I
’ve complained in these pages before about how South County
usually bears the brunt of budget cuts in community services.
Service providers who are based here are typically small and suffer
when even a modest grant is pulled.
I’ve complained in these pages before about how South County usually bears the brunt of budget cuts in community services. Service providers who are based here are typically small and suffer when even a modest grant is pulled.
Gilroy lost Familias Pueden, a provider of services to working poor families, this past year after losing a grant. Other San Jose-based agencies folded their South County tents due to funding shortages (American Red Cross, ESO/CAUSA and St. Vincent de Paul). In collaborative committees that are “countywide,” I witnessed repeatedly how South County organizations – and residents – were overlooked. A grant would be submitted for resources, but most of the project implementation would be up north.
These recent moves and other trends in human services have invigorated the South County Collaborative to raise its voice and work to combat the negative effects of these changes and improve – and even increase – services here in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy.
The South County Collaborative is a group of human service organizations – both public and private – that work together to meet the human care needs of South County residents. Established in 1991 by a group of organizations that included Community Solutions, MACSA, Gavilan College, the Gilroy School District and a few others as a collaboration for a federal Healthy Start grant to bring health services into schools, the group has since grown to include many other local service providers that also provide housing, domestic violence services, mental health care, HIV/AIDS counseling and treatment, farmworkers services, and more.
What is remarkable about this group of organizations is how it has continued to work together, even without grant money. The level of cooperation reflects the rare extraordinary spirit seen among all our marvelous South County volunteers who do so much for our community. It is very inspiring to see groups such as the South Valley Medical Clinic working with Rebekah’s Children’s Services, Kaiser and the Gilroy School District, motivated by a strong and genuine sense of mission to serve our neighbors. What they do without the level of resources they need and deserve is remarkable.
Collaborative member organizations are looking at what they can do together at home to share and save resources, such as sharing certain functions. It is looking into the adoption or development of a shared database, so that services to clients are coordinated, efficient and effective. They are soon to put more effort into grant seeking and bringing other resources down our way.
They are also committing “face time” in San Jose at the tables of debate where decisions are made about policies, practices and funding. This is no small thing for organizations in which upper management usually serve clients directly, fix the plumbing, and deal with the daily fires that crop up.
Supervisor Don Gage has done a great deal to raise the profile of South County and get it on the county’s radar. The community groups that work down here are adding their efforts and voices in order to maintain and increase it (especially necessary in the event District 1 is represented by someone from Los Gatos or Monte Sereno.)
Take, for example, Kids In Common, a non-profit formed in 1995, and is working on updating its Children’s Report. The Children’s Report has a lot of influence, as it is used by local foundations and other funding entities in helping determine to what issues and what areas they are going to target their valuable resources that are so critical to non-profits and public agencies to fulfill their missions in serving those in need.
When a representative from MACSA realized she was the only representative from South County at a focus group, she and other members of the Collaborative worked to bring Kids in Common down here to meet with the community so that the snapshot of Santa Clara County in the Children’s Report will include Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy. With the highest poverty indicators in the county, as well as the impact of agriculture, South County children and their families have unique needs.
Community members and other human service organizations (including churches) that are not working with the Collaborative at this time, and who want to help us help Kids in Common create an accurate picture of the needs of our community, and have an impact on the distribution of future resources, is welcome to attend the Collaborative’s next meeting. It will be on Thursday, Jan. 13, 11:30am to 1pm at the Gilroy School District boardroom.
