The California Youth Crisis Line is the State’s only comprehensive telephone counseling and support network designed to provide a non-threatening, anonymous system for 24-hour, 7 day per week access to services for California’s most vulnerable or at-risk youth. Over 25,000 young people, their friends and families members call about issues as diverse as depression, family conflict, AIDS, survival sex, street life, gay and lesbian issues, drugs, suicidal feelings and pregnancy, and even the often frightening realities they face about the appeal and conflict associated with gang involvement. Speaking with our caller counselors (paid and volunteer) provides youth and parents a confidential and non-judgmental forum to discuss their concerns. Many utilize this service as a first step toward overcoming hesitations they have or, in the case of gang members, fears about whether some local agencies are safe alternatives, given that outreach workers and community counselors are often well known by youth in the community. In other areas, such as rural districts, youth services are quite limited or many miles away, and the Crisis Line can once again serve as the only available option for urgent and immediate assistance.

It is for these reasons that we are proposing to build on the Crisis Line’s existing service model to make it a viable emergency service for gang members, those youth being enticed into gang activity and youth with significant indicators of vulnerability to gang involvement. In adding the California Gang Hotline elements, including a statewide network of former gang members who will be available 24/7 for counseling, we believe the Crisis Line will become an even stronger adjunct to local youth service programs throughout the State.

CRISIS LINE OVERVIEW: Operational now for more than 15 years, the Crisis Line is one of the most cost-effective and pervasive resources available to youth throughout California. We maintain round-the-clock operations with a paid staff of 6 caller counselors, and a pool of nearly 20 volunteers, each of whom has received in excess of 50 hours of training and regular informational updates on topics of importance. More than 25,000 calls are received each year, with 75% of the calls coming from youth between the ages of 12 and 24 (more than 50% of callers are between 13 and 20). Girls tend to call the Crisis Line more than boys, though this statistic varies periodically, and may be related to local issues. Well over 2,000 youth callers identify themselves as homeless, with many others living in foster care, shelter or residential programs of some sort. We maintain data by counties and statewide.

The Crisis Line is an intervention and a primary prevention project. Young people and their adult supporters regularly call us to discuss issues they believe they cannot safely discuss with anyone else, either because they are already engaged in these activities or because they are seriously considering hurtful or self-destructive options. We have noticed that many of our calls are from youth who simply will not turn to other local programs because they believe that the staff or volunteers of a local program are not safe for them to approach Outreach workers, for example, are often well known among other youth and thus it is perceived that word could get out to other youth or to gang members. Accordingly, youth seek to call the Crisis Line for a sense of trust and confirmation that there are local programs that they can turn to safely for help.

Once we have spoken to the youth (for an average of 5 to 15 minutes, though the call can continue as long as necessary for some calls), we can then often provide them with direct referral information for local services that may be available to help them on an ongoing basis. To ensure that we have adequate referral options, the Crisis Line maintains the largest listing of available counseling, shelter, support and community involvement resources for youth, families and concerned adults in all of California. Over 6,000 referral sources are currently listed. We update information on these resources on a continuous basis. Over the past two years, we have expand our software capabilities and begun the process of refining referral information within certain selected topic areas. Over 50% of our listings are for counseling and medical services. In addition, we have begun developing referral research tools that will soon allow us to better match callers with programs that are sensitive to their language and cultural concerns. We have similarly also begun to include Internet resources to further educate and support our callers.

CRISIS LINE MISSION: Our mission, then, is to help the young people who call to overcome their belief that they have no options. We seek to accomplish this by breaking down communication barriers (a very serious reality for youth caught in the gang cycle, for example). Using a highly refined “active listening” model of crisis counseling and support, we seek to guide the caller toward understanding the situation that he or she is in and what productive alternatives exist. Sometimes this involves multiple telephone conversations with us, and at other times it involves safe “patch thru” telephone connections, where we can telephonically link a youth directly with the staff or counselor from a professional near them or even with a family member. While these patch-thru services are used extensively for reunifying runaway/homeless youth and their families, they also serve to facilitate a youth’s transition from an institutional setting back into the community or simply to get young people connected to local programs.

CRISIS LINE CALLERS: Vignettes of our callers provide a sampling of the daily calls we receive:

· A youth’s aunt calls, frightened that her Latino nephew has failed out of many other local programs, because gang members pressure him to stay connected with them. She wanted to move her nephew out of town and away from all the problems. We provided her with some local programs that we knew might help her plan other strategies for the youth.

· The twenty-year-old mother of an infant was in a domestic violence situation with the father. Her family was not supportive and although she had decided to leave him, they were not willing to help. She felt hopeless, but after talking to a counselor she got the phone number to a few different shelters specifically for survivors of domestic violence.

· A parent in Santa Barbara was frustrated by her fourteen-year-old daughter’s lack of respect. She had been stealing from her, and failing in school. The mother thought perhaps counseling would help them communicate so she could find out why she had been doing these things. She got some numbers for counseling centers in her area.

· Twelve-year-old in Red Bluff said no one understands her. Her parents fight a lot, the boys at school tease her, and she wants to slit her wrists so she won’t hurt anymore. She was able to talk to a counselor for an hour and she was encouraged to call back if she felt suicidal or call the local suicide hotline in her community.

· A twenty-two-year-old whose mom had died two years ago was now raising her eight-year-old brother. She was worried about how angry he had become and she felt like she was at the end of her rope, she wanted numbers for counseling and therapy for herself and for her brother.

· A Spanish-speaking youth outside of Los Angeles was begin harassed and threatened by boys to get him involved in a local gang. He doesn’t want to be involved and thinks his only option is to move, but he cannot move. We talked with him about going to some local youth programs and trying to connect with others who have been involved with gangs … he remained afraid but said he would go.

POSITIVE GANG IMPACT: In modifying the Crisis Line to assist gang members we provide the targeted population with an anonymous, safe, trusting resource that will get them connected to local programs and convince them that there are people who can help them get away from gang influences.

The Crisis Line has never historically been promoted as a gang resource, but we have nevertheless received a fair number of calls from youth involved with or troubled about gang issues. A recent statistical analysis for the combined fiscal years 2000-2002, for example, shows that 185 callers contacted us about gang difficulties. Of course, many callers do not necessarily say that the primary reason they are calling is about gang issues, even when those issues are intimately wrapped up in the youth’s overall family, school or personal conflicts. For example, during the same period, over 3,600 callers identified themselves as being “out of control,” and, as a result, often involved with other groups of youth experiencing similar situations. Still other youths (over 1,300) identified “school problems” as their main concern, when one of the primary factors causing them concerns in their schools is the bullying and harassment that goes on as gangs or other associations of youth. Similarly, it is very difficult to determine how much of the family and adult drug issue calls have underlying gang involvement. And more recently, we have begun to get increasing numbers of calls from youth who talk freely about the challenges they face either within their family and in school about the conflicting cultural and language expectations that they are trying to figure out how to handle.

CALIFORNIA COALITION FOR YOUTH: The California Youth Crisis Line is operated by the California Coalition for Youth (CCY) (formerly known as the California Child, Youth and Family Coalition), a 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit whose broad purpose is to be the lead for the voices of youth and youth-adult partnerships. Since 1977 CCY has worked with policymakers to address major issues of concern to youth and youth-serving agencies. The agency’s initial work centered on laws impacting juvenile status offenders, and we conducted early studies on the needs of California’s runaway/homeless and throwaway youth. We have broadened our focus to include a number of policy and administrative initiatives designed specifically to ensure that youth-adult partnerships are visible and functional throughout local and state government. We are active participants in statewide policy initiatives on issues such as teen pregnancy, violence prevention, adolescent health care, after-school project and conflict resolution. We continue to represent more than 250 members and member agencies that pay dues to remain informed about legislative activity and how they, as community-based organizations, can benefit from changes in California’s policies. The California Youth Crisis Line is our primary direct service component. This project provides us with viable information to share with policymakers the scope and nature of challenges California’s growing youth population faces.

2. Problem Statement/Documentation of Need

California as a whole continues to be a major force in the good, bad and downright ugly aspects of gang life within the nation. Not only are there large numbers of “active” gang members, there appears to be a significant tangential draw of vulnerable youth toward gang involvement because of the extreme perceived benefits of power, sexuality, fun, a sense of togetherness, trust, protection and control that gangs and gang life styles offer in California. States like California that are learning to live with the cultural clashes of change seem particularly hard hit by the phenomenon of gang involvement and gang associations.

DEMOGRAPHICS: According to the National Youth Gang Survey, an annual survey of law enforcement agencies, there are approximately 24,500 gangs throughout the nation with upwards of 772,000 members. This number indicates that overall between the years 1996 and 2000 reports of the number of gangs known to law enforcement decreased by 5%; however, certain areas (cities with populations of 25,000 or more) increased by 1%, presumably as people moved from the urban areas to suburban communities. Of particular interest too is the fact that throughout this period the number of gangs with girls increased up until 1998, where the numbers seem to stabilize. According to these figures, “94 percent of gang members were male and 6 percent were female.” But still a fairly large number of gangs (39%) included girls, but only 2% of all gangs qualified as being considered predominately girl gangs.

Regarding the issues of age and race/ethnicity: “In 1996, respondents (law enforcement) reported that 50% of gang members where juveniles (under 18) and 50% were adults (i.e., 18 and older), …” with these numbers undergoing a significant change by 1999 when 37% were juveniles and 63% were adults. “In 1999, respondents reported that 47 percent of gang members were Hispanic (Latino), 31 percent were African American, 13 percent White, 7 percent Asian, and 2 percent other” – percentages that have remained quite consistent over the many years of the survey.

GANG CRIME AND ARRESTS: While the total number of gang members nationwide is quite large (772,000), what is just as disconcerting is that fact that various estimated place the number of youth in California who are involved with gangs at between 150,00 to 200,000, or nearly one-third of the national total. Some cities, such as Los Angeles, seem to be particularly highly susceptible to this phenomenon. A monthly tracking program of the LA Police Department currently lists the number of active gang members at over 55,000, with nearly half being youth or young adults.

California does not maintain detailed criminal or juvenile justice records on gang activities statewide. However, a general picture of some of the activities can be seen in selected ways. The following is a detailed listing of the gang types and numbers in LA as of May 2002:

Gangs/Number/Membership Size

Hispanic/204/33,551

Crip/107/13,006

Blood/43/5,218

Asian/32/1,733

Stoner/16/777

White/5/740

TOTALS:/407/55,025

Other reports by various cities similarly suggest large numbers, though it is difficult to determine precisely what is known (and even more so since September 11, 2001, as a result of the transfer of police activities away from gang issues toward terrorism). Utilizing basic population numbers, however, it is possible to speculate with some level of confidence. For LA, with a population of 9,600,000 in the year 2000, approximately one-half of one percent of the total population was involved in gangs. If this formula is applied to the state as a whole, the likely number of gang members across the State would exceed 185,000 (assuming a population of 32 million). While this might be an over estimate, the predominance of certain ethnic groups in gang activities (as noted below) and the corresponding growth in California’s overall youth population (well over 10 million, if youth under 18 are combined with young adults up to age 24).

Regarding the criminal activities of gang members, a statistical assessment of LA (www.lapdonline.org) gang crime involvement shows the type of offenses that gangs or gang members engage in. Among the most prominent (in terms of absolute numbers) are felony assaults, robberies, witness intimidations, attempted homicide and homicides. The only “official” statewide records (reported below) deal with homicides committed by gang members. These records show that LA is the lead city in this regard as well, with very significantly larger numbers of reported gang homicides than any other location in California (375 out of more than 500 in LA and just over 2,000 statewide). The Department of Justice documents the only officially sanctioned information, and that reflect a racial and ethnic breakdown of willful homicides that are known to be gang related. This report for the year 2000 indicates that California had 506 gang-related homicides in 2000, roughly 25% of the overall state total of 2074. These data are recorded on a county-by-county basis, and thus it is possible to determine the 10 counties with the largest numbers of homicides:

(TABLE REMOVED)

We then compared the data we possess on gang inquires of concern to the California Youth Crisis Line and found that there were some similarities. Overall, for example, the largest percentage of calls we received at the Crisis Line came from the Los Angeles area. The remaining counties listed below also had multiple requests, suggesting that gang calls to the Crisis Line naturally follow the breakdown of experiences young people seem to be living with. The following chart shows the calls the Crisis Line received during the 2000 and 2001 calendar years (out of a total of over 41,000 calls):

Table Removed

CALIFORNIA GANG VULNERABILITIES

For California as a whole the gang numbers are high but there appears to be no significant increase in gang activity in recent years. But this is because of the bias of gang statistics that favor only documenting gang activities associated with violence. For California’s youth, gang associations remain paramount for other reasons, including reasons that seem just as important to youth who get “trapped” into gang associations. The State is, after all, on the cutting edge of contributing to the styles of the nation’s youth. In particular, the influences of fashion, technology and ethnic migration along with the growing number of youth may be the most significant collective factors associated with the direction of gang activities.

FASHION: What we have found is that many youth are directly subject to gang enticements because of how they dress. A “gangster-rap” mentality now pervades much of the music and clothing sales of the young and daring, making it virtually impossible for many young people to even consider staying away from the “style.” Young people frequently bring up this phenomenon in their calls to the Crisis Line, and they have difficulty determining how to “give up” their fashion style even when they wish to totally disconnect from gang involvement.

TECHNOLOGY: Similarly, technology is having a very profound impact. A recent assessment by Carrie Kirby of the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Gangs.com” revealed that thousands of web sites are now actively glorifying and promoting gang actions. Free e-mail, chat rooms and even advertising by respected companies such as Amazon.com and Gateway add credence to the messages sent by these sites. Advertisements for these and other corporations were at one time placed right next to the pictures of gang youth heros with guns, sexually explicit models and the other kinds of associational incentives that are a very big turn on to vulnerable youth. According to Gang.com, one web site, www.gangstyle.com, received over 345,000 hits in a six-month period, with their internal estimates suggesting that at least half of those contacts were from gang-involved youth and that the remainder came from “troubled youth” seeking affirmation and/or help.

ETHNICITY: But perhaps more overriding is the direct connection between gangs and California ethnic migration patterns. California has both the largest number of youth in America (as a class), and the largest number of Latino/Hispanic and Asian youth in the entire country. This is particularly important because Latino and Asian gangs are quickly overshadowing most other gangs, even though in reality these gangs often have a mix of ethnic groups or a wide-ranging spectrum of differing Asian nationalities. The same type of changing pattern is emerging as more gangs are crossing the gender barrier and either including boys and girls together or operating with gang alliances where certain girl and boys gangs serve to support and protect each other.

This rather unique intermixing of cultures and genders has begun to be seen as the ultimate success in “fitting in” to American culture. And particularly so for some cultures (such as Mexican) where gang involvement is sustained across a family’s history. As one author put it, “Kids who are born into a family with a gang background, which is becoming more and more common, …are basically recruited when they are born.” Thus the gang serves the dual purpose of being the great melting pot, and gang membership becomes the overriding prevalence over every significant issue, including “race, background, neighborhood, and even family.”

YOUTH CRISIS LINE STATISTICS

There is a growing and widely accepted recognition that young people who are susceptible to gang enticements are the same youth experiencing other indicators of personal, family and peer difficulties. This seems particularly true for youth from certain ethnic groups that are also disproportionately lacking in access to health, wellness and general program support. While we will not attempt to detail those here, we do believe that a summary of the kinds of general calls received by the California Youth Crisis Line gives a snapshot of how close our callers are to the youth in these general categories. The following numbers demonstrate two years worth of calls, covering the 2000 and 2001 calendar years.

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3. At-Risk Target Population

GENERAL DESCRIPTION:

The proposed project primarily focuses on three distinct targeted youth categories between the ages of 12 and 24, with the major focus being on youth from 13 to 20 who are:

1. Active youth gang members struggling with gang obligations or concerns (personal, peer, family, community)

2. Targeted youth (or concerned adults) who feel that they (or the youth they call about) are being strongly coerced into gang involvement.

3. Youth who possess certain high-risk characteristics (including ethnic and cultural expectations) that makes them a probable targeted for future gang interest.

We believe that all of the youth who call the Crisis Line are at-risk youth in that they are experiencing either transient or ongoing crises relating to personal, family, peer, school or community concerns. This often is verbalized within the context of other issues such as depression, suicide, loneliness, fear, anger, sadness, family disputes, school problems and/or simply being “out of control.”

The youth who call the Crisis Line and specifically identify gang issues carry the burden of these concerns, plus the pressures of gang involvement. This group will self-identify as an active gang member or as a person who is being pressured to become involved in criminal, delinquent or other types of anti-social behaviors. Based upon past experience, most of the callers will be seeking ways to get out of gang involvement while at the same time they will be showing significant conflict around peer issues or the general validation that comes from being associated with other, similar youth (i.e., other Asians).

The youth who fall into the third category will most likely call for one or more of the regular crisis issues. In discussing their concerns, however, we anticipate that we will uncover that part of their problem involves peers or family members who have some type of affiliation with gangs. As such, they themselves will most likely demonstrate fairly positive gang or peer attitudes or a willingness to utilize gang participation to solve other problems.

SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES:

The Crisis Line’s Gang Hotline project has four major elements:

1. Individualized Counseling and Support: The primary service of the Statewide Gang Hotline is twenty-four hour individualized, telephone-based crisis counseling and support with complimentary referrals for ongoing assistance to appropriate local agencies. (Crisis counseling is a specialized, short-duration form of counseling, even though we then intermix it with our active listening model.)

2. On-Call Intensive Gang Counseling: In addition to the need to discuss their general gang situation, some youth will simply be in a period of extreme crisis and need more intensive support than can be achieved using the active listening model. The Gang Hotline will attempt to stabilize the situation (as we do for other crisis calls) and then seek to electronically link the call to a member of an on-call pool of former gang members who are trained and willing volunteers.

3. Local Program Augmentation: The Gang Hotline will also serve as an adjunct to the needs of other locally youth programs serving gang or gang-targeted youth. We will conduct an extensive outreach program to youth agencies across the State who are involved with gang activities to ensure the adequacy of our referral base and to appeal to them to use the Crisis Line as a program augmentation. A related result is to help facilitate greater coordination and efficiency among agencies across the state that are engaged in counseling or similar types of support for youth for the expressed purpose of helping to integrate gang activities with other positive-oriented youth activities.

NUMBER OF YOUTH, FAMILY AND SIBLINGS

PROJECTED NUMBERS: 675-750. We anticipate that 300 active gang members or youth who are being directly enticed into a gang will call or use our services. A similar number of targeted vulnerable youth will also be identified and receive appropriate guidance/referrals. In addition, approximately 75 to 150 additional concerned adults, family members, siblings or peers will similarly benefit.

The number of family members or siblings impacted is more difficult to determine. We are anticipating changing our data collection techniques to attempt to ask callers for information about themselves and their family members, but at this point it is impossible to determine which percentage will be willing to comply. Based upon the growing “family” nature of gangs, we will be able to make some estimates of the number of secondary youth (siblings and possibly friends) who will be impacted. We also expect to ask how many parents the youth lives with so we can also speculate about these numbers. We expect that a conservative estimate of 25% to 50% of the total calls will have one or more family members who can legitimately be linked to benefiting from our assistance, thereby increasing the total number of participants in the project by 75 to 150 for a total of 675 to 750.

ADDRESSING IDENTIFIED NEEDS

The needs that are specifically being addresses include:

v Providing youth (and concerned adults) with a safe, anonymous counseling and support option for severe crisis or when local agency options are not available. (Annonymous, safe, trusting)

v Give youth 24/7 access to former gang members to talk with about the difficult circumstances they find themselves in. (Peer sensitive; responsive to immediate needs)

v Being able to affirm where the youth are in their lives and helping empower them to understand what options they have. (Empowerment and respect)

v Linking the youth to other local referral agencies that have been verified as to their ability to deal with gang concerns. (Locally responsive)

One of the most clearly identified needs of the targeted youth population is access to someone who they can trust to discuss important issues. The anonymous caller component serves to overcome this barrier most effectively. Gang youth often have a high degree of distrust on one hand but at the same time tend to be receptive to other youth and adults who themselves have histories of gang involvement. The on-call pool of former gang members can relate better to the youth who call when they are experiencing extremely high levels of concern, frustration and anxiety about the circumstances they are facing. Using local contacts will best allow for the development of ongoing relationships, or even person-to-person contacts with former gang members that they can relate to and respect.

Many youth who call are experiencing the relatively normal range of concerns that young people face, including the realities of family disputes, emotional challenges, school difficulties, etc. When these factors are combined with the pressures and expectations of gang involvement, it may become hard for youth to be clear about what is causing the problems. Our active listening model helps to clarify this confusion and enable the youth themselves to seek adequate solutions.

And finally, once the youth have developed a sense of trust and confidence, we believe they will be more willing to continue their interventions at local programs. By knowing and networking with the service providers, the Gang Hotline becomes a kind of secret friend whose assistance is helpful in getting the youth to be less concerned about turning to local counseling or even skills building or resiliency projects.

PLAN FOR SERVICING TARGETED POPULATION

ACTIVE AND ENTICED GANG MEMBERS: For the first two categories of the targeted population, the youth (or concerned adults) will directly identify themselves (or the youth in question) as being an active gang member or as being directly pursued and/or coerced into gang activity. We will document these comments and seek a specific clarification of this indication by asking the caller to make this assessment clear. In addition, as part of our efforts to develop a statewide network, we will specifically ask local outreach and program staff to tell their gang-identified youth to use the Crisis Line as an adjunct to the local services they are receiving (i.e., to call if the counselor is not available, for example).

HIGHLY VULNERABLE YOUTH: For youth who we assess to be of high vulnerability to gang involvement, our caller counselors will be asked to inquire about several consistent factors that are known to be associated with gang involvement (i.e., are their friends involved with gangs, have they been involved with juvenile justice, etc.). The overall statistical data we keep will verify that they are experiencing school, family or other similar problems in the majority of cases. Part of our established protocol seeks to identify their living situation, including whether they are in a residential, shelter, justice or other institutional setting. During the established training protocols, all persons who engage in counseling or support with the callers will be taught how to direct conversations in a way that helps uncover the gang elements that are being expressed by the youth (or concerned adult).

DEMONSTRATION OF IMPACT (ATTITUDES & BEHAVIORS)

The main elements of attitude and behavioral change generated by the Crisis Line will include:

ü Establishing a sense of trust.

ü Empowering youth to understand the circumstances they are in.

ü Helping the youth to come to their own conclusions about their next step.

ü Assessing their follow-through to referral resources.

Our 15 years of experience and interaction with youth programs throughout the State indicate that one of the most significant barriers to youth utilizing a variety of local programs is their fear or lack of trust about how safe programs are. Overcoming this distrust by empowering the youth to have confidence in their own decision-making is a significant way to get them to demonstrate attitude and behavioral change. We will document the numbers of youth who acknowledge that the source of their referrals to a given agency was the Crisis Line, to help determine if they are able to follow-through with their next steps. The process of recording this will be developed in conjunction with the involved program personnel and our project evaluators.

5. Project Description

SERVICES AND CORRESPONDING GOALS/OBJECTIVES:

1. Individualized Counseling and Support: The primary service of the Statewide Gang Hotline is individualized telephone crisis counseling and support with referrals for ongoing assistance to appropriate local agencies. All callers are engaged in our guided or “active listening model,” where the words of the young people help determine how our callers direct their thinking to understand the issues they face. In this way, rather than making judgmental assessments of the situation that the caller finds himself or herself in, we instead try to provide an assessment of the overall situation and guide the caller toward options. If the caller identifies gang concerns directly, we will use protocols that will be established to examine those issues as objectively as possible. If they do not identify gang concerns but voice other indicators that appear to be related to gang influences, we will explore these factors to determine what is the appropriate option. In both instances we will document the factors that were heard and thought to apply to gangs. The average call will last between 5 and 15 minutes (though some calls can go much longer, if needed), by which time the caller will usually be ready to accept a referral or to discontinue the call. Callers are free to decide for themselves about whether to utilize the referral resources, and many call back on multiple occasions to continue their discussion if issues remain or resurface.

Goal:

To ensure that 675 to 750 targeted youth (ages 12 to 24) throughout California have 24 hour per day, seven day per week access to anonymous crisis counseling, support and referral services.

RISK FACTORS:

Addresses family, school, personal or peer difficulties/dysfunctions

Assist youth involved with criminal justice/juvenile justice system

Active or future gang activity

Gang or family enticements toward gang involvement

Low-income or high crime/violence concerns

Objectives:

1. Develop Crisis Line protocols and operating procedures for paid staff and volunteers to field gang involvement calls.

2. Purchase and prepare needed equipment and office settings.

3. Research and identify local gang resource programs throughout the State, including a diversity of programs providing counseling, support, safety, housing, educational, peer leadership, mentoring and related topics. (Targeted geographic areas will be established by the network advisory committee; see below.)

4. Research and develop computerized caller assistance tools (such as pop-up informational screens) to assist caller counselors to understand terms, assess the situation of the targeted youth or otherwise find appropriate referrals or mental health assistance.

5. Modify the existing Crisis Line database to allow for input and regular updates to gang resources, including adding appropriate new data fields and software activation buttons to allow for documenting the characteristics of targeted callers.

6. Implement the service using appropriate press releases or related promotional activities, including web-based announcements and modification of the California Youth Crisis Line web site (www.YouthCrisisLine.org)

7. Advertise the California Youth Crisis Line as the California Gang Hotline to 3000 service providers, 3000 schools and 200 law enforcement agencies throughout the State.

2. On-Call Intensive Gang Counseling: In addition to the need to discuss their situation, some youth will simply be in a period of extreme crisis and need more intensive support than can be achieved using the active listening model. The Gang Hotline will attempt to stabilize the situation (as we do for other crisis calls) and seek to electronically link the caller to one member of an on-call pool of former gang members who are trained and willing volunteers. The Gang Services Director will work with a network of agencies around the State to develop this pool, and to ensure that one or more of these on-call counselors is available every day at all hours using cellular phone or pager technologies. While our goal will be to link the youth with an on-call counselor who is located in the same geographic area, we will utilize which ever member of the pool is on-call and available for at least an initial session. These calls may be monitored by the Crisis Line (as we do with all patch-thru calls) to enable us to assist if needed or redirect the youth to other crisis resources if needed.

Goal:

To ensure that 25 to 50 active youth (12-24) gang members or persons being coerced into gang membership have 24/7 access to emergency telephone counseling and support from former gang members or otherwise experienced youth and adults to address immediate emotional, behavior or safety issues facing the youth anywhere in the State.

RISK FACTORS:

Addresses family, school, personal or peer difficulties/dysfunctions

Assist youth involved with criminal justice/juvenile justice system

Active or future gang activity

Gang or family enticements toward gang involvement

Low-income or high crime/violence concerns

Objectives:

1. Create Crisis Line operation protocols for dealing with calls from youth that are of sufficient urgency to require immediate, emergency counseling and support.

2. Develop guidelines and expectations of requirements for on-call counselors.

3. Purchase or have donated sufficient pager or cellular telephone equipment to enable all on-call counselors to be available during their scheduled periods.

4. Develop a statewide outreach plan for identifying and maintaining available, trained pool of qualified volunteers.

5. Schedule and implement four or more regional training sessions for on-call counselors and local service personnel who will be utilizing the service.

6. Develop an on-line calendar for on-call counselors in various locations to ensure access at all times, with the expressed preference of being able to connect a youth to a local counselor if possible.

3. Local Program Augmentation/Statewide Gang Services Coordination: The Gang Hotline will also serve as an adjunct to the needs of other youth programs serving gang or gang-targeted youth. We will conduct an extensive outreach program to youth agencies involved with gang activities to ensure the adequacy of our referral base and to appeal to them to use the Crisis Line as a program augmentation. Many local programs that seek to help these youth are simply unable to operate 24 hours per day, or cannot operate at all on weekends due to budget cuts. The staff and volunteers of the Crisis Line, under the direction of the Gang Services Director, will field calls from these youth during the hours when other local staff are not available, or as an alternative when an individual program staff cannot talk with the youth. It is not the intention of our staff or volunteers to be replacement counselors nor to interfere with established intervention strategies for a given youth; instead, we will once again simply seek a productive, listening situation and try to ensure that the youth does not choose a counterproductive option during the temporary crisis while he or she is waiting for access to a local program. The establishment of the network will be accomplished used CCY’s extensive network of agencies, and with the assistance of two major networking programs, the Western States Youth Services Network (WSYSN) and the California Center for Civic Participation and Youth Development. Letters of support/operational agreements are attached.

To ensure coordination of services, the Gang Hotline staff and volunteers will schedule quarterly training workshops throughout the State to provide information to service providers on the operation of the Hotline and to share relevant information regarding gang resources within the region. Members of the Advisory Board will be involved in trainings within their geographic areas, as will the major service providers.

Goal:

Ensure the development of a Statewide, comprehensive gang-services database that is appropriate for immediate and ongoing services referrals covering a broad range of programs and activities for targeted youth from all regions of the State.

RISK FACTORS:

Provides assistance for youth involved with juvenile justice system

Helps active, former and potentially future gang members

Addresses complex issues when family members involved in gang activities

Helps youth find available local resources

Objectives:

1. Identify 10 to 20 youth agencies to serve as the Gang Hotline State Advisory Board.

2. Ensure that 25% to 50% of the members of the Advisory Board are youth or young adults, including a substantial number of youth who are active or former gang members or actively engaged in gang prevention efforts.

3. Provide stipends to youth and/or other State Advisory Board members to a minimum of 4 quarterly meetings.

4. Create majority-approved guidelines for gathering and maintaining up-to-date database and referral information about gang service programs throughout the State.

5. Create majority-approved guidelines for developing and sustaining an on-call volunteer pool of former gang members who can provide urgent or emergency counseling and support.

6. Provide overview and commentary as the guidelines and expectations of the Advisory Board are implemented by the Gang Hotline and Crisis Line staff.

Goal:

Provide regional trainings and workshops for gang service providers to facilitate communication and information about the use of the Gang Hotline.

RISK FACTORS:

Provides assistance for youth involved with juvenile justice system

Helps active, former and potentially future gang members

Addresses complex issues when family members involved in gang activities

Helps youth find available local resources

Objectives:

1. Create training materials.

2. Schedule four or more regional training sessions for on-call counselors around the State and for local agencies involved in gang services.

3. Evaluate all interested parties for their understanding and purpose of project.

4. Make suggestions for improvement of service and referral elements of Gang Hotline operations.

STAFFING REQUIREMENTS:

Gang Services Director: 1 FTE. Primarily responsible for overall development, coordination and implementation of the project. Reports to the Executive Director. Works cooperatively with the Administrative/Clinical/Training staff of the Crisis Line. Oversees Advisory Group meetings and training meetings. Responsible for developing required protocols, operating procedures, and promotional campaigns.

Referral Assistant: .5 FTE. Responsible for researching and confirming referral agency information. Helps in development of appropriate software and referral materials. Develops update procedures and assists in developing training materials.

Volunteer/Training Coordinator: .5 FTE. Assists Gang Services director to identify on-call volunteer counselors and regular telephone counselors. Works with Referral Assistant and Gang Service Director to create regional training workshops and all training and preparation needed for caller counselors.

Caller Counselors: 3 FTE. Crisis Line Caller Counselors needed to augment existing call load. These paid staff will be trained in regular Crisis Line active listening model and Gang Hotline protocols. All regular staff counselors will also receive Gang Hotline trainings.

On-Call Counselors: 10 to 15 volunteer counselors located strategically throughout the State. Former gang members or other experienced youth or adults who can be trained and maintained on a regular schedule to be available for referring urgent or emergency calls from youth experiencing gang involvement or gang recruitment coercion when other resources are not available. Will remain in contact via pager/cellular phone connections, and will be reimbursed for some costs based upon established relationships with participating service agencies. Gang Services Director will supervise, with cooperation and assistance from Volunteer and Clinical program staff.

Operating Agencies: Stipends will be paid to 10 to 15 agencies to help identify on-call counselors and for their involvement in the State Advisory group meetings. A sample operational agreement is attached.

General Gang Hotline Volunteers: As needed for regular Crisis Line operations, outreach, promotion. Sacramento based. Assist with caller counseling, monitoring “patch thru” calls, updating referral information, conducting research on gang- and other health and mental health issues, conducting outreach, participating in community outreach and helping with office and general administrative tasks.

Evaluator: The agency will hire an outside evaluator to develop and establish process and outcome evaluation. Will work with service staff to modify procedures to ensure they are conducive to evaluations. Details noted below.

Administrative Support: .33 FTE. Reports to Executive Director. Assists Gang Services Director and Crisis Line administration with preparation of fiscal and project management reports. Purchases and bills for office supplies and related projects. Maintains database and related contract files. Helps with update of web pages and with production and distribution of outreach materials.

LOCATION FOR SERVICES:

The primary counseling and support services, including on-call counseling, will occur or be coordinated out of the current offices of the California Youth Crisis Line in Sacramento, CA. Because this is a telephone-based hotline service, all counseling will occur via the telephone until a caller is referred to a local service provider. The project will make use of CCY’s website (www.YouthCrisisLine.org) as well for sup mental information, and to keep the network informed.

RISK FACTORS

The specific risk factors are noted above following each goal.

5. Project Implementation Plan

TIMELINE: The following is a general timeline of the major implementation tasks for year one. Future years will include operational and evaluation issues as the project is fully utilized.

First Quarter:

Hire Gang Services Director

Hire Support Staff

Development of Advisory Board

Schedule Advisory Board/regional Meetings

Identify/finalize Operating Agreements with Service Agencies

Develop Project Outline/Operating Protocol Drafts

Made telephone/hardware modifications

Enhance software

Initiate development of web/software resource materials

Hire Evaluator

Develop evaluation plan/protocols

Second Quarter:

Finalize pool of On-Call Gang Counselors

Conduct local/regional meetings

Conduct training sessions for Crisis Line/new Gang Hotline staff

Research local service program information for database

Develop Appropriate Outreach/Promo/Publicity Materials

Announce availability/operation of service

Integrate evaluation elements into operations plans

Third Quarter:

Begin receiving calls

Begin use of on-call counselors as needed

Prepare progress reports

Conduct scheduled regional meetings

Ensure adequate integration of evaluation procedures

Develop reports on initial use of service

Fourth Quarter:

Project fully operational

Process Evaluation conducted

Operational Evaluation initiated

Year-end report prepared

Recommendations for enhancements for year two.

Community Collaborative

In addition to the project staff, the key collaborative players in the Gang Hotline will be the 10 to 20 agencies selected from throughout the State to serve on the project’s advisory board, as well as the service/resource agencies (discussed below) who will be utilized as the major local referral agencies. Because CCY is a well-established membership agency with statewide contacts and a current membership of more than 250 agencies and individuals, we believe it is critically important to take some time to develop a network of agencies who will be responsible for assisting in the development of the Gang Hotline. Information about the advisory board and its purpose will be sent to agencies in all areas of the state where gang activities occur, with a goal of ensuring that the advisory board adequately reflect regional and other service considerations. It is expected that the majority of these agencies will be the major service providers, with youth or young adult appointees who have experience and interest in gang activities and programs. The selected programs will be asked to complete a detailed operational agreement to ensure that the Gang Hotline has ready access to on-call counselors and others needed for adequate referrals.

Resource Providers

Through the process of selecting members of the advisory board CCY will collect information on all available gang service programs in the State and survey these agencies for their capabilities. This information will be entered into our database and maintained as part of the Crisis Line’s ongoing resource maintenance system. We will develop a system for allowing agencies to log on to the database and update the records of their own program as well to ensure that we have a way of staying current with all available programs.

Referral Sources

The newly identified gang services around the state will be included in our existing database which currently has over 6,000 referral options. Our caller counselors can utilize the search capabilities of the database to determine which resources are geographically proximate to the caller. In addition, a specialized search protocol will be established with a variety of resource and referral options specific to gang needs, such as gang programs that are fluent in Spanish, that meet the needs of particular types of gangs (i.e., girl gangs, Southeast Asian gangs, etc.).

Description of Plan for Youth/Families

The Crisis Line already has fully functioning service and referral systems in place to provide callers with ongoing support for crises or local support for long-term assistance. These resources will provide the callers with substance abuse, mental health, health, HIV/STI, educational, community and other resources that meet needs other than gang-specific concerns. Our records detail programs for youth and for adults.

Youth Involvement

In addition to being the operational agency for the Crisis Line, the California Coalition for Youth’s overall mission is to promote youth-adult partnerships. Our “marketing strategy for these advocacy efforts is that CCY “puts the youth in Youth Development!”Accordingly, we have in place and will continue to utilize a number of policies for ensuring, even mandating, the inclusion of youth into the development and implementation of the Gang Hotline. We will mandate that youth and young adults compose at least 50% of the advisory board, and we are willing to pay agencies or cover youth costs directly to ensure that this happens. Meetings will be scheduled to ensure that the times of the meetings do not conflict with school or other youth obligations, and all materials will be designed to be youth friendly and youth sensitive. Trainings and workshops will be jointly conducted by youth and adults, following the model used by the agency for mandating the same for the workshops we currently conduct annually. It is expected that most of the major new positions created under this project will be filled with youth or young adults.

Expansion of Current Prevention and Intervention Services

This entire project is based upon expanding the reach of the California Youth Crisis Line, which we believe functions well as both a prevention and intervention strategy geared specifically to youth with extreme vulnerabilities and challenges. In demonstrating that the service can be modified to meet the needs of gang services, we are adding for the entire State of California a higher-qualify service component that can both address these needs and help to integrate a wide-range of youth-positive resources.

Support Documentation

See attached MOUs and listing of agencies to be utilized for Operating Agreements.

6. Project Evaluation

Young people in California, as with young people across the State, experience many barriers to utilizing existing services, even when special steps are taken to ensure that youth as a group are aware of the projects. And the reason is that youth are looking for safe, interesting and empowering opportunities to learn for themselves.

The addition of the Gang Hotline into the services of the California Youth Crisis Line services grabs at the best of this generalized assistance resource and makes it work for the particular needs of youth involved in, at risk of involvement in or extremely vulnerable to gang activities. In doing so, it offers the promise of a anonymous system of crisis counseling and support, and lets the young people themselves take the next step toward using locally based resources. Because youth involved in gangs at many levels also are skeptical of the motivation of others who have not been involved with gangs, we take the added step of giving them access to the growing network of caring youth and adults from throughout the State who can related to the youth’s concerns and respect their desire to find options outside of a gang.

Change In Attitudes/Behaviors

The primary important factor is to give the youth (and adult) callers the sense of trust needed for them to utilize the Crisis Line as a safe place to talk and clarify the nature of their issues. We believe that we can do this using the established “active listening model.” Then, we can connect the youth (adult) to an appropriate local resource for ongoing assistance, carrying over to the local agency the sense of trust that we helped establish. By having available a host of complimentary elements—ranging from fully up-to-date resources to a pool of former gang members—we believe that we can answer the youth’s needs for immediate and accurate information as well that can relate to their experiences. The caller model we use also builds extensively on empowering youth to understand their own situations and to respect the cultural, family, peer and language expectations that can otherwise cause concerns for service providers. In accomplishing this, we have then established the possibility that the youth can make use of the other positive programs to build skills, get them enrolled in needed services, provide education and job options, etc.

Service Monitoring

As described above, we will build into our protocols a number of ways for documenting the youth’s concerns, and under which of the targeted population categories they qualify. By utilizing local service providers as part of a network of agencies who will rely upon the Gang Hotline to augment their services, we expect to know which youth are gang members and are already involved in local programs. For other youth, we will seek to encourage them to make us of local resources and to report to those agencies that the referral was made from the Crisis Line so that we can track their willingness to use local resources. We will also establish on-line and telephone-based evaluation options as well to encourage a form of anonymous feedback to ensure that the Crisis Line is generally meeting their needs. These materials and operational protocols will be jointly developed with the project evaluator and with guidance provided by the advisory board members.

Local Evaluation

The major elements of our local evaluation include:

Reaching the targeted population

Willingness of youth to use the service

Receptivity to the Gang Hotline

Acceptance of active listening model to empower youth to make decisions

Willingness to carry over that trust to local services

Sustained use of gang support services following use of Hotline

Tools

Guided questioning during discussion

Use of On-Call Counselors

Formal call evaluation forms

Web-based call evaluation forms

Referral identifications (to verify caller used the Crisis Line at local service provider)

Continued use of service options, as needed

Program Planning:

Many elements are built into the system to listen to the callers for operational guidance. The network itself will provide a larger overview, as will the local and statewide evaluation. Perhaps the most important element is that the addition of the Gang Hotline will show that the Crisis Line model can help youth overcome many barriers to using services of many kinds in the State. Our model builds in respect, trust and the confidence that the youth plays an important role in determining his or her own future, even on a difficult issue such as gang involvement. We hope that this will carry over to other topics that can similarly improve the Crisis Line and, by extension, all youth services in California.

7. Budget Narrative

The grand detail of this proposal counts on the cooperation and involvement of a number of agencies and selected staff. CCY will utilize an equivalent 5% match through it’s existing services (Crisis Line counselors, administrative staff) to support the project as well. Future budgets will be directed predominately toward operations. Many of the networking and information gathering elements will be reduced or eliminated. It is expected that future project costs will be less than the initial start-up costs.

NOTES: Because the service element includes the development and utilization of referral resources across the State, we are counting the Gang Services Director and the Referral Assistant as direct services. Other administrative tasks (bookkeeping, overall executive administration, etc.) are covered by the Executive Director and other project staff either as an in-kind contribution or as part of the Admin. Indirect costs. The Admin. Support position is expected, along with the Admin. Indirect costs under the Operating Expenses, to be counted toward the overall Admin Costs, for a total of $17,000 in admin, which is less than the 10% maximum allowance.

PERSONNEL:

Gang Services Director: 1 FTE. Primarily responsible for overall development, coordination and implementation of the project. Reports to the Executive Director. Works cooperatively with the Administrative/Clinical/Training staff of the Crisis Line. Oversees Advisory Group meetings and training meetings. Responsible for developing required protocols, operating procedures, and promotional campaigns.

Referral Assistant: .5 FTE. Responsible for researching and confirming referral agency information. Helps in development of appropriate software and referral materials. Develops update procedures and assists in developing training materials.

Volunteer/Training Coordinator: .5 FTE. Assists Gang Services director to identify on-call volunteer counselors and regular telephone counselors. Works with Referral Assistant and Gang Service Director to create regional training workshops and all training and preparation needed for caller counselors.

Caller Counselors: 3 FTE. Crisis Line Caller Counselors needed to augment existing call load. These paid staff will be trained in regular Crisis Line active listening model and Gang Hotline protocols. All regular staff counselors will also receive Gang Hotline trainings.

Administrative Support: .3 FTE. Reports to Executive Director. Assists Gang Services Director and Crisis Line administration with preparation of fiscal and project management reports. Purchases and bills for office supplies and related projects. Maintains database and related contract files. Helps with update of web pages and with production and distribution of outreach materials.

OPERATING:

Occupancy: 15% of current office and records storage costs. CCY will utilize available space.

Telephones: Monthly costs vary. This amount reflects approximately 25% of fixed telephone costs. Actual amount may be greater in future years.

Insurance: Reflects 20% of actual for agency. Includes general business, board and bonding costs that are anticipated.

Equipment Maintenance: Estimate of increase for additional use of existing office, computer and other technology equipment.

Office Supplies: paper, mailing supplies, photocopies, pens, pencils, paper clips, binders, and related general office needs.

Printing: Allows for 2 to 3 major mailings of gang project materials, and modification of existing Crisis Line materials as needed.

Postage: Estimated postage increase of $400 to $600 each for three bulk mailings, and use of general mailing meter for other outreach materials, general correspondence, etc.

Consultants:

Operating Agencies: reimburse advisory board members for their involvement or travel to meetings and for assisting in identifying On-Call Counselors. Assumes $500 for 20 agencies.

Software Development: Assumes 55 hours of assistance at negotiated rate of $100 to modify database and add additional caller resource options.

Evaluation: Maximum amount allocated for hiring local evaluator.

Travel: Assumes 10 trips at $400 each, or $200 per person. Most of the meetings are expected to be one-day round trip within California. The 10 trips include 4 Advisory Board meetings, 4 regional trainings and 2 mandated trips. Actual costs of some trips will be lower and these costs will be used to offset overnight stays using established reimbursement parameters.

Reference Materials: Allows for purchase of mental health, community-based and other types of gang-specific educational materials.

Training: Allows for purchases or production of volunteer training items. Also allows for printing poster size presentation materials.

Volunteer Costs: Expected costs for minor volunteer incentives and rewards.

Indirect Admin.: 5% of salaries, exclusive of benefits.

EQUIPMENT:

Computers: Estimated $2,000 cost for purchase of 3 or more compatible MACs or PC for use in Caller Counselor network.

Cables and Connections: Includes cabling and any type of portal equipment to ensure adequate connection to CCY network and web resources.

Telephone Que/Routing: An anticipated expansion of telephone capabilities is expected, including some ability to control increased call volume. This estimate is based upon preliminary discussions. CCY may match this amount or find other sources to ensure adequate potential if cost is significantly greater.

Office Furniture: Purchase of 3 to 5 modular office settings to maximize use of space for new counselors and equipment.