Early Warning System

SANTA PAULA â€”  Ventura County law enforcement officials have launched a series of early intervention programs aimed at steering elementary school-age children away from troubled lives.

A Santa Paula program that began this week targets youngsters between 10 and 14, officials said.

Research shows that children at risk of becoming juvenile delinquents usually exhibit warning signs, so it is essential to get involved early with them and their families to head off problems, officials say.

“Teachers say they can tell you by first or second grade which kid is going to be Charles Manson,� said Cal Remington, the chief of Ventura County’s Probation Agency. “And they are probably right. By the time a kid is 13, they are already out of control; they have become associated with gangs; they are much more difficult to turn around.�

The county has set aside $850,000 in state funds for community-based organizations to establish early intervention and prevention programs from Simi Valley to Ventura.

The county tried a scaled-down early intervention program in south Oxnard. That program, which began last year and is still running, proved so successful that the county is now initiating 13 youth programs that target children as young as 10.

Remington said law enforcement officials have undergone a philosophical shift in how they deal with at-risk youths.

“Years ago, if an 11-year-old was cited by the police for stealing a tricycle, we would have thought, it’s just a kid--we don’t want him spending time in a juvenile justice program,� Remington said.

Now, however, police would consider such an incident a red flag, a sign of a potentially bigger problem.

Under the new programs, officials said they would start looking for ways to intervene with the youth’s family or teachers.

“If the child is truant, if the sibling is a gang member, if the father is on probation or maybe in prison, we look at that,� Remington said. “If we find the kid has three or four--or maybe five or six criteria--they are very much at risk of becoming a serious, habitual delinquent in another three years.�

In Santa Paula this week, workers started accepting referrals for 120 participants in the early intervention program. Santa Paula’s is the largest and most ambitious of such programs.

Under a loosely formed alliance called the Santa Paula Youth Services Agency, seven local organizations--ranging from the library to the Palmer Drug Abuse Program--will work with children with bad school attendance or brushes with the law to get them back on track.

Interface Families Services Collaborative, a nonprofit group funded by $424,000 in federal money, will oversee the grant, which will provide funding for programs through June.

Children will be referred either by the School Attendance Review Board or law enforcement agencies.

The alliance will use intervention agencies to work with problem kids as well as with their families and teachers.

A family resource center will coordinate one-on-one mental health and substance-abuse counseling for kids and their families. Parenting workshops as well as educational development and tutoring classes for children will also be offered.

In addition, the grant will provide more than $20,000 to assist needy children with everything from medical care to equipment fees for sports activities.

“This is a real experimental year for the county,� Remington said of the early intervention programs. “More and more, we find if kids can make the adjustment from eighth to ninth grade they will stay in school. So we want to get behind them at an early age.�