New Horizons

It is estimated that as many as nine out of every ten minors in California’s detention system have a mental disorder. In the past, few have received the care they need because only half of the juvenile facilities in the state provide any mental health training for staff.

In 2004, a string of highly publicized suicides and the videotaped beating of wards in the California Youth Authority brought this deficiency to the public’s attention.

In response, the state has vowed to reform its troubled juvenile justice system, with a specific emphasis on providing rehabilitative and mental health services.

That’s precisely what the innovative Northern California Regional Facility, in the tiny town of Eureka, is trying to achieve.

The New Horizons program at this Humboldt county locked facility brings together the probation department, county mental health, and the education department to address the thinking and behavioral problems of nearly two dozen adolescent inmates as well as their families.

It took 10 years of creative financing to get the facility built, and the interdisciplinary staff has struggled to keep the fledgling program operating for its first six years. California Connected visits the New Horizons program and chronicles this groundbreaking effort to turn young lives around by talking to the adults who work at the Regional Facility as well as the teens who are receiving treatment.

Please note: due to the confidential nature of information related to mental health and youth offenders, the identity of the inmates participating in the New Horizons program has been obscured.