Oversight of the Service Integration Program provided by the Employment and Human Services Department as recommended by the Family and Human Services Committee. FISCAL IMPACT: None BACKGROUND: The Employment and Human Services Department reports annually to the Family and Human Services Committee on the activities and achievements of the program. On October 7, 2013 the Committee heard the 2013 annual report and directed staff to transmit the written report to the Board of Supervisors for their information. The report is attached. CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION: The Board and the public will not receive current information. CHILDREN'S IMPACT STATEMENT: Not applicable. APPROVE OTHER RECOMMENDATION OF CNTY ADMINISTRATOR RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE Action of Board On: 10/22/2013 APPROVED AS RECOMMENDED OTHER Clerks Notes: VOTE OF SUPERVISORS AYE:John Gioia, District I Supervisor Candace Andersen, District II Supervisor Mary N. Piepho, District III Supervisor Karen Mitchoff, District IV Supervisor Federal D. Glover, District V Supervisor Contact: Dorothy Sansoe, 925-335-1009 I hereby certify that this is a true and correct copy of an action taken and entered on the minutes of the Board of Supervisors on the date shown. ATTESTED: October 22, 2013 David Twa, County Administrator and Clerk of the Board of Supervisors By: Stephanie L. Mello, Deputy cc: C. 71 To:Board of Supervisors From:FAMILY & HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE Date:October 22, 2013 Contra Costa County Subject:Oversight of the Service Integration Program ATTACHMENTS SIT Report TO: Family and Human Services Committee Supervisor Federal D. Glover, Chair, District V Supervisor Candace Andersen, Vice Chair, District II FROM: Paul Buddenhagen, Staff Assistant to EHSD Director SUBJECT: Report on the Contra Costa County Service Integration Program/SparkPoint DATE: October 7, 2013 RECOMMENDATION ACCEPT the attached report on the activities and achievements of the Contra Costa County Service Integration Program. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Established in 1994, the Contra Costa County Service Integration/SparkPoint Program co- locates County and nonprofit agency service providers and community residents in neighborhood-based centers to provide accessible, coordinated social services tailored to meet the specific needs and goals of low-income families, while also engaging families in resident-driven efforts to revitalize their communities. The success of this program’s Service Integration Team (SIT) model stems from the synergistic relationship between its two key program components: (1) integrated case management services and (2) neighborhood - building activities. Two years ago the Service Integration Program Manager position was combined with the East Bay Works One Stop Administrator position. This was a synergistic merger for service delivery but dramatically reduced the time available for fund development. We continue to build on SIT’s strong foundation and have been able to integrate One -Stop and SIT work more closely. Additionally, we have thoroughly transformed the East Coun ty SIT into a SparkPoint center with the same approach but a laser -like focus on economic improvement. The Service Integration Program is a leader in creating public/private strategies that improve outcomes for low-income children, youth and families. Key Service Integration innovations include:  Developing new paradigms of inter-agency collaboration and creating necessary tools to support this work, including cross-agency information-sharing protocols, an integrated case management system and an effective family conferencing model.  Redefining County-community partnerships to help fundamentally shift the way in which our public agencies work with residents of low-income communities.  Launching new initiatives and strategies, such as free tax preparation services (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance), community career centers, employment -focused service delivery, County--Schools projects, the Supporting Fathers Involvement Program, SparkPoint and others. 2 The success of the Service Integration model is evident in the measurable improvements achieved in the lives of the children, families and communities it serves. Recent examples of Service Integration Program outcome measures include:  For the 2013 tax season SparkPoint’s Bay Point Works’ staff prepared and filed 490 tax returns – more than any other site in the County, and a Bay Point record! -- saving low-income community residents about $50,000 in filing fees, while helping put $829,900 in federal tax refunds back in the pockets of working poor Bay Point residents (and circulating in the local economy). Significantly, $364,436 in Earned Income Tax Credit were returned to families for whom SparkPoint staff prepared and filed taxes. EITC is the most effective government anti-poverty program.  North Richmond SIT partnered with County Supervisor John Gioia, the San Pablo City Council and the Jr. Giants to start the first little league in North Richmond. Check out the nice article on North Richmond SIT Coordinator Denise Carey: http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23430422/hometown -hero-junior-giants- volunteer-brings-baseball-north Due to the effectiveness of this model, the Service Integration Program has received local, state and national awards; has been the subject of articles and research studies; and frequently is represented by Service Integration staff at conferences as a “best practice” model. 3 The Service Integration Program has been successful in leveraging its positive outcomes to raise money for new innovative programs that benefit Contra Costa’s most impoverished families. The chart below contrasts SIT’s private revenue with net county cost during the past ten years. SIT Revenue 2000– 2012 NCC VS Non County BACKGROUND Established in 1994, the Service Integration Program started as a multi-disciplinary collaboration of three Contra Costa County departments (Employment & Human Services, Health Services and Probation), two school districts, community-based organizations (CBOs) and neighborhood residents. The Service Integration Program’s two Family Service Centers were designed to take an innovative approach to working with families that historically have posed some of the greatest challenges to service providers: families involved in two or more county systems who live in the County’s most economically disadvantaged communities. This unique model co-located County and non-profit agency service providers and community residents in neighborhood-based centers to provide accessible, coordinated public services tailored to meet the specific needs and goals of low-income families, while also engaging families in resident-driven efforts to revitalize their communities. $- $100,000 $200,000 $300,000 $400,000 $500,000 $600,000 $700,000 $800,000 $900,000 2000/01 2002/03 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011-12 2012-13 Net County Cost Revenue 4 The success of the Service Integration Program model stemed from the synergistic relationship between its two key program components: (1) integrated case management services and (2) neighborhood-building activities. The integrated case management services component placed cross-disciplinary Service Integration Teams comprised of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Counselors, Employment Specialists, Probation Officers, School Family Resource Workers, Social Workers and other specialists in Family Service Centers located in Bay Point and North Richmond. Based on the premise that the challenges facing low-income families and communities are inter-related, these teams embraced a holistic approach. The teams focused on the whole family unit, rather than just the individual, and built upon family strengths to provide services driven by and customized to each family’s unique circumstances. In addition to providing families with more personalized services in the communities where they live, this multi- disciplinary approach produced a comprehensive, consistent strategy for each family, reducing conflicting expectations and demands made by different programs. The Service Integration Program’s two neighborhood-building projects, Bay Point Works (BPW) and the North Richmond Empowerment Collaborative (NREC), were born out of the recognition that an integrated team of county and community-based organization staff was a necessary, but not sufficient mechanism for addressing the full range of challenges facing the communities of Bay Point and North Richmond/San Pablo. BPW and NREC were designed to harness the talents and skills of neighborhood residents in the process of revitalizing their communities. This strategy has galvanized the creation of highly innovative and successful programs (designed specifically by and for community members) that support and build upon local cultures and traditions and fill critical gaps in the formal service delivery system. Perhaps most important of all, the neighborhood-building projects have expanded the long- term capacity of the Bay Point and North Richmond/San Pablo communities by developing the skills of numerous neighborhood residents and providing opportunities for them to give back to their communities and build stronger connections in the neighborhoods where they live. BPW’s community-building efforts started with the establishment of the Bay Point Community Career Center in May 1998 and have expanded steadily from there. Every year si nce, BPW has strengthened its services and, in turn, helped more and more Bay Point residents get jobs, keep jobs and move up the job ladder. In recent years, BPW has offered a number of supportive services that go well beyond the traditional employment services package, such as free income tax preparation for low-income Bay Point workers to help them capture the benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and free structured activities for the young children of “working poor” parents during school holidays. NREC’s community-building activities also initially focused on boosting neighborhood employment. Early successes included reinstituting night bus services in North Richmond, creating several in-home family day care centers and establishing the No rth Richmond Community Career Resource Center, which continues to serve neighborhood residents after having been spun off to a CBO in 2000. After making a number of strides in the area of employment, NREC decided to take on an issue of great importance to neighborhood residents: low levels of student success and parental involvement at Verde Elementary School. This focus resulted in the establishment of NREC’s Verde Involving Parents (VIP) Program, which has played a critical role in initiating and sustaining the renaissance of Verde 5 Elementary School over the past seven years. With private foundation support, the VIP program was later expanded to Helms Middle School and Nystrom Elementary School. This report to the Family and Human Services Committee of the Board of Supervisors summarizes some of the Service Integration Program’s key innovations and contributions to improving the wellbeing of Contra Costa ’s children, families and communities over the past 16 years. SERVICE INTEGRATION PROGRAM AS A LEADER IN “BEST PRACTICES” Since its inception 19 years ago, the Service Integration Program has emerged as a leader in the development of successful strategies that improve outcomes for low-income children, youth and families. The Service Integration Program reaches far beyond the traditional “agency service provider” model by involving low-income residents as integral partners in the process of addressing the needs and aspirations of the neighborhoods where they live. This small, inter-agency program draws down flexible funding from private foundations and outside contracts to complement more traditional federal, state and county funding streams. As a result, Service Integration has managed to maintain a flexibility and inventiveness unusual to public sector agencies. SIT has launched programmatic, fiscal and organizational innovations that have laid the foundations for the development of more effective and efficient services to children, families and communities countywide. Due to the effectiveness of the Service Integration model, Contra Costa County h as received local, statewide and national recognition and has been the subject of research papers and studies, including: North Richmond Gets Its Buses Back: How a Poor Community and an Urban Transit Agency Struck Up a Partnership (Institute of Governmental Studies Press, University of California, Berkeley, 1999), which focuses on NREC’s successful strategy for partnering with A.C. Transit to bring night-time bus service back to North Richmond; and A Case Study on North Richmond (Abt Associates, on behalf of the Ford Foundation, 2004), which highlights the VIP Program as a successful model of school -community revitalization. The latter study credits VIP as being “largely responsible for the major improvements in school attendance, parent involvement and student behavior that have taken place at Verde…” four years ago the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University highlighted SIT’s VIP program as a best practice intervention in their report, Present, Engaged, and Accounted for: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades. Last year the Service Integration Program finished a fatherhood study – Supporting Father Involvement -- that was evaluated by researchers at UC Berkeley and Yale and included in the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. Some of the Service Integration Program’s major areas of innovation are summarized below:  Inter-Agency Collaboration: Service Integration has been at the vanguard of Contra Costa’s efforts to develop effective models of colla boration and cross- program and agency partnerships, paving the way for greater collaboration countywide. Service Integration has developed new organizational structures to support this collaboration at the management oversight level (e.g., the inter-agency Service Integration Executive Oversight Committee), as well as at the frontline service delivery level (e.g., multi-disciplinary teams). The infrastructure and tools established through Service Integration’s partnership model and the relationships 6 that have formed as a result have laid the groundwork for and facilitated the success of many other inter-agency initiatives.  County-Community Partnerships: Service Integration has redefined relationships between public agencies and residents of low-income neighborhoods while developing a viable model for bridging the all too common gap between agency “service providers” and the communities they serve. In 1997, in the wak e of Federal Welfare Reform, each of the SIT sites engaged neighborhood residents in planning efforts to determine how these communities could succeed in this new policy environment. These efforts resulted in the establishment of two innovative community-building projects, Bay Point W orks and the North Richmond Empowerment Collaboration. Last year we surveyed Bay Point residents to find out how we could better help them into economic stability. The results of this survey will lead the way in our effort to partner with community based nonprofit organizations.  Cross-Agency Information-Sharing: Working together, key Service Integration partner agencies (i.e., EHSD, CCHS, Probation, CAO) and County Counsel developed Contra Costa’s first informed consent agreement for integrated services in 1994. This confidentiality release gives permission for Service Integration staff from participating agencies to share information to better serve families. This “Agreement to Participate” form served as a model for more recent integrated services programs, such as the mental health “Spirit of Caring” Initiative, and contributed to the establishment of the Service Integration Program as Contra Costa’s first official “Multi-Disciplinary Children’s Services Team”.  Outcomes/Performance-Based Accountability: Service Integration spearheaded Contra Costa County’s early efforts to implement performance -based accountability. In the early- and mid-1990’s, the inter-agency Service Integration Management Team developed a set of meaningful outcomes that could be used to evaluate the success of the Service Integration Program by concretely measuring the program’s impact on the lives of children and families. Service Integration staff has diligently tracked these program results since 1996. Service Integration’s novel approach led to wider adoption of outcome measures by other County programs and laid the groundwork for the 1997 establishment of Contra Costa’s Children and Families Report Card.  Leveraging Public and Private Investments: Service Integration has designed its fiscal strategy around encouraging private foundations and other funders who do not typically support county ventures to invest in innovation in the public sector. SIT currently has commitments of nearly $400,000 from private and public sources to fund a variety of family support projects through June 2013. Through its strong track record of capturing measurable results, promoting public-private partnerships and engaging community residents in the process of bettering their neighborhoods and their lives, Service Integration has helped to convince many new funding partners that investments in the public sector can galvanize sustainable individual, family, neighborhood and systems change.  Holistic, Integrated Case Management System: The Service Integration Program pioneered the County’s first integrated case management process. Focusing on the whole family unit, rather than just the individual, this process allows SIT staff to build upon family strengths and provide services driven by and tailored to e ach family’s unique needs. Service Integration created the Family Assessment Record to support 7 the development of comprehensive plans for addressing issues in a range of interdependent life domains, such as child care, child and adult health, transportation, school, employment and other social supports. First developed in 1995, this tool and the SIT case management process as a whole have been refined over the years to support continuous improvement and better integration of Service Integration services. SIT staff, funded by a generous grant from the S.H. Cowell Foundation is nearing the end of a 2 year project to re-evaluate the case management model and make updates. One of the interesting findings is that in order to truly strengthen individuals and families we also have to strengthen the communities in which they live. We are embarking on a community development/organizing model in Bay Point and have hired organizers who are working with residents this year.  Family Conferencing: The Service Integration Program’s “Family Conferencing” model brought a new way of doing business to Contra Costa County. Service Integration began conducting inter-agency case conferences with client families in the mid-1990s. The success of our family conferencing model help ed open the doors for similar family-focused models in Contra Costa, such as “Wraparound” in Children’s Mental Health and “Team Decision Making” in Children and Family Services.  Employment-Focused Service Delivery: In 1995, prior to the passage of Welfare Reform, Service Integration was the first County program to implement an employment-focused service delivery model. The Service Integration model transitioned “eligibility workers” into “employment case managers” and tapped into the resources of all disciplines to move welfare recipients into the workforce. Due to the effectiveness of this model, the Service Integration Program was invited to co - develop EHSD’s redesign plan for restructuring its eligibility determination function into an employment-focused service delivery strategy.  Free Tax Preparation Services (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance): In 2003, the Service Integration Program piloted the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) free tax preparation model at the Bay Point and North Richmond SIT sites. Based on the success of this pilot, Service Integration played a lead role, along with a number of other partner agencies, in launching a countywide VITA campaign in 2004: Earn It! Keep It! Save It! Contra Costa. This year, the Bay Point Works VITA site filed more tax returns than any of the County’s thirteen VITA sites.  Community Career Centers: In May 1998, Bay Point SIT’s BPW project established the Bay Point Community Career Center, a forerunner to the County’s One-Stop Career Center system. In January 2000, NREC established a second Community Career Center in North Richmond. The Career Centers introduced community- based employment resources delivered via a neighbor-helping-neighbor model to the communities of Bay Point and North Richmond. The Bay Point Community Career Center continues to be a heavily utilized hub in the community; 7,563 people have enrolled as members of the Career Center since it opened in 1998!  Verde Involving Parents (VIP): Service Integration’s VIP Program, established in February 2001, has reaped impressive results. VIP is a team effort of parents, students, teachers and county agencies and non -profit organization staff who live and work in North Richmond. Their goal: get our children to school – every day, on time and ready to learn. Due to the dramatic impact of VIP on student attendance 8 and parent involvement at Verde Elementary School, the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) invested $125,000 in the VIP Program during the 03/04 and 04/05 school years. During the first half of 2004, at the request of WCCUSD Superintendent Dr. Gloria Johnston, the VIP staff and managers met with principals and staff from four low-performing elementary schools to offer technical assistance and training on the VIP school improvement model. In summer 2004, the VIP Program presented the WCCUSD with a Training Handbook to support its VIP replication efforts. In the last year SIT has expanded by working with parents, teachers and administrators at Nystrom Elementary School and Helms Middle School to implement the “involving parents’ model at those two schools.  Supporting Father Involvement (SFI): We are pleased to offer an evidence based program that improves families’ lives to Contra Costa County. Service Integration’s North Richmond family service center is one of five sites statewide to provide the SFI program. For the next three years, SFI will be working with families in the child welfare system to reconnect fathers with their families and increase protective factors so that they stay healthy. Moving Forward: SIT As a Model for Change – SparkPoint One of the Service Integration Program’s strengths is its flexibility to respond to local, community need in a collaborative, public-private, outcomes focused way. This dexterity has allowed SIT to pilot many new ideas that were then replicated in other locations. Though the recession’s icy death grip on the poor is starting to slip, unemployment rates remain near 20 year highs, obesity is more prevalent than ever, school test scores are falling and budgets are still modest. How health and human services agencies respond to this crisis to remake the social safety net will significantly impact the future of our communities. The Service Integration Program is taking up this challenge by working closely with local residents, county departments, nonprofit agencies, schools, community colleges, private foundations, and businesses to rethink and reorganize a fractured and wobbling safety net system. Creating a new system that builds collaborative goals and brings leveraged resources to bear on the problems of poverty is our current focus. This focus and thinking has led us to SparkPoint, a strong antipoverty approach that is now two years old in Richmond and Bay Point. In Bay Point, the Service Integration Program in partnership with nonprofit, funder and government leaders transitioned the SIT model into SparkPoint. We are building on years of community based services to transition our focus from general family support to specific economic support. The SparkPoint center opened to the public in June 2011 with a focus on helping low-income people from East County become economically self sufficient. We are measuring four specific outcomes over three years:  Reducing Debt to no more than 40% of take home pay  Improving Credit Scores to 650 and above  Increasing income through getting a job  Increasing assets by amassing at least one month of liquid savings 9 2012/13 SparkPoint East Contra Costa County Data 616 low-income East County residents came to SparkPoint for workshops or individualized services. We provided intensive, one-on-one services to 486 people and had the following outcomes related to those 486 people:  66% of members achieved at least a 5% positive change toward one or more of the SparkPoint goals (Debt, Credit, Income and/or Assets).  25% of members reduced debt to income to less than 40%.  225 residents received job coaching, resume preparation, interview skills and job placement services. 59 found employment at an average starting wage of $17/hour; 42 entered vocational training.  43% of participants increased income by at least 5%  19% of participants increased savings by at least 5%  Fourteen families participated in the matched savings program – seven toward purchasing homes, one toward starting a business and six toward going to college.  531 income tax returns filed, putting $364,436 back into Bay Point resident’s pockets, which also boosts the local economy.  70% of members who used more than one SparkPoint service achieved economic mobility vs. 64% for those who used only one service.  53% of SparkPoint members receive some form of public benefits (CalWORKS, food stamps, medical, etc). We have raised more than $1M from private foundations and corporate funds in support of the SparkPoint Center and helped over 1,100 East County residents in the first two years. The Employment and Human Services Department, via Service Integration, is the lead agency for SparkPoint and has helped develop a new public/private model. SparkPoint leverages public funds to drive superior outcomes for the public sector and for low-income people in general by building on the strengths of nonprofit and government agencies that have similar missions. SparkPoint would not have been possible in East County without the existing Service Integration framework. Our hope is to build a similar, but smaller version in North Richmond using the SIT program there as a springboard to the next iteration of the model. Thank you for your continued support.