PROGRAM INCUBATION

Wraparound serves families with children referred through child welfare, behavioral health, and probation who are at immediate risk of out-of-home placement.  Wraparound is an organized planning process through which families receive individualized services and supports necessary to keep families together and out of institutional placements.

As part of the County’s child welfare redesign efforts, the ACTION Council is helping transform the system by implementing a new way to respond to allegations of child abuse and neglect. Pathways to Safety is an early intervention and prevention program designed to keep children safe in their homes. It
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Based on a community assessment undertaken by the ACTION Council in April 2001, which identified youth development and mentoring programs as a significant county need, the Council adopted ECHO (Education, Careers, Health, Opportunities) as a major long-term project. ECHO began in one high school, serving 12 girls. Since that time, the Council has been “incubating” this project, now Girls Incorporated of the Central Coast, with the intention of expanding services, developing organizational capacity and sustainability and — when ready — spinning it off as an independent nonprofit organization. In 2003, the programs became a provisional Girls Inc. and achieved full affiliation in 2007.     Girls Inc. has grown to serve more than 700 girls in 16 schools in 6 cities and offers a constellation of programs that provides participants specific knowledge regarding health and academic pursuits, while developing leadership, goal setting and decision-making skills. Young women have opportunities to practice being leaders, role models, teachers, mentors and activists. [Learn more: http://www.girlsinccc.org]

Because of the identified crisis in the emergency foster care system, in 2001 the ACTION Council formed a collaborative partnership with the Monterey County Social Services Commission and the Department of Social Services to develop a new comprehensive system of care for children who have been placed into protective custody. The recommendations included adoption of a community-based system of foster care called Family to Family, now active in five communities in the county. A receiving center, Cherish House, offers children who have been removed from their families a safe, friendly place to go while awaiting placement. Children’s Circle of Friends offers potential foster parents the opportunity to secure affordable housing in return for a commitment to provide care for a minimum of three years.

In July 2002, we developed the Breast Feeding Promotion Project. In April 2003, we were awarded a $470,000 three-year grant from The California Endowment to improve institutional practices towards breastfeeding promotion and support in the hospital and workplace settings, provide breastfeeding education to healthcare professionals, and conduct and collect community-based breastfeeding research and data. Now concluded, the project was successful in meeting all its objectives.

In 1996, children’s dental care was identified, through a community assessment, as the most urgent health need of children in Monterey County. In response, the ACTION Council initiated community partnerships, raised over $800,000 in funding, developed the program components and hired staff, creating the country’s first children’s mobile dental center. Once its sustainability was insured, the ACTION Council created the Appolonia Foundation, a new 501(c)(3), to administer the program. Since its inception in 1998, the Children’s Mobile Dental Center has served over 17,000 children per year who would not have, otherwise, received needed care – and has had a significant impact on the dental health of the rural children in the county. Now called the Community Oral Health Services, the organization offers education and prevention services in addition to treatment services county-wide. To contact this organization, call Debi Diaz, Executive Director at 422-6889, ext. 11.