VeNews November 2006

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Vesper Society Helps Youth Succeed

When youth struggle in school, the cause is rarely just one issue. Family, environment and economics all factor in along with physical, emotional and mental health. The same is true when students succeed: success comes as multiple issues are connected and addressed.

So helping youth succeed calls for a comprehensive approach. “And a comprehensive approach requires collaboration across community agencies,” says Mary Baich, president and CEO of Vesper Society.

The San Francisco-based foundation has been working on just such an approach for the past few years in the community of Hayward, California. Here, three agencies are coordinating services to meet the physical and mental health needs of students at an alternative school. And the students are experiencing success, which ultimately means re-entry into the traditional school system, earning high school diplomas, with some students continuing on to college.

“We’re finding that a coordinated response is really critical,” Baich says. “When the specific disciplines and assets of individual agencies are shared, great things happen.”

Vesper Society provides funding and technical assistance to bring the agencies together as the Adolescent Health Consortium. The Consortium, in turn, focuses on supporting the students of Hayward Community School (HCS), an alternative program of the Alameda County Office of Education for youth age 12 to 17.

The students’ behavior has kept them out of regular school settings. At HCS, they take courses in English, math, sciences and other core subjects plus receive individual attention from mentors, grief counselors, and psychologists. Structured discipline and life-skills training are provided in an environment that’s safe, positive, and collaborative.

HCS shares a campus—a former elementary school—with the Silva Pediatric Clinic of St. Rose Hospital, the clinical partner in the Consortium. The clinic sees about 11,000 people a year, providing direct health screening, treatment, and referral services.

Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center is the mental health provider for the project. A freestanding facility, Tiburcio Vasquez provides comprehensive, culturally sensitive mental health services through a mental health specialist located on campus. The center’s skilled counselors meet with students and parents to address behavioral issues.

Vesper Society convenes the Consortium partners quarterly to review statistics, discuss communications issues, and determine how to improve the delivery of their joint services.

And the project is working. Over the past three years, the partners have served increasing numbers of students. In 2005, the Consortium provided 207 hours of individual and group therapy to students and their families. A bilingual counselor joined the Silva Clinic staff, handling 280 mental health visits from children. In addition, Vesper Society funds supported the hiring of a staff member who enrolled 112 children in various health insurance products.

Beyond the immediate services provided, Baich sees the emergence of a working collaborative that will lead to greater community health.

The Consortium is an example of school-based mental health programs that are a growing movement in the U.S. It also represents a model partnership between education, community health agencies, and funding organizations. Deepening the partnership is the long-term goal of Vesper Society, Baich says.

“We have a holistic understanding of health, which means we believe that healthy people and healthy communities are physically, mentally, spiritually, and economically healthy,” she explains. “So a community must work together on all of these issues, otherwise services are always fragmented and incomplete.”

But collaboration is never easy, she notes. Established agencies must relinquish some control in favor of shared leadership. They have to talk frequently and openly. Finally, they must be willing to share the risk and be mutually accountable. And all of that takes time.

One partner representative puts it this way: “It is great that Vesper understands that time and patience are necessary in this type of work . . . this allows us the ability to learn from trial and error. . . . Their funding has enabled us to achieve results without the push that came from other funding organizations.”

For more information about the Adolescent Health Consortium, click here.

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Vesper Society, a private operating foundation, promotes social justice locally and globally by addressing critical social issues including the provision of health services for the underserved.