Community effort aims to get youth 'Ready by 21'

<p>Ready by 21 is the latest development in an ongoing effort to help Petaluma’s youth achieve the most out of their education and life experiences growing up.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>The Healthy Communities Consortium — known to most as HC2 — has been looking into community heath and social issues since it formed in 2000. Ready by 21 is the result of many hundreds of hours of public input since then, according to executive director Pat Landrum.</p><p>“We are not a program,” Landrum emphasized. “It’s a shift in the way we do business, a framework for how to think about how to do the work we already do. That’s the most important thing to remember. The work we are doing is designed to help the community see what we absolutely need to do to make sure we are using the resources we have, to make sure young people thrive.”</p><p>Landrum says the main work of the Ready by 21 studies will be done by February. And it involves figuring out what it will take to help youth be better prepared for life, identifying existing resources that can be used and setting up an action outline for those other organizations and resources to make better collaborations and use of their existing abilities. </p><p>Ready by 21 is modeled on a national program called the Ready by 21 Challenge that poses the question: Does our community give children what they need to succeed by age 21? In many cases, the answer is communities could be doing better.</p><p>Gathering hard data is the current stage that Landrum and her two part-time staffers are working on. </p><p>The first community meeting was on Nov. 4, but other meetings are scheduled for Monday, Nov. 16 at Casa Grande HighSchool and Wednesday, Nov. 18 at the Petaluma Regional Library. </p><p>These meetings are for everybody, because Landrum takes seriously the adage, “It takes a village to raise a child.”</p><p>Ready by 21 has three sources of funding: Sacra-mento-based California Unity Center is underwriting the current planning process, and the Petaluma Health Care Foundation and HC2 provide ongoing operational funding. The group has received $35,000 for the year to cover staffing, meetings, materials and technical assistance from the Forum for Youth Invest-ment. But that’s not the whole story. </p><p>“Some things don’t cost money,” Landrum said. “Just sharing information to make decisions may change way things are done and solve the need. Everybody is strapped for money and we pose the question, ‘How can we work together to improve the safety net?’ We have to come up with priority areas we need to work on and measurements to know if we are making a difference.”</p><p>A case in point is the Coalition to Prevent Underage and High Risk Drinking, a coalition brought about through HC2 studies that identified Petaluma as a place where teenagers are engaging in high-risk alcohol and drug consumption. </p><p>“We see in the city of Petaluma unusually high incidents of underage substance abuse. That’s a symptom we could see in high school success work, and it poses a challenge for us,” Landrum said.</p><p>Ready by 21 is an extension of ongoing work of HC2. More than 140 focus groups of Petaluma youth aged 10-19 were held in 2008 and the results compared with a larger survey of the high school community taken in 2005. Both surveys provided clear pointers to further action.</p><p>“Youth expressed feelings of disconnection and disengagement in their schools and communities. Those youth who had one adult in their life who they could trust and talk to said it made a positive difference in their lives,” Landrum said. The 2008 study findings found a lack of integration with the larger community as a primary source of discontent and difficulty for Petaluma’s youth.</p><p>Over the next three months, HC2 will host public meetings to identify what’s needed and what’s possible to improve the lives and upbringing of Petaluma’s young people. Landrum says it’s even more important today.</p><p>“This is responding to what we expect to be a continuing stressed economic environment. This will help us deal with it,” Landrum said.</p><p>(Contact Jay Gamel at argus@arguscourier.com)</p>