Youth Incarceration in Humboldt at New Horizons - California Connected

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• published: 16 Oct 2015
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It is estimated that as many as 9 out of every 10 minors in California's detention system have a mental disorder. In the past, few have received the care they need because only half of the juvenile facilities in the state provide any mental health training for staff. New Horizons is a youth probation & mental health treatment program created from a 1997 law that enabled California counties to develop a "Wraparound Model" using existing state and county AFDC-FC money (also known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children--Foster Care). This funding stream allowed mental health services, intensive case management, employment training, access to transportation, and family involvement in rehabilitation cases that otherwise would have more likely been treated as straight up incarceration. Through a state waiver, Humboldt County, was able to provide mental health treatment to their county's highest-need youth . . . those who are already in the custody of the probation department. This documentary on youth detention and "rehabilitation" programs in at New Horizons in Humboldt County in the very Northern part of Northern California coastal region was produced by a traveling PBS news crew for a now defunct series and production dates from late 2005. This program on Juvenile Inmates and Mental Health aired in April of 2006. In 2004, a string of highly publicized suicides and the videotaped beating of wards in the California Youth Authority brought this deficiency to the public's attention. In response, the state has vowed to reform its troubled juvenile justice system, with a specific emphasis on providing rehabilitative and mental health services. That's precisely what the innovative Northern California Regional Facility, in the tiny town of Eureka, is trying to achieve. The New Horizons program at this Humboldt county locked facility brings together the probation department, county mental health, and the education department to address the thinking and behavioral problems of nearly two dozen adolescent inmates as well as their families. It took 10 years of creative financing to get the facility built, and the interdisciplinary staff has struggled to keep the fledgling program operating for its first 6 years. CC visits the New Horizons program and chronicles this groundbreaking effort to turn young lives around by talking to the adults who work at the Regional Facility as well as the teens who are receiving treatment. * From the RV: Humboldt In Recovery - Humboldt County is famous for its beauty, its timber, its environmental activism - and its marijuana. As with all underground economies, Humboldt's is a long-term threat to the livelihood of all its residents. From widespread health problems to violent crime, from a crippled work force to an under funded infrastructure, the real costs of the regional drug trade are staggering. For example, businesses that try to hire a drug-free workforce have found that up to 80% of the applicants they test for drug use fail. CC discusses these and related challenges with Kathleen Moxon, Director of the Institute of the North Coast and Chief Administrative Officer of the Humboldt Area Foundation, Jacqueline Debets, Executive Director of the Humboldt County Community Development Services, and Dr. Joseph Leeper, Chair of the Geography Department at Humboldt State University, about the present state and future of this region at risk. video edited with the YouTube Video Editor