What is Social Services Agency Doing to Help Family Resource Centers Fulfill Their Strategic Mission?

Additional Recommendations 2

These recommendations are not explicitly linked to specific findings.

• R13
  Responses to Recommendations R-1 through R-6 are requested from the Orange County Social Services Agency. Responses to Recommendations R-1 and R-2 are required from the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
• R12-15
  full and part time permanent staff complemented by 30-50 volunteers. The SSA-supported FRCs should not be confused with the County Probation Department’s Youth and Family Resource Centers (YFRCs), which have different programming directed at youth on probation and their families. In Orange County there are presently 28 stand-alone FRCs, plus a potentially larger number of organizations such as hospitals that provide some of the functions of a FRC. Stand-alone FRCs are typically operated by consortia of private charitable organizations called collaboratives. Different member organizations in a FRC collaborative will be responsible for different services or functions. Stand-alone FRCs are usually located in residential neighborhoods and are supported by a combination of private donations and county, state and federal grants. In some cases, county grants are funded by federal and state programs and the SSA acts as the program administrator. FRCs that are not supported by SSA are not within the scope of this report. The SSA and the OCF have created a jointly supported and staffed entity, Families and Communities Together (FaCT), for the purpose of supporting certain types of services offered by selected Orange County FRCs. The FaCT mission statement is: “To identify and promote promising and best practices, train, fund and advocate for FRCs to be Orange County’s community based platform for prevention activities and family support services.” FaCT has offices in the SSA’s facility in Orange and a budgeted headquarters staff of 31 – 11 from the SSA including five in the SSA Contracts department and 20 from Orangewood Children’s’ Foundation. The organization chart of FaCT is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 – FaCT Organization The Board of Supervisors approves contracts with the FRCs that SSA/FACT will support based on SSA/FaCT recommendations. SSA/FaCT selects its recommended FRCs by evaluating responses by FRC collaboratives to a Request for Proposal (RFP) that is issued on a 5-year cycle. Of the 28 stand-alone FRCs in Orange County, 14 FRC collaboratives responded to the RFP for the cycle for services beginning July 1, 2006, of which 12 were selected. Each selected FRC executes a contract with SSA/FaCT specifying the suite of SSA/FaCT-supported services to be offered in that FRC and the expected caseload for each offered service. The SSA’s Contracts Department administers the contracts between SSA/FaCT and the FRCs. Under these contracts, each SSA/FaCT-supported FRC directly receives between $230,000-350,000 yearly depending on the mix of services offered by the FRC that are eligible for SSA/FaCT support. Most FRCs also offer additional services not supported by SSA/FaCT; typically SSA/FaCT funds represent about 15-25% of their annual budgets. This means that each dollar spent by the SSA on supporting the FRC network leverages about $3-5 in other contributions. Most contributions to FRCs, from whatever source, are categorical, inflexible and time-limited, and therefore do not cover infrastructural costs such as overhead or administration. As a result, FRCs may struggle to effectively meet the needs of their communities and stay true to their original missions if they modify priorities to fit the restrictions of available grant monies. Therefore, some FRCs may be reluctant to accept SSA/FaCT funding if the SSA/FaCT RFP is narrowly written. One FRC, for example, was SSA/FaCT-supported prior to 2002, but decided not to respond to the SSA/FaCT RFP for the 2002/2003 through 2005/2006 cycle because it was too narrowly focused on supporting adoptive and foster parenting. This FRC believed that emphasis 4 was not appropriately targeted to the requirements of its neighborhood, where most of its caseload comes from divorces and family break-ups rather than adoptions and foster homes. This FRC did respond to the RFP for the 2006/2007 through 2009/2010 cycle, because that RFP was more flexible in allocating funds toward family support and preservation in addition to adoption and foster care. In each SSA/FaCT-supported FRC, one of the collaborating organizations acts as the Lead Agency, paying the other members of the collaborative their share of the SSA/FaCT supporting funds and billing SSA/FaCT regularly for reimbursement. The Lead Agency also is responsible for the overall administration of the FRC and for maintaining and operating its financial and information systems. Each FRC is audited annually by an independent certified public accounting firm and the audit results are submitted to SSA/FaCT. SSA/FaCT’s FRC support funds have declined from the previous RFP cycle. In FY2005/2006, the last year of the previous cycle, SSA/FaCT administered a total of $3,905,116 in federal, state and county government grants. The SSA/FaCT program is budgeted to administer a total of $3,818,858 in federal, state and county government grants during FY 2006/2007, a decrease of $86,258, or about 2%. Of this total, $3,173,884 is going directly to FRCs in the form of contract payments from the SSA, $312,500 is going to the Child Abuse Treatment (ChAT) program to support activities in the FRCs, and $332,474 is going to the OCF to support activities in the FRCs and provide administrative support to FaCT headquarters. SSA/FaCT’s FRC support funds come from the following sources (dollars shown are for FY 2006/2007): Federal Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program - $2,525,000 (66%) This program funds four types of services: Family Preservation, Family Support, Time-Limited Family Reunification, and Adoption Promotion and Support. The services are intended to promote protection of children from abuse and neglect, safe maintenance of children in their own homes whenever possible and appropriate, permanency and stability in the living conditions of children, preservation of the continuity of family relationships, enhancement of families’ capacity to provide for their children’s needs, and provision of appropriate educational, physical health and mental health services for children. This program’s allocation to Orange County was decreased by $212,052 from FY2005/2006 levels. Federal Community Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) program - $107,474 (3%) This program funds services designed to reduce child abuse. Its allocation to Orange County was decreased by $74,602 from FY2005/2006 levels. State Supportive and Therapeutic Options (STOP) program - $133,474 (3%) This Proposition 10 program funds treatment and support services for families with children returning from out-of-home placement or families at risk of such placements. This funding requires a 30% match from county funds, which come from the county Wraparound Fund. This grant was decreased by $590,014 from FY2005/2006 levels. County Wraparound Funds - $790,410 (21%) These funds are used to address the needs of behaviorally and/or emotionally disturbed children so that the children may be maintained safely in their homes. These funds are also used for the required 30% county match to the State STOP program funds as well as for the Differential Response Pilot program in operation at two of the county-sponsored FRCs. This grant started in FY2006/2007. State Office of Emergency Services Child Abuse Treatment (ChAT) grant – $200,000 (5%) This grant funds comprehensive treatment services for child victims of physical and sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, school violence, community violence and abduction. This grant was also $200,000 in FY2005/2006. County Children’s’ Trust Fund - $62,500 (2%) These funds are derived from license plate taxes and are used to support general FRC programming. This funding was also $62,500 in FY2005/2006. Note that if Orange County had not contributed the $790,410 in Wraparound funds in FY2006/2007, the total funding available to SSA/FaCT would have dropped from FY2005/2006 levels by $876,668, or more than 22%, instead of only $86,258, or 2%. Child Welfare funds, contributions from OCF and Title 4E funds pay for the FaCT headquarters staff; the SSA allocates its departmental overhead to programs based on caseload, but FaCT programs, by definition, generate no direct SSA caseload, so there is no SSA overhead allocated to SSA/FaCT. FRCs that are supported by SSA/FaCT funds offer the following categories of core and comprehensive services (not all FRCs offer all these services): • Information and Referral – helping individuals and families find services in the community and from government agencies; • Advocacy – helping individuals and families obtain multiple forms of assistance from the FRC and other agencies (including government) through individualized case management; • Comprehensive Case Management – reviewing the status of client cases with multiple needs and planning how the FRC will engage with each client going forward; • Counseling – support groups, crisis intervention, and individual counseling; • Domestic Violence Counseling – for non-offending parents and children; • Domestic Violence Legal Assistance – helping non-offending parents secure restraining orders and other legal remedies; • Parenting Education – teaching parents how to be more effective; • Personal Empowerment Program – classes and coaching for battered or at-risk parents; • After School Programs/Tutoring – for children and adults; • Youth Enrichment Activities – including day care for children of parents attending classes or other functions at FRCs; • Foster/Adoptive Recruitment and Outreach; • Legal Assistance – for other than domestic violence situations; and • Community Workshops – to promote community improvement, involvement and solidarity, including a Community Action Council (CAC) composed of FRC clients, at each FRC. FRCs are not supposed to charge fees for any SSA/FaCT-supported services. If fees are posted, they are supposed to be waived. However, FRCs may charge fees for other services that they offer that are not SSA/FaCT-supported. It appears that the SSA/FaCT-funded FRCs are complying with this policy. SSA/FaCT supports twelve FRCs that are operating in these Orange County locations during FY 2006/2007: 6 Anaheim Fullerton FRC At Manzanita Park, 1260 N. Riviera Street, Anaheim, CA 92801 Corbin FRC 2215 W. McFadden Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92704 Friendly Center Collaborative FRC 147 W. Rose, Orange, CA 92867 FRC of La Habra 301 W. Las Lomas Drive, La Habra, CA 90631 Garden Grove Focus Collaborative FRC At Magnolia Park, 11402 Magnolia Avenue, Garden Grove, CA 92841 Minnie Street FRC 1300 E. McFadden Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92705 Oak View FRC 17261 Oak Lane, Huntington Beach, CA 92647 Salk Community FRC 1411 S. Gilbert Street, Anaheim, CA 92804 South Orange County FRC 28191 Marguerite Parkway, Suite 19, Mission Viejo, CA 92691 Stanton FRC 11822 Santa Paula Street, Stanton, CA 90680 Tustin FRC 14722 Newport Avenue, Tustin, CA 92780 Westminster FRC 8102 Westminster Boulevard, Suite E, Westminster, CA 92683 Figure 2 – Orange County SSA/FaCT-Supported Family Resource Centers 7 In addition to providing direct financial support, SSA/FaCT provides the following in-kind services to FRCs: • Program Coordination – four program coordinators perform the following functions: o attend monthly management meetings with each FRC in which best practices are shared, training needs identified, resource needs are identified and recommended, etc.; o attend weekly case management team meetings in which individual clients’ cases are reviewed and action plans developed for further engagement with the clients; o attend a monthly meeting with all FRC managers (site coordinators) in which best practices are shared, and problems and issues are reviewed; o approve the governance structure of each FRC and work to intervene in dysfunctional governance situations (this is helpful to FRCs because each FRC is operated by a consortium of at least three different charitable organizations and agencies which must agree on how the FRC is to be managed); o work one-on-one with FRC site coordinators to resolve day-to-day issues; o review bids in response to RFPs for FRCs, and complete the contracts with the FRCs; o deal with the various agencies and staff collaborating in each FRC; and o review monthly reports from FRCs, analyze discrepancies between expected and actual caseloads for each service offered, and work with the FRCs to restructure service programming if necessary. • Data Collection and Analysis – a Data Evaluation specialist and the FaCTTRAK data collection and evaluation system perform the following functions: o collect data on caseload and outcomes by service offering at each FRC (each FRC maintains a data entry clerk who performs the input to the system, each FRC “owns” its own section of the data base, and FRCs can use the system to track caseload and outcomes for all services they provide, even services not supported by FaCT); o provide detail and aggregated statistical reports on caseload and outcomes at each FRC and in total across all FRCs; o provide statistical reports required by the federal and state funding programs supporting FaCT and the Children and Families Commission of Orange County; and o train the data entry clerks at the FRCs and conduct monthly meetings to reinforce training and evaluate their work. • Training – Under its CONNECT program, which builds organizational capacity among Orange County non-profit organizations, OCF provides training to FRC employees in areas such as management, grant writing, and marketing and supervisory skills. • Technical Assistance – FaCT provides FRCs with assistance in integrating their information systems with the Internet, memo writing, dealing with government agencies, and other areas. • Case Management – FaCT arranges for SSA social workers, some of whom are licensed clinicians, to assist FRCs in reviewing and developing engagement plans for client cases at weekly Case Management Team meetings. The majority of the SSA social workers have master’s degrees. 8 • Outreach – FaCT assists FRCs with marketing and refers clients to the FRCs. It also trains and encourages other County departments that come into contact with at-risk families, such as the Health Care Agency and the Sheriff’s Department, to refer clients to the FRCs. The SSA hosts other programs on the FRC network in addition to the functions that SSA supports through the FaCT mechanism, including: • “Project Connections.FRC Health Access” is a countywide, culturally sensitive in-home service that helps medically and socially vulnerable children from newborn to age five and their families by providing services such as immunizations and assistance in obtaining health insurance. Hospitals associated with the Bridges for Newborns program (see below) screen 75-80% of all families with newborns in Orange County for prenatal care and health insurance knowledge and refer families to their neighborhoods’ FRCs’ Health Access programs. “Project Connections.FRC” is funded by Proposition 10 monies administered by the Children and Families Commission of Orange County (the “First 5” grant, which is directed at helping children who are newborn through five years of age) and is offered in eight SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs (in addition to three other sites outside the FaCT FRC network). • “Bridges for Newborns” provides in-home parent education in health care for children, and assists families in finding and understanding how to access community health care resources. Referrals to this program come from hospitals. This program is funded by Proposition 10 monies administered by the Orange County Children and Families Commission (the “First 5” grant) and is accessible at all SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs (plus other sites outside the FaCT FRC network, such as hospital social services departments). • “Differential Response” (DR), funded by the SSA and operated under the auspices of its Children and Family Services Division, is a new program that the SSA is piloting at two of the SSA/FaCT- supported FRCs. The idea of DR is to refer at-risk families to FRCs, instead of the Court or the official social services system, when the risk level is not high enough to warrant Court intervention to remove the child from the home. This allows the FRC to involve the community in educating and supporting the family and mitigating the risk conditions and to help advocate for the family. Families assessed by the SSA as eligible for DR are given the option to participate, rather than go through the formal social services process. If a family agrees, a FRC-based DR advocate accompanies the SSA social worker on up to the next three visits to the family, after which the FRC DR advocate takes over the case from the social worker. Once in DR, the family can engage with any other service provided by the FRC, and the FRC case management team reviews the DR cases along with the FRC’s other normal cases. In FY 2005/2006, the last year for which statistics are available, there were nine SSA/FaCT funded FRCs in Orange County. These nine FRCs served 6,399 families with 5,354 children, including 11,658 individuals. The case load was 77% Hispanic/Latino; the primary language of nearly 70% of the clients was Spanish and most of the FaCT-funded FRCs offer their services in Spanish as well as English because of these demographics. This may be a result of the location of most FRCs in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. It may also signify a lack of successful outreach to non-Hispanic constituencies, although the FRCs also offer Vietnamese language services and materials. It is, however, consistent with national trends in the client bases of FRCs. There is anecdotal evidence that many undocumented families go to FRCs because they do not want to deal directly with the government. No procedures exist for identifying whether SSA/FaCT-supported FRC clients are undocumented aliens. FaCT and FRC personnel believe that such procedures, if implemented, would alienate the FRCs from their neighborhoods, damaging their ability to perform their strategic mission. Most individual FRC clients are female; the typical client’s age is between 30 and 39. Thirty-five percent of clients have annual incomes under $10,000 and another 30% of clients earn between $10,000 and $20,000 per year. Many clients initially contact FRCs to get information; a FRC can often field 200-400 information inquiries per month. In many cases the FRCs, after providing the requested information, refer the clients to other agencies in the County. In FY2005/2006, the breakdown of service caseload was as follows (note that some individuals and families may be clients for multiple services): Number of Number of Number of Contracted Service Category Individuals Families Children Case Load ----------------------------------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- -------------- INDIVIDUAL SERVICES Advocacy 1,045 800 237 453 + 372(1) Comprehensive Case Management 681 500 229 608(3) Counseling 827 491 339 601 Domestic Violence Counseling 168 140 27 120 Domestic Violence Legal Assistance 46 46 0 32 Parenting Education 467 399 0 411 Personal Empowerment Program 427 421 0 379 After School Programs/Tutoring 391 295 402 98 Youth Enrichment Activities 729 554 713 883 GROUP SERVICES Foster/Adoptive Recruitment & Outreach 2,668 44(2) Legal Assistance 814 208 Community Workshops 9,062 56(2) OTHER SERVICES Adult Education 254 230 0 93 ChAT 421 179 133 n/a Project Connections.FRC 9,934 4,322 5,362 n/a Emergency Services 157 134 131 Information and Referral 11,706 4,325 (1) In FY2005/2006 some FRCs’ contracts specified this target in families and others specified it in individuals. Both figures are shown; 453 individuals and 372 families. (2) The figure shown is the contracted number of workshops. Multiple individuals attended each workshop. (3) The contracted number of families is shown. The caseload in FY 2006/2007 will be greater because of the increase in the number of FRCs compared to FY 2005/2006 (twelve sites versus nine). Year-to-year individual FRC caseloads appear relatively stable overall, although some service categories experience larger fluctuations. The SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs are meeting or exceeding their contracted caseloads for most services, and in those cases where the expected caseloads are not being met, FaCT and FRC staff are analyzing the reasons and modifying the service offerings in an effort to make them more attractive to the population in the FRCs’ neighborhoods. In FY2005/2006 cases were referred to SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs from the following sources: 10 Hospital, Doctor or Nurse 32% (many of these are through Bridges for Newborns) Friend or Family 22% Walk-in 17% School 5% Social Worker or Counselor 4% Other Community Based Agency 4% Brochure or Flyer 2% Other 14% Measuring the effectiveness of social services is difficult at best. Ideally, actual outcomes would be examined: Are FRC clients successfully preserving their families, or are they failing and/or turning into SSA child welfare cases? However, traditional evaluation tools used to measure social services outcomes do not work well for family support programs or FRCs, which respond to a diverse range of family issues in a holistic manner with an entire menu of inter-related services, rather than to a single issue or through a particular task or service that is easily identified and evaluated. Because families often participate in a variety of individual and group programs offered by a FRC, measuring exactly who got what from which program or service can be very difficult. The problem of outcomes measurement is made even more difficult because what needs to be measured is, in effect, the degree to which something is not happening – the dysfunctionality or breakup of families. Individual FRCs also do not have the internal resources to perform rigorous statistical evaluations of their services that demonstrate the value of those services. This is an area in which SSA/FaCT can provide great assistance to FRCs. Accordingly, SSA/FaCT has implemented a system to track and analyze outcomes information. The summary analysis from this system was first available for 2005/2006. SSA/FaCT assesses the outcomes of FRC cases based primarily on self-reports by the clients on pre-tests and post-tests. When clients begin engaging with a SSA/FaCT-supported FRC, they are administered pre-tests that measure whether they are at risk. At the end of their cases they take post-tests, which are repeats of the pre- tests. The content of the tests depends on the services the clients are receiving. For example, the Parenting Education pre-test asks clients to rate themselves on whether they never, sometimes, or always engage in various child rearing behaviors, such as: • setting limits and rules; • spending quality time with the child; • losing patience with the child due to stress; • listening to the child when he/she wants to talk; • encouraging the child to do his/her best; • working together with one’s partner on how the child is disciplined; • being consistent when administering discipline; and • communicating with the child’s teacher. The test also asks whether the clients know certain facts about child rearing, such as: • whether drinking alcohol or using drugs can affect parenting; • whether a five-year-old can be put in time-out for more than 20 minutes; and • whether physical punishment is a necessary form of discipline. The FRCs input the clients’ answers to the pre-test questions into FaCTTRAK and FaCTTRAK computes an at-risk index for each client. At the conclusion of the clients’ engagements, when the FRC re-administers the post-tests, the at-risk indexes are again computed by FaCTTRAK. The differences between the pre-test and post-test at-risk indexes and other results are taken as measures of the efficacy of the services. In effect, this pre-test/post-test procedure measures the increase in clients’ knowledge of the content of the services that they receive, rather than directly measuring the desired outcome, i.e., whether changes in clients’ behavior that are conducive to family preservation and child welfare actually occur. The SSA infers the linkage between increase in knowledge and actual behavior changes through a logic model based on extensive research that indicates such a linkage exists. For example, in a 2000 study of parental neglect in infants and toddlers done for the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, families in which neglect was substantiated by child protective services workers were found to have less knowledge of parenting overall on issues such as child development, children’s needs, and unrealistic expectations of children than parents in families where there was no neglect; caregivers in families who neglected their children also had fewer parenting skills such as impulse control, effective communication, effective coping with stress, and problem- solving skills. (This was the first study ever done of the correlates of the substantiation of neglect in children 0- 36 months of age.) However, as far as the Grand Jury could determine, none of this research, including the 2000 study just cited, is specifically based on Orange County’s population. During FY2005-2006 the overall outcomes of selected SSA/FaCT core services across all of the nine FRCs that were SSA/FaCT-supported during that fiscal year were measured by pre-testing and post-testing in this way, as follows: • Individual and Family Counseling: Clients increased their self-esteem by 33%, reduced their depression by 25% and reduced their anxiety by 27%. Children who participated in counseling reduced their overall school behavior problems by 32% and improved their academic achievement by 33%. The risk of physical, emotional and sexual abuse was reduced by 20%. Also, 46% of clients reported that they felt less discouraged after completing counseling than at the beginning, and 46% stated that they now turn to family members for help. • Parenting Education: Clients increased their overall knowledge of parenting techniques by 16% from the beginning of the course to the end. The course teaches five key parenting concepts and clients improved in all five areas. Clients’ knowledge of effective discipline techniques improved by 17% and their knowledge of how to use social support resources, such as their children’s teachers, to assist in parenting increased by 20%. Seventy-three percent of clients understood the proper use of timeout at the end of the course, compared with 31% at the beginning. • Domestic Violence Counseling: Upon completion of six sessions of counseling, clients reduced their risk of emotional abuse by 66% and their overall risk index by 57%. Clients’ self-esteem improved by 57%, their ability to access a safety plan improved by 73%, and their financial stability improved by 63%. The counseling sessions addressed the risk of physical abuse, sexual abuse, motivation, depression, and social support; clients improved in all these areas. • Personal Empowerment Program (PEP): Clients increased their knowledge of domestic violence risk factors by 81% after completing this ten-week course, which addressed four areas: How to develop a safety plan, types of abuse, legal options available to abused people, and the effects of violence on children. Clients increased their knowledge in all four areas. • Comprehensive Case Management: Over 50% of families were able to complete their service plan upon the close of their cases; however, about 30% did not follow through on their referrals, were unable to complete them or were lost to follow-up. Of the families referred to counseling, 70% completed or were participating in the services and 45% had completed or were participating in domestic violence counseling. Parents referred to parenting classes seemed to be split, with one-third 12 participating in the classes, one-third referred but not participating yet, and one-third not following through. • Family Advocacy: Over 80% of families participating were able to successfully complete their service plan upon the close of their cases. Families had the highest need for counseling, domestic violence services, parenting, and health services (excluding health insurance). Of the families referred to counseling, 71% completed or were participating at the time they ended their service plan, 91% accessed the health services they needed, and 83% participated in parenting classes. The results above show that for the services where pre-tests and post-tests are given, the FRCs generally appear to be successfully increasing their clients’ knowledge of, and access to, strategies and resources for dealing with stresses that put their families at risk of breaking up. (It should be noted that not all services offered by SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs have pre-tests and post-tests.) However, this does not demonstrate conclusively that the clients’ behavior has actually changed, or that the majority of FRC cases do not ultimately turn into SSA caseload. Client confidentiality considerations prevent client information collected by SSA/FaCT-supported FRCs from being matched against other social services data bases. Because of this, the Grand Jury was unable to determine how many FRC client cases turn later into interventions by the SSA Children and Families Service (CFS), which could be one potential measure of the actual subsequent behavior of the clients, and which could also indicate whether FRCs actually divert caseload from the SSA. Also, unlike CFS cases, there is no formal mechanism in the SSA/FaCT-supported FRC network for tracking clients after the close of their cases, which could be another method of determining subsequent client behavior. Tracking a sample of clients could verify the logic model that supports using the difference between pre-test and post-test scores as a proxy for directly measuring changes in behavior. The FaCT team believes that such tracking would be considered overly intrusive by the clients, and would therefore ultimately damage the effectiveness of the FRCs. Clients of FRC comprehensive case management services do give consent to the SSA to check their prior involvement with social welfare services statewide, and these checks indicate that generally the clients have not had extensive prior interaction with the social welfare system. However, only a small percentage of cases are subject to comprehensive case management, and it is not clear whether they represent a valid sample of the general FRC client population.