County pressed to revive IVROP Rising Stars program
EL CENTRO — A group of community members voiced their desire to the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to bring back Imperial Valley Regional Occupation Program’s Rising Stars, a foster youth program that was shut down in June due to a lack of funding.
Three members of the group, which consisted of program staff members, parents and children who were in the program and an elementary school teacher, took to the podium and shared their thoughts with the board during Tuesday’s public comment session.
Witter Elementary School teacher Alma Martinez shared the experience of a young girl who was inspired to one day pursue a secondary education after going on a field trip with Rising Stars.
“I know that, working in the county, you have to measure goals and be objective, but sometimes these are things that you can’t really measure,” Martinez told the board. “It’s until later on that you get to see the results. I hope we can bring this program back.”
Due to budgetary constraints, the Imperial County Department of Social Services did not renew its contract with IVROP for Rising Stars, which expired June 30.
Created in October 2017, Rising Stars served as a mentoring program for foster youth up to 16 years old, providing them with academic support and confidence-building activities.
It also served youth who have experienced trauma from neglect, physical or mental abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, loss of family members, exposure to drug abuse or extreme poverty.
The program collaborated with local school districts and community agencies, and through academic support, field trips, and counseling, motivated foster youths to complete their high school and post-secondary education.
While no immediate action was taken during Tuesday’s meeting, District 3 Supervisor Michael Kelley did suggest that the county executive officer meet with the director of Social Services as to whether there could be potential continued funding for the program.
“It sounds like a dynamic program,” Kelley said.
IVROP Project Rising Stars development specialist Aurora Suarez explained that drawing the Board of Supervisors’ attention to Rising Stars and the impact it had on the more than 200 foster youths it was serving was the main goal of attending Tuesday’s meeting.
To Suarez’s knowledge, there are currently 500 to 600 kids in the county’s foster care system — a number that continues to grow every day.
Although Suarez’s position had been cut to part-time and more than 10 other IVROP staff positions were eliminated as a result of funding cuts, she said she felt the fight to reinstate the program is for the youth.
“It’s not about the job; it’s about the kids,” she said.
Imperial County Department of Social Services Director Veronica Rodriguez explained that due to budgetary constraints, ICDSS was faced with evaluating all its service contracts.
“The main focus of this evaluation was to ensure continued services to our community and reduce the impact to our foster youth population within the limits of mitigating the county fiscal burden,” she said.
To make a fair decision in the evaluation, ICDSS established a set of priorities and requirements for all Child Welfare Services-contracted programs.
Each contract was assessed to ensure state and federally mandated services are provided to foster youth and/or the community.
Rising Stars was not a federally funded program as it was not attached to a federal mandate, Rodriguez explained.
The second priority was to determine which contracted programs provide evidence-based practices to ascertain reliable outcome measures that prove a positive impact to foster youth.
Lastly, if the first two criteria were not met, then ICDSS assessed successful outcomes to the community through the data reporting by all contractors.
“All Child Welfare Services contracts were evaluated based on this priority to ensure we continue delivering the needed services to our foster youth clients,” Rodriguez said.
The last contract from ICDSS to IVROP for Rising Stars was for a nine month period, Oct. 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018, which was for $133,456.
However, the total cost for Project Rising Stars for fiscal year 2018-19 was $188,432.
Suarez explained that a search continues for other agencies that could possibly fund Rising Stars.
Rodriguez said ICDSS recognized the need for services to local foster youth and worked with IVROP.
IVROP absorbed Camp HOPE, another program which provides a week-long camping trip for local children, both in and out of the foster care system, as a way to heal any trauma or abuse they’ve gone through.
Child Welfare Services will continue with the Project Rising Stars case management services component, Rodriguez said.
“It was important for ICDSS to ensure we continue successful programs and we ascertain these programs are meeting the needs of the community, and in this case foster youth,” she said. “I understand their concerns (at the) Board of Supervisor’s meeting today. I share passion for the services delivered to our youth and want to reassure the constituents who provided public comment today, that even though our contract with Project Rising Stars ended, the services continue to be delivered to our foster youth.”