![[Table of Contents]](/icons/up.gif){kind=icon}
"Safe Schools/Healthy Students"
San Luis Obispo, CA
| Partners: | San Luis Obispo County Office of Education San Luis Obispo Department of Mental Health San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office | |
San Luis Obispo County is the fifteenth largest county in California. Fifty-eight percent of the residents in this suburban county live in seven cities. The juvenile population of the county increased 34% between 1990 and 1998. This trend is expected to continue. In 1997, the county's ethnic composition was: White, 76%; Hispanic, 13%; African American 3%; Asian Pacific Islander, 3%; Native American, 1%; Other 4%. Twenty percent of the county family households are headed by a single parent; 36% of the families live below the poverty level. Up to 28% of the students qualify for free or reduced cost meal programs.
Other county agencies involved in SLO-SIPP include: Children's Service Network (primary coordinator of children's services in the county); Drug and Alcohol Services; Regional Youth Task Forces; Child Abuse Prevention Council; Parents Project; Prevention Alliance and the United Way of San Luis Obispo.
SLO-SIPP will establish a county-wide, comprehensive, and integrated program to foster safe, disciplined and violence/drug-free environments. The approach is multidisciplinary and builds individual, institutional and community capacity with strategies specifically tailored to meet local needs. The addition of two part-time resource teachers will free early childhood teachers to screen, identify, and work with young children who are at risk for behavior problems and their families, including through home visits. The Department of Mental Health will provide diagnosis and referrals, individual and family counseling and solution-focused interventions. Mental health consultants will be added in eleven new preschool sites. Elementary school children and families will participate in a violence and substance abuse prevention program, which rewards student's academic success, social achievement, and individual accomplishment. The initiative will also provide literacy and social skills training for monolingual Spanish families. For the adolescents and their families, SLO-SIPP has developed a parent and teen training component to prevent youth violence, alcohol and other drug use, gang involvement, school drop out, teen pregnancy and family conflict. SLO-SIPP will hire a counselor to develop and implement a program to reintegrate students from the Court Community Schools into public school districts. Mini-grants will be available to community-based agencies to implement strategies that respond to local needs. Two part-time Community Safety Resource Specialists will provide community organizing and training around school safety.
SLO-SIPP will use a process and outcome evaluation. A local evaluation consultant hired by the project will be responsible for supervision and monitoring of data collection. The data collected will provide feedback to enhance, review and improve the program, and for later dissemination and replication efforts.
-###-
[San Francisco, California]