The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has greenlit a $27 million pilot program, in a bid to improve mental health care for foster youth. The program specifically entails the establishment of a Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Program (STRTP) at the Valley of the Moon Children's Center. With an ambitious objective, Sonoma County seeks to slash wait times and facilitate the foster youth's ongoing connections with family and friends during their treatment.
Currently, they need to send most Sonoma County foster youths requiring intensive treatment to different counties—then making it harder for them to remain closely tied to their communities. The newly instituted STRTP aims to tackle this problem, while simultaneously supporting foster youth affected by trauma and complex mental health disorders. Sonoma County, taking the lead as only the second county in California to receive state licensing to manage its STRTP, anticipates beginning the program in the upcoming summer.
The $27 million pilot program, set to run for three years, will gather funds from both state and federal resources, allocations from the county's health and human services budget, and a $1.65 million input from Measure O. Measure O is the quarter-cent sales tax that Sonoma County's voters approved in 2020, specifically designed to extend support to mental health and homelessness services.
Housing approximately 430 minor foster youth in need of placement services in Sonoma County, it is critical to ensure that they avail services that effectively cater to their particular requirements. Out of these young individuals, 6 to 8 percent are in urgent need of intensive treatment to help them deal with trauma, mental health issues, or substance abuse. This straining bottleneck effect in local programs has led to extended wait times—pushing up to nine months in the Valley of the Moon's Children’s Center—before the youth can be placed in a high-level therapeutic environment.
The newly launched pilot program promises an increase in the center's capacity, making it able to accommodate up to 16 young individuals at a time, with separate short-term beds for initial assessment and dedicated beds for intensive three to 12-month treatment and supervision.
Established in 1976, Valley of the Moon’s Children’s Center provides the lone 24-hour emergency caregiving assistance for foster youth in Sonoma County. In the past six years, the facility has seen a drastic reduction in the number of youth it cares for, dropping from approximately 300 to 115 annually, due to successful efforts to place the fostered youth in more nurturing family environments. This drop in occupancy has enabled enough space to initiate the STRTP, which will be staffed with residential counselors, behavioral health clinicians, social workers, supervisors, a residential clinical manager, and shared medical and professional support staff from the Children's Home shelter.
This new program, according to county officials, is expected to complement the ongoing efforts to facilitate local foster youth's transition from institutional housing to more family-like environments. Supervisor Chris Coursey, acting as the chair of the Board of Supervisors, notes that the STRTP will provide the needed intensive therapy for youth in a timely, seamless manner, setting them on course for a successful adulthood.
