Holistic Interventions for Gang-Vulnerable Youth

The 4th Annual Community Lecture “Working with Vulnerable Gang-Involved Youth”, took place at San Diego State University on March 10, 2016. Presenters from various professional backgrounds presented including Robert Hernandez, MSW, Senior Lecturer at USC ; Steve Kim, MSW, co-founder of Project Kinship; and Conrad Fuentes, MSW, Director Field Instructor at USC.The hall was filled to capacity with an array of SDSU students from various disciplines along with youth who are served by the Tri County Collaborative Partnership and Project Kinship. Tri County Collaborative provides direct prevention and intervention services, as well as training to mental health professionals in San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles. This training enlightened participants about the systemic cycle of incarceration and how professionals can use a holistic socio-ecological model to better support gang-involved youth. Growing up with friends and family members involved in gang activity, it was important for me to learn about holistic prevention and intervention services. My home town has a Gang Investigations Unit responsible for investigating all criminal activity involving known or suspected gang members and graffiti vandalism.
The Police Department works with a local non-profit organization, Escondido Education COMPACT, on two gang intervention programs; Family Intervention (FIT) is a program designed for middle and high school vulnerable gang-involved boys, while Girls Rock is designed for girls in 7th or 8th grade who are at risk of joining a gang. As a school counselor living and working in North County San Diego it is important that my methods of outreach and engagement are genuine and compassionate. This community lecture clarified the history of systemic incarceration and how holistic interventions can make a difference in keeping students of color off of it.

One intervention technique that was most practical and made the most sense was utilizing a Holistic Socio-Ecological Model of Gang Involvement that comes from Brofenbrenner’s Ecological System’s Theory. The goal of looking at the socio-ecological model is to provide services before youth join a gang, by analysing the school, individual, peer-related, and community based protective and risk factors. In 2014, Project Kinship of Orange County led a countywide analysis of reentry services in their county where they found three recommendations to improve reentry of the formerly incarcerated,

Train staff of agencies and systems to have a clear, defined, and consistent common language, message and shared objectives to promote reentry work, encourage agencies to commit to mutual, collaborative relationships with developed and shared responsibilities and resources, and, linkage, also known as a “warm hand off,” and follow through from services and government agencies to help prevent members of the reentry population from slipping through gaps in the system, thus decreasing the risk of recidivism. (projectkinship.org, 2014)

Project Kinship along with the work of Robert Hernandez, Steve Kim, Conrad Fuentes, and their colleagues, utilize holistic interventions where they look at the client’s socio-ecological system, they understand what agents of social control have been broken, identify risk factors, build meaningful relationships off of that so clients are receptive to interventions. This could be replicated with different populations in various settings because it only requires genuine interest in learning about the client and their story. Youth’s gestures and words expressed pride and gratitude towards the professionals and agencies that had accepted them without judgement and deconstructed gang-related stereotypes.

Kim, S., Men, A., & Vu, M. (2014, October). OC LANDSCAPE REENTRY ANALYSIS. Retrieved April 28, 2016, from http://projectkinship.org/oc-landscape-reentry-analysis/