MAKING A DIFFERENCE : One County’s Approach: Support Children in a Family Environment

A model program in Ventura County helps keep the most vulnerable children out of institutions while containing the county’s costs of care.

BACKGROUND

It costs the state an average of $32,000 for each Juvenile Court ward or dependent child placed in an out-of-home setting--a group home or other juvenile institution. Since 1986, a program in Ventura County has provided home-based services to troubled children, helping them before things get so out of hand that they’re taken out of the community and institutionalized. At the core of the program, known as the Ventura Project, is “family preservation”--a multi-agency attempt to keep children in a family setting with their natural or foster parents. Participating children include victims of abuse, juvenile offenders, emotionally or behaviorally disturbed children and other minors who are considered at high risk for out-of-home placement.

Range of services

Home visits to families (foster and natural) by caseworkers, school counselors, probation officers and mental health workers.

School-based services, including special education classes and door-to-door student transportation from home to school.

Follow-up rehabilitation counseling and mental health care at home and school for released juvenile offenders.

Intensive 20-hour-a-week, six week in-home crisis intervention therapy program to eligible families in lieu of separating child from home.

Mobile mental health crisis team available 24 hours a day for home visits.

THE MISSION

We define family preservation broadly: family preservation can mean helping a child tolerate a foster home or helping families become foster families as well as keeping natural families together. When kids end up in group homes it means separating them not just from their family but from their community and local school.

--Don Kingdon

Chief of Child and Adolescent Services, Ventura County Mental Health Services

THE BENEFITS

(Out-of-home placements) are so expensive. We can show a tremendous financial advantage to the taxpayers by reducing that number while providing the intervention and prevention services that keep (children and adolescents) closer to home.

It’s not like we’re saying one or the other, black or white--nobody goes to a hospital, nobody goes to a residential program. We’re saying that good services can reduce the number of kids who appropriately should go. The other point--and all the research emphasizes this--is that the further the child gets from a normal life and support system, the lower the degree of success and the more money you spend. We have reduced by 60% the number of out-of-home placements and it saves Ventura county $8 million a year.

--Randall Feltman

Director, Ventura County Mental Health

AN ASSESSMENT

The success of a family preservation program seems to depend on the quality of the risk assessment and the comprehensiveness of the services. The other important component of family preservation is that at any point there appears to be danger to the child, there must be very clear, decisive action to remove the child from danger. The point of family preservation can’t be just to save money.

The ideal is to have this kind of program in conjunction with earlier identification of families at risk, to have programs that reach families before they come into the system, to have home-based and school-based services to bring the community together and to provide parenting eduction. There are certain kinds of cases, such as sexual abuse and chronic severe physical abuse, where you wouldn’t use family preservation. (You use it) on those cases where there’s hope and the ability to effectively monitor.

--Deanne Tilton Durfee

Executive director of Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, vice-chairman of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect

Number of out-of-home placements each month per 10,000 residents under 18:

Ventura County 7

California 18

Annual costs of placement and care in Ventura county for children under county supervision:

Out of home placement: $43,200

Family preservation service with foster home care: $15,000

Family preservation service and natural home care: $3000

Source: Ventura County Mental Health