LIVE OAK, CA (MPG) - At the Sept. 3 meeting of the Live Oak City Council, City Manager Ben Moody introduced Ken Berrick of Rising Social Strategies (RSS) Consulting, which advises on children’s behavioral health, child welfare, juvenile justice and education programs.

Moody said Berrick’s insight would be helpful to the city as it considers a potential project proposal by the Church of Glad Tidings to rehabilitate the vacant Leo Chesney Correctional Facility into a youth care facility.

While a formal application has not yet been submitted, Glad Tidings’ goal is to create “Peace of Heaven,” a sanctuary for youth rescued from human trafficking. They hope to establish the sanctuary as the largest care facility in the nation, perhaps housing more than 200 at-risk youth.

“As we work through this project, I’m going to be looking for services like this to represent the city, so we can help analyze and work through a project that might have a lot of different complexities,” said Moody. The city is in the process of drafting a contract with Rising Social Strategies Consulting, not to exceed $5,000, for evaluation of the Peace of Heaven project.

Berrick is an expert in this field, serving as the founder and CEO of Seneca Family of Agencies, a nonprofit providing unconditional care to at-risk youth. He was appointed to the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission and the California Child Welfare Council and served twice as president of California Alliance of Child and Family Services.

“I understand both the imperative for the work and the complexity of the work,” said Berrick. “I think you’re faced with a challenging situation. You’re faced with a group of people who…by any measure, have the right idea and a mission to try to support some of the kids that are most vulnerable. And at the same time there’s been a tremendous amount of research and work in trying to figure out what’s the best way to serve those kids and families.”

Berrick said it would be a challenge to get approval for a large facility from the state regulatory agency, Community Care Licensing. The current trend is to move away from large congregate care facilities, because youth who have experienced high levels of trauma need high levels of care and support, so they are better served in smaller, family-like settings. Berrick said foster families that are trained to provide appropriate support are among the best practices, along with smaller group facilities with a high staff ratio for those with more intensive needs.  

Youth who have experienced trauma and abuse often exhibit “runaway behavior,” said Berrick, and maintaining enough staff for full supervision is more difficult in larger facilities. And legally, these facilities cannot be locked, and you cannot stop the residents from leaving — so when the youth inevitably run away, it becomes a police enforcement issue within the community.

Councilmember Bob Woten asked whether the existing system is sufficient to care for the children recovered from trafficking situations. Berrick said five years ago the care system was overwhelmed but, since then, increased resources and an expanded network of supportive services have built more capacity into the system.

Berrick added that care facilities work best when they are kept local, serving youth from within the community.

“The number of young people who would come to Live Oak from across the country voluntarily to be in placement is, frankly, close to zero—even if you said, ‘Here’s a sanctuary, here’s a safe place.’” Berrick said the idea “doesn’t seem realistic to me.”

Woten said it seems like a “multifaceted situation.” He agreed that having many youth runaways in town could cause problems.

“You want to do something to help, but it just seems there’s a lot of obstacles in the way,” said Woten.

He said he appreciated Berrick’s expertise and wondered whether the group proposing the project might have “oversimplified the process, and really doesn’t know, kind of, what they’re getting into.”

Berrick agreed that having such a large number of youth in one facility “has the potential of being quite problematic,” and perhaps in their desire to provide help and support, they hadn’t thought through all the nuances.

“When that bridges over to saying we’re going to have care custody and control, you’re just in a whole different realm of both responsibility and legal technicalities,” said Berrick.

Woten said, “These are valuable people in our community. We see their heart, we know how strongly and deeply invested they are in this.”

He asked if Berrick would meet with them to advise how to best move forward.

City Manager Moody said he will facilitate that introduction to Glad Tidings, who he said have asked for help to navigate the complexities of this project.

This was an informational item only, so no action was taken by council.

Finance Director James Ramsey submitted an annual report on the AB 1600 Fund, which holds Development Impact Fees collected through new development. The funds are restricted and can only be used for new construction or equipment purchases, for the specific function for which they were collected — including parks and recreation, the community center, public works, general government, police, fire, roads and signals and flood control.

Funds are held for five years, at which time if they have not yet been used, they must be returned unless the council declares them to be necessary for future projects. Typically, the fees are held until enough funding has accumulated to cover the cost of the planned projects.

This year, the funds that were at the five-year mark included $206,854 for the Community Center, $11,186 for public works, $327,149 for general government, $53,680 for police and $2,058 for flood control.  

These funds are already earmarked for specific projects, as identified in the city’s Nexus Study, but at this time, “there’s just not enough accumulated in that particular account to do those projects,” said Ramsey.

The council received and filed the report.

The next meeting of the Live Oak City Council is scheduled for Sept. 17.