SPI’s Wellness System and Prevention Team is actively working with San Diego County, Ventura County, and Tulare County to build their capacity to create and sustain a wellness system of care. SPI’s wellness capacity-building spans the diversity of California counties in terms of size, governance and infrastructure, priority populations, and leadership styles proving the approach to wellness system capacity building to be adaptable while maintaining fidelity.
- San Diego Child and Family Well-Being System: SPI supported partners within the County of San Diego to “turn the triangle upside down”! This resulted in the investment in prevention activities going from the lowest percentage to the highest.
- Ventura County Child, Youth, and Family Wellness System: Ventura County is the first and only California County to develop and implement customized Integrated Core Practice Model (ICPM) Training
- Tulare County Wellness System: An emerging Wellness System, Tulare County is transforming internal capacity into a sustainable “By Us, For Us County”.
Initially, the work in San Diego and Ventura counties was to infuse a stronger prevention focus, aligned with California’s Comprehensive Prevention Planning efforts. Ventura and San Diego counties are both leveraging their CPP to chart a path beyond prevention, that is leading to break historical cycles and inspire generational change for child, family, and community well-being and wellness.
Comprehensive Prevention Plans – What is a CPP?
SPI’s most recent Knowledge to Action (K2A) brief Beyond Prevention describes what it takes for public systems to go beyond simply preventing “bad things” from happening. In short it means actively building systems of Wellness and Well-being. San Diego and Ventura County teams are among the adaptive leaders in California who have done just that!
CPPs can become transformative when they are supported by a clear vision, develop adaptive skills, create, and share incentives, manage resources through shared finance, and follow a concrete action plan. Capacity-building technical assistance (such as that offered by SPI and other statewide organizations) can leverage counties’ investment in change.
San Diego County
1 Radically transformed its child welfare system; now known as the Child and Family Well-being Department—the first in the country.
2 Working with Evident Change to develop a Community Resource Guide to inform its Community Pathway—major shift from mandated reporting to community supporting.
3. Shared definition of prevention across public system and community partners, soon to create a shared definition of well-being.
4 Race Equity work underway for co-design and sharing power with families.
Ventura County
1 All out adoption of ICPM as the blueprint for Wellness; Leadership launch and Train-the-Trainers program to build capacity for training all staff countywide.
2 Every Right Door is the new “No Wrong Door” to expand access through Community Pathway.
3 Guaranteed Income Pilot (proposed), part of enhanced service array to meet basic needs.
4 Ventura County Community Pathway is building on the existing infrastructure, most notably VC Wellness Centers (which already involve multiple public systems coming together) and Family Resource Centers.
Are you a County looking to partner with experienced consultants to enhance your work? Contact us for an exploratory conversation. SPI can customize services to your local needs.
Contact SPI Director, Lori Clarke | lsclarke@sdsu.edu