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Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health Prevention and

Early Intervention Program provides a series

of trainings, community programs,

and supports designed to improve the overall

well-being of our two counties. This is done

through continued assessment of

Sutter-Yuba’s unique regional and cultural needs, as well as the

regular input of community stakeholders.

Prevention and Early Intervention’s underlying

philosophy is to empower the community

through a “help first” approach, reducing the

future occurrence of suffering and need for a

higher level of care.

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Inside:

Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health is pleased to announce some restructur-ing that brings housing, homeless supports / resources, prevention and early intervention, and substance use disorders prevention programs together into one office, and under one program manager, John Floe. Staff from the com-munity programs are located at 545 Garden Highway, Suite B in Yuba City but, as always, will spend much of their time in schools and in the community in Yuba and Sutter counties, building and strengthening connections with community members, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, providing trainings, workshops, and skill building classes/groups, and support-ing the individual needs of homeless / precariously housed community mem-bers.

Semper Gumby 2 Life Skills 3 Girls’ Circle 3 Homeless Resource Team 4 Meet the Team 4-5 Homeless Outreach Team Plan of Operation 6 Rudy’s Corner 7 Yellow Ribbon 7

Friday Night Live 8 Youth Traffic Safety Summit 8 Red Ribbon Week 8 Out of the Darkness 9 Bullying Awareness & Prevention 9 Nurtured Heart Apprach 10 Mental Health First Aid (cont. from 1) 10

Mental Health First Aid The Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) program is committed to providing

high quality, evidence-based, no cost training in the Yuba-Sutter area. Through the tax payer-approved Mental Health Services Act, passed in 2004, we are able to do that.

Mental Health First Aid for Adults Working with Youth (YMHFA) is an eight-hour program which introduces participants to unique risk factors and warning signs of mental health problems in adolescents, builds understanding of the importance of early intervention, and teaches individuals how to help an adolescent in crisis or ex-periencing a mental health challenge. The workshop uses role playing and simulations to demonstrate how to assess a mental health crisis; select interventions and provide initial help; and connect young people to professional, peer, social, and self-help care.

Continued on page 10.

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Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health Prevention & Early Intervention / SUDS Prevention Programs present the Semper Gumby Award quarterly to individuals and organizations that display qualities represented by the green clay character who originally showed his flexibility, collaboration, and friendship back in the 1950’s.

Semper Gumby Awards

PEI started providing services at Live Oak Middle School in spring of 2017. At that time, thanks to the hard work of counselor, Eduardo Bucio Ochoa, we started the first Girls’ Circle group which included 15 fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade girls. Since then, we have successfully completed two Girls’ Circles and a Council for boys.

We appreciate the support of the administration, staff, and faculty who make our work at Live Oak Middle School possible, and successful! We look for-ward to providing many more services and activities there in the future!

Marysville High School received a Semper Gumby Award with much appreciation for their com-mitment to providing diverse supports and interven-tions for their students. PEI staff have had the oppor-tunity to collaborate with MHS on Friday Night Live, The Council, and Girls’ Circle. They have also shown their commitment to creating a suicide-safer school environment by allowing PEI staff to train students on the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program. A spe-cial thanks goes to Yvonne Thornton, one of the counselors at the school, who puts in extra effort to ensure that our work there is possible.

PEI appreciates the efforts of Marysville Commu-nity Day School to support Yuba county students and to provide them with interven-tions to help them success-fully graduate there or return to other schools with new skills. PEI is glad to be able to collaborate with MCDS to provide some of those inter-ventions and supports!

PEI wants to acknowledge the amazing collaboration with Pathways Preven-tion this year. Melissa Kelley, Prevention Specialist, who worked tirelessly to in-crease awareness about substance use and to build strength in youth, has moved on to another chapter in her professional life. Her passion for prevention work was undeniable. We will truly miss her contribution to the team. She was a part of many different prevention activities such as Life Skills, Red Ribbon Week, Second Step, collaborative work with coalitions and other non-profits, Friday Night Live, and various community presentations on substance use prevention. We wish her all the best in her future work. Before her departure, Melissa assisted the administration of Pathways with finding a replacement so that the valuable services she provided will continue.

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Girls’ Circle is a support and skill building group for middle and high school girls with weekly themed curricu-lum designed by One Circle Foundation. It is a strengths-based program recognized by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It is designed to foster self-esteem, help girls maintain authentic connec-tion with peers and adult women in their community, and allow for genuine self-expression through verbal sharing and creative activities. During the fall semester of the 2017-2018 school year, the PEI team was at five different schools providing the Girls’ Circle curriculum to support the needs of the girls, counselors, and schools in our community: Live Oak High School, Live Oak Middle School, Marysville Communi-ty Day School, Marysville High School, and Harry P. Carden School at Juvenile Hall and Camp Singer. Girls demonstrate their interest and commitment to the groups by returning each week and expressing inter-est in future participation, and counselors and administra-tions continue to request our return for this service. We plan to continue to collaborate with some of the schools we have been working with in the spring semester, as well as starting in some new schools. If you would like to learn more about Girls’ Circle, please contact one of us to set-up a meeting to talk about curriculum and potential schedul-ing: 530.674.1885: Cynthia Martinez (ext. 111) or Kristen Batchelder (ext. 115).

Girls’ Circle

One group activity asked the participants to think

critically about their life goals & things that could

prevent them from reaching those goals.

Life Skills During the summer and early fall, staff provided the Botvin Life Skills training to youth at Juve-nile Hall and Camp Singer. Students received the Transitional Youth curriculum. Youth participants en-joyed the conversations around the different topics, and provided good insight while participating in the planned activities. This curriculum focuses on how to make healthy choices during the important transi-tional period from youth to young adult as young people start to think about adult responsibilities like job readiness, budgeting, and resisting peer pressure skills. In the upcoming semester, our team has classes scheduled for elementary school, middle school, and high school-age youth focusing on self-esteem, substance use prevention, emotion management and critical thinking, among other important topics.

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Homeless Resource Team Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health (SYBH) added housing support to the menu of specialized services over ten

years ago. Housing Resource Specialist, Rupi Dail, then worked tirelessly to assist referred clients with mental health issues to find appropriate, affordable housing. When SYBH received and began facilitating federal funding in the form of the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) grant, she began working close-ly with Intervention Counselor, Lesia Chase. Lesia has become the outreach staff member working with the homeless, mentally ill population. Due to a marked increase in housing / homeless referrals, another Intervention Counselor, Isac M. Matei, was hired to work with this population.

The main goal of this team is to assist clients with mental health issues who are homeless or precariously housed with getting the support and resources needed to achieve safe and stable housing. This may include activ-ities indirectly related to housing such as getting medical care, accessing mental health and substance abuse treatment, resolving legal issues, or obtaining public assistance benefits.

The team is actively involved in community-based case management and rehabilitation services. A typical day involves providing direct support to clients to identify housing needs and resolve barriers to successful hous-ing. It also involves working very closely in both counties with community rental agencies, local healthcare pro-viders, and agencies that support the homeless such as 14 Forward, county Social Services departments, and Hands of Hope.

“Our team believes that by educating the community on homelessness, it helps community members to become more effective problem solvers so they can end homelessness and the conditions that create it”, said one member of the PATH team. “The best part of being on this team is that we get to help build lives, watch peo-ple change, and help them to believe in themselves.”

Meet the Team, Part 1 With the recent merging of the homeless support, housing, and

PEI / SUDS prevention teams to form a new community programs group, we would like to introduce some staff who are not new to Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health, but who may be new to our newsletter readers. Lesia Chase, intervention counselor and nationally certified drug and alcohol counselor, introduces herself this way:

When humans experience homelessness in their lives it is not un-common for their lives to unravel. My passion is to connect people expe-riencing homelessness in their community to resources, and to provide information about recovery. My hope is that during our engagement, cli-ents can begin to see themselves differently and start to build healthy relationships and know themselves as whole and complete human be-ings.

I recognize that no single approach is the right approach for every indi-vidual; I utilize a range of different modalities. Trained in Seeking Safety, Motiva-tional Interviewing, and Recovery Model-based services through the Mental Health America of Los Angeles affiliate at The Village. I have worked with the chronically mentally ill population in various settings including as a counselor for Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health (SYBH) Substance Use Disorders Services sta-tioned at Sutter County Probation. While there, I worked with individuals who had consequences through the legal system. In that position, I was challenged with the task of assisting individuals to develop stability in their lives so that they could be successful in their recovery journey, and complete probation success-fully. Then, I transitioned to the SYBH Urgent Services program where I assisted individuals with chronical mental illness in their journey towards stabilization and to maintain recovery in their lives.

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Meet the team, part 2

For the past year, Mary Ontiveros has worked very hard at 14 Forward, making it a great success. She is a Peer Mentor working for Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health through the Prevention & Early Intervention pro-gram. She has been working with clients helping them adjust to their new environment of transitional housing at 14 Forward. She will be working at the two coordinat-ed entry points, helping people who are homeless to find services, along with Hands of Hope staff. She is making sure that participating clients have the support they need to make their appointments, as well as providing them with transportation and a great many other assigned duties. She attends meetings throughout both counties, where she is requested to speak about issues of homelessness. Mary will help Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health with the two-year plan to address homelessness in Sutter County. The goal of the plan is to assist homeless individuals in obtaining permanent housing and to be-come self-sufficient. The problem is complex, and staff from multiple departments have developed a plan that includes a continuum of care that will meet the needs of this population. Mary will help to identify issues and problems, and work toward helping with solutions to the issues. She will help with the coordinated entry by working with Hands of Hope; under their supervision, she will provide services to those that are homeless.

Meet the Team, Part 3

Isac M. Matei started working with the Adult Services program of Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health (SYBH) as an intervention counselor in June 2017. As part of the new community programs team, Isac will be providing case management, housing, and clinical services to the homeless and to the community at large. Before working at SYBH, Isac worked for Yuba County Public Health for two and a half years as a program aide, conducting community outreach events, teaching classes on various health topics, providing management of the car seat program, serving as accreditation coor-dinator, etc. Prior to that, he spent over twenty years as a minister, family therapist, and teacher in Europe and in the United States. Isac’s educational background includes an M.A. in Community Coun-seling, an M. Div. in Practical Theology, and an M.D. (from Romania & Germany) in General Medi-cine.

Isac, his wife, and their three children, ages 18, 20, and 22, have lived in Romania, on the East Coast, in the Northwest, and several other places in the US and in Europe. Isac has lived in the Yuba-Sutter area since 2012, and he looks forward to serving and making our community a safer, stigma-free community through his work with the commu-nity programs and through community collabora-tions.

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HOMELESS / DISPLACED PERSONS OUTREACH TEAM –

SUTTER COUNTY & SYBH

PLAN OF OUTREACH / OPERATION

Mission Statement:

The mission is to reach out and assist individuals and families that are experiencing a housing cri-sis, or are displaced, to stabilize them in an emergency shelter and / or permanent housing by providing supportive services and client-appropriate housing solutions. The team plan:

Develop a multi-agency partnership (Police Department / Victims’ Witness / Sheriff’s Depart-ment, Public Health, Veterans, Eligibility, Adult Services, etc.) to increase collaboration of service providers to assist them in becoming self-sufficient.

Ongoing personal contact between Outreach Team / people assisting the displaced. PATH staff will work with them to build trust and make referrals to service providers.

Work closely with local outreach organizations to coordinate housing, employment, medical, and behavioral health services.

Enforcement of law violations (i.e. trespassing, illegal lodging, public intoxication, aggressive panhandling, etc.)

Plan of operation:

Team will engage the displaced population at their respective encampments with some incen-tives (coffee, pastry, oral health kits, toiletries, STD kits, etc.).

Fill out HMIS form – data & needed info collection and assess the needs.

Communicate the Sutter County (SC) plan of temporary shelter (location, date, etc.).

Assist with moving / transition from their own place / street / encampments to the temporary shelter.

The 3 C’s Approach:

Collaboration with a variety of partners and non-profit stakeholders, such as Hands of Hope, Rescue Mission, food pantries, faith-based organizations, to provide effective and comprehensive services offering support and requiring participants to move to a path of self-sufficiency.

Coordination of efforts between Sutter County, SYBH, Yuba City Police, Victims ’ Witness Program, Sheriff’s Department, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and regional partners to lev-erage resources in order to best address the variety of challenges related to being displaced.

Communication with Sutter County residents and businesses through an extensive aware-ness campaign.

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Rudy’s corner

I continue to facilitate parenting classes using the Nurtured Heart Approach (NHA) in English and in Spanish throughout the community. I also stay busy doing presentations to Spanish-speaking parents at vari-ous school readiness program at schools, Migrant Education sites, and Head Start locations on topics includ-ing substance abuse prevention, stress management, positive discipline, signs of self-injury, and much more. School staff who are interested in scheduling a presentation for their students’ parents can contact me to talk about and/or schedule a presentation.

Recently, I became a provisional trainer for Adult Mental Health First Aid, which I will be pleased to co-facilitate with one of my PEI colleagues in English or in Spanish in the coming year. I have also continued to provide Mental Health First Aid for Adults Working with Youth.

Substance use education, prevention, and early intervention services continue to be in high demand in the Sutter-Yuba community. I am currently working, and will continue to work with Feather River Academy in Yuba City, and with T.E. Mathews Community School and Marysville Community Day School in Marysville. In the spring, I will be extending the services to middle schools in both counties, and I will start working with students by referral from Marysville High School.

PEI works to reduce the stigma around mental health, and I support that work by doing outreach in the community, participating at different community events, and providing trainings.

Community members are welcome to join the Latino Support Group, which meets every Wednesday at the PEI office. The Latino Support Group is a group that seeks healing and supports recover though sharing and supporting each other. More information is available by calling 530.674.1885, extension 110.

Last year, the Friday Night Live (FNL) chapter at Sutter Union High School, with the support and en-couragement of their PEI FNL facilitator, Cory Quinn, decided that they wanted to focus on addressing teen suicide as a concern in their community. The students and their school advisor, along with PEI staff, worked with the school administration to get support and authorization to provide trainings. Over the summer, Kris-ten Batchelder, PEI Resource Specialist, trained the student leaders and school advisor of the FNL chapter on safeTALK, a 3-4 hour long training on recognizing signs of suicide risk and responding to those signs. Before the school year began, Rudy Rodriguez and Cynthia Martinez presented safeTALK to over 50 school staff.

In September, Sutter Union High School addressed the increasing number of teen suicides by inviting PEI staff to train the students and parents/guardians on signs of depression and risks of suicide. Because teens often relate better to other teens, school administrators allowed PEI staff to train some of the school’s dedicated FNL students to talk with their peers about suicide prevention. Almost 800 students attended presentations. Thanks to the Sutter Union High School staff and administration, who supported the programs by al-lowing student presenters to miss classes in order to share their knowledge and experiences, as well as sacri-ficing instructional time to allow the presentations to take place, and the Friday Night Live students who vol-unteered their time and brought their energy, enthusiasm, and personal experiences to the presentations, our community is a suicide-safer place.

Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program

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This year, Friday Night Live has grown from the four chapters PEI supported last year to eight chapters. We are excited to be working with students and staff at Live Oak, Sutter Union, and East Nicolaus High Schools in Sutter County. In Yuba County, we are working with Marysville Community Day School, and Wheatland Union, Marysville, and Lindhurst High Schools, as well as with a community chapter at the Allyn Scott Youth Center. Also, we have in-troduced a Club Live chapter, which is an age-appropriate tobacco, alcohol, and drug use prevention group, at Gray Avenue Middle School. Friday Night Live has continued to expand and to influence high school youth within Sutter and Yuba Coun-ties. Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) and Friday Night Live (FNL) have built new partnerships with Wheatland Union High School and Lindhurst High School this year. These new chapters have embraced FNL’s principles by en-gaging in active leadership, driven by the youth, in order to empower healthier communities. Lindhurst High School students plan to focus on bullying and violence within elementary schools in Olivehurst for their action plan project this year. Wheatland Union High School will impact their school climate by addressing diversity on campus.

In September, FNL students from multiple Yuba-Sutter area schools took a trip to Anaheim to participate in the FNL Youth Summit, an amazing opportunity to connect with youth leaders, as well as healthy lifestyle and traffic safety advocates from throughout California. The Summit is an annual two-day gathering of over 700 high school students who are excited and eager to make positive change in their local communities. On the first day of the Summit, participants attended three different workshop sessions from more than 30 different topics in an effort to gain as much knowledge about projects, campaigns and the most cur-rent information on topics that are important to preven-tion work. Topics ranged from informative presentations on legislation regarding the legalization of marijuana; environmental strategies to change social norms around the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; distracted driving; skill building; campaign how-tos like TRACE, Eve-ry Fifteen Minutes & Beyond; and much more! Day two was a day of planning - participants spent time in their chapter groups creating a plan of action for the upcom-ing school year based on what they learned the previous day. They also had an opportunity to network with agen-cies and organizations from throughout the state that could be potential partners in their future work.

Youth Traffic Safety Summit Red Ribbon Week Each year, PEI supports local schools with their Red Ribbon Week activities. Red Rib-bon is a nationally celebrated event to encour-age awareness about substance use preven-tion. The theme for Red Ribbon Week 2017 was “Your Future is Key”. This year, PEI provid-ed services to over 5,000 students, and gave presentations at many different elementary and middle schools in the Yuba-Sutter area. The Friday Night Live chapter at East Nicolaus High School wanted to get involved by working with their neighborhood elementary school. Chapter vice president, Xitlalitl Rodri-guez, led a group of students in presenting Red Ribbon to Marcum-Illinois Elementary School students. In speaking to the students, the mes-sage was clear. She said, “Drugs not only affect your brain, but your future as well. You don't get a second future. It's why you do a lot of the things you do…in hopes of having a good fu-ture. There are so many beautiful places you could go. There are unlimited possibilities for you to explore. So don't let drugs ruin it."

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PEI participated in the 2nd annu-al Yuba / Sutter Out of the Darkness Community Walk. It took place on Sat-urday, October 21, 2017 at Gauche Park in Yuba City. The walk was intended to fight suicide by increasing awareness, sup-port and prevention to those who have lost loved ones to suicide, as well as to those who have survived past at-tempts. All donation proceeds went to the American Foundation for Suicide Pre-vention (AFSP) to assist in research and prevention on a national level, as well as to the local AFSP board for pre-vention resources and education in the Yuba-Sutter community.

Out of the Darkness

This past school semester, PEI staff had the opportunity to support Luther Elementary School in Live Oak by providing bullying awareness and prevention presentations. Thanks to this collaboration, PEI Resource Special-ists, Cynthia Martinez and Kristen Batchelder provided a presentation to each of the classrooms from kindergar-ten to fourth grade, a total of 26 presentations, reaching approximately 630 students and over 30 teachers and staff using an abbreviated version of the grade-specific Second Step Bullying Prevention curriculum.

We hope that through presentations like this, we are able to increase awareness about bullying, and through that awareness and by increasing resilience, empathy, and healthy communication skills, be able to erad-icate this issue among students at schools and in our communities.

We would like to express our appreciation to Luther Elementary School’s counselor, Dolores Herrera, for providing us with the opportunity to support the community through these presentations and her help with scheduling them, to the teachers for opening their doors and allowing time for important social and emotional learning as their students received this information, and to the school administration for their support.

Bullying Awareness & Prevention

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The PEI team has been providing the Nurtured Heart Approach® (NHA), training for many years. This training was created by Howard Glasser. Initially this approach began as a method for treating chil-dren labeled as challenging, difficult, or intense – especially those with diagnoses such as ADHD, Oppo-sitional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Autism, PTSD, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), Fetal Alcohol Spec-trum Disorder and more. The approach is now used successfully in schools, foster-care systems, and communities worldwide to help all children flourish and find their inner greatness. This last summer, three of PEI staff members were able to participate in the Certification Train-ing and two of them, PEI Resource Specialists, Cynthia Martinez and Kristen Batchelder, became NHA certified trainers for the first time. Their certification came just in time to meet a need in our communi-ty. The PEI teach was approached by the parent liaison from April Lane Elementary School in Yuba City with a request to teach the Nurtured Heart Approach training to a group of mothers who speak only Dari. In order to be culturally sensitive and to meet the needs of the potential participants, the facilita-tors for the class needed to be female. The school was able to find an interpreter to work with our staff in order to be able to provide this training. The training is six weeks long, and we have had a consist-ently good number of participants since we began. The mothers have expressed how much they appre-ciate the opportunity to learn something new to continue to support their children and families. http://difficultchild.com/

Nurtured Heart Approach

About This Newsletter

Contributors: Kristen Batchel-der, Lesia Chase, John Floe, Cynthia Martinez, Isac M. Ma-tei, Mary Ontiveros, Meagan Poage, Cory Quinn, Rudy Ro-driguez, Yesenia Vazquez

Editor: Kristen Batchelder

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In 2017, PEI trained 79 people in YMHFA in English, and an addi-tional 13 people in Spanish, for a total of 92 new First Aiders! Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an eight-hour training intended to help community members to be able to offer initial help to a person developing a mental health problem or experiencing a mental health cri-sis until appropriate treatment and support are received, or until the cri-sis resolves. There is also a module with additional information for law enforcement, corrections, and public safety, one for higher education, and one for military, veterans, and their families. In 2017, PEI trained 80 new First Aiders in the original MHFA pro-gram, and an additional 18 corrections staff in the public safety, law en-forcement, and corrections module! PEI plans to provide many more Mental Health First Aid and Youth Mental Health First Aid workshops in English and in Spanish in the coming year to continue getting this important information out to the communi-ty. If you are interested in one of these trainings, please contact the PEI team at PEI@co.sutter.ca.us or 530.674.1885 for more information.

Mental Health First Aid