FOLLOW-UP AUDIT OF THE BLUEPRINT
FOR A COMPREHENSIVE CITYWIDE
ANTI-GANG STRATEGY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over the last 25 years, the City of Los Angeles has made several attempts to address gang violence. Early efforts included joint programs with the County of Los Angeles and establishing an ad hoc City Council Committee focused on gang violence and youth development. Various City departments established programs to address gang violence and the social issues that are generally believed to lead to gang membership, such as a lack of jobs, housing, interest in school, etc. However, some of these programs, e.g., L.A. Bridges I & II that targeted youth at risk of joining gangs or sought to alleviate tensions when incidents of gang violence occurred, did not have sufficient outcome measures to prove their success.

In 2005, the City Council and the Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development engaged The Advancement Project to develop a comprehensive citywide gang reduction strategy. The three-phase study identified the City’s efforts to reduce gang violence and to address the underlying causes of gang violence. The Advancement Project’s January 2007 report recommended significant changes and recommended practices for an effective anti-gang strategy.

To provide the City with a “roadmap” to implement The Advancement Project’s large-scale reforms, the Mayor and City Council requested the Controller’s Office to conduct an independent evaluation of the City’s social service and gang prevention delivery systems. The “Blueprint for a Comprehensive Citywide Anti-gang Strategy” was issued in February 2008. The primary recommendations in the Blueprint were to:

Create a single office to coordinate City-wide anti-gang services;   Build upon and develop regional partnerships with LAUSD, LA County and other local governments;   Conduct community-based and department-wide needs assessments;   Redirect funds to the gang reduction strategy;   Reinvent youth and family services; and   Establish rigorous performance measures and conduct evaluations of both City and contracted programs.

The Blueprint presented a long-term strategy that called for a significant departure from previous anti-gang efforts. Recognizing that resources and funding are limited, the City’s gang-reduction efforts could only be successful by collaborating with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the County of Los Angeles (County) to leverage resources, minimize any duplication of services, and work together on a unified strategy.

Many of the recommendations are long-term solutions that will require time and commitment from entities outside of the City’s authority. One recommendation in particular requested the Controller to conduct periodic follow-up audits. This is our first follow-up audit, which covered City activities through February 2009 and assessed the actions taken, and plans in place to address the recommendations in the Blueprint. This report presents our assessment of the status of each recommendation, and identifies concerns with any delayed corrective actions or alternative solutions proposed, so that the City’s policy makers are informed and can determine the appropriate next steps. We utilized the services of Leap Consulting Group, LLC as a subject matter expert.

SUMMARY

The Mayor’s Office hired a Director and established the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) to be the “unified voice” of the City for gang reduction efforts. The GRYD Office became operational in July 2008. Considering the magnitude of work involved to implement a new strategy, which goes beyond City boundaries and services, the GRYD Office has made considerable progress implementing the new anti-gang strategy. We have determined that most of the Blueprint recommendations are in progress of being implemented. Attachment A of this report presents a detailed assessment of each recommendation.

The GRYD Office has primarily focused on directing specific anti-gang efforts and coordinating with City departments, and in this regard will not administer general youth or family development programs. Current plans will keep youth and family development programs and the related $19 million under the management of the Community Development Department (CDD), where a redesign of these programs is planned. Since this is a significant departure from the Blueprint’s recommendations, which called for a single point of accountability for all youth and anti-gang programs, there remains a risk for disparate programs. GRYD and CDD’s efforts must be well coordinated to ensure improved delivery of services throughout the City to youth and families in general, and to at-risk youth and communities in particular.

In addition, efforts to collaborate with LAUSD and the County have started but are far from the Blueprint’s vision of a regionalized, comprehensive gang reduction and youth development strategy with all the necessary linkages.

GRYD needs to build on what has been initially established to ensure there is a strong structural framework from which the City’s strategy can be monitored and further refined. For example, a GRYD Cabinet, comprised of key City and regional managers was established to provide a forum for collaboration and coordination. However, the Cabinet needs to operate more as a policy-making body rather than a direct working group responsible for executing planned programs.

Overall, the significant work that has been initiated must continue with focus and commitment to a unified regional strategy. Planned actions must be put into operation and adjusted if necessary, to ensure the ultimate success of the City’s anti-gang efforts. In addition, the areas of concern identified in our report due to the City’s deviations from the Blueprint recommendations must be addressed. These include the following:

The GRYD Cabinet has not established itself as a policymaking body nor formally defined the roles and responsibilities expected of each participating entity.

The GRYD Cabinet was established to help foster coordination and collaboration with the many City agencies that have an interest or focus on anti-gang services. The County’s Chief Executive Office and LAUSD are represented on the Cabinet. The Cabinet is a good start for opening up the lines of communication within and outside of the City’s organization.
However, the Cabinet’s initial work has focused on direct programs, rather than what is needed from a policymaking body.

The Cabinet lacks a strategic plan and formal delineation of roles and responsibilities. Without a long-term vision and commitment from key players, there is a risk that a sufficient institutional structure will not exist to support the anti-gang strategy into the future. By not formally establishing its roles and responsibilities, there is less accountability on the part of Cabinet members and potentially, less commitment by participating entities. The Cabinet could also oversee general youth development services to help assure collaboration on the broader basis for all of youth and family development services, as envisioned by the Blueprint.

Attempts to coordinate with LAUSD and the County have started but without a concerted effort to establish formal working relationships, the City faces a significant challenge in making its priorities LAUSD’s and the County’s priorities.

The GRYD Cabinet is an example of the City’s efforts to include LAUSD and the County in its anti-gang strategy. However, the GRYD Office has made a deliberate decision to focus first on improving coordination and collaboration with other City departments before undertaking the bigger challenge of coordinating with entities that are external to City government.

If inroads cannot be established with the City’s regional partners in the near future, Los Angeles will continue to respond to the gang reduction strategy in an isolated manner, and risks having programs that are less effective or duplicative of those provided elsewhere.

The GRYD Office has no set timeframe for conducting future needs assessments and has not adequately addressed the requirement for on-going community needs assessments or department-level needs assessments.

The GRYD Office contracted for an initial community needs assessment for the 12 GRYD zones that was completed in phases, with the majority done in 2007. As of our review, GRYD management had not yet determined when future needs assessments will be conducted. The characteristics and needs of a community evolve as the population or other factors change. Resources are at risk of being wasted if the ways in which services are provided or the types of services provided are not aligned to the needs of the community.

One way to mitigate the risk of programs not reflecting current community situations is through the Blueprint’s recommended Interdisciplinary Community Assessment Teams (ICATs). The GRYD Office developed the Local Advisory Committee as an alternative community-level, multi-agency team to meet the intent of the ICATs. In most respects, the Local Advisory Committee is a reasonable alternative; however, there is currently no provision for an assessment team member. Without this expertise, the GRYD Office will lack the ability to assess the community’s needs on an on-going basis, and adjust programs and approaches accordingly.

The GRYD Office has received inventories of anti-gang services currently provided by City departments which should be used to coordinate and leverage limited resources. However, while GRYD management understands the benefits of department-level needs assessments, there is no plan to require departments to develop and submit needs assessments or department strategic plans related to their anti-gang programs. By not having a complete understanding of citywide needs (beyond the GRYD zones) and the resources available, there is a risk that unidentified target populations and service gaps could remain.

Youth and family development programs and the related $19 million in funding were not transitioned to the GRYD Office.

The Blueprint recommended $19 million from three CDD programs; Neighborhood Action Programs (NAP), Specially Targeted Programs (STP) and the Neighborhood Development Program (NDP), be re-directed toward focused, high-priority outcomes that correspond to the City’s top priorities - of which gang reduction is one. Yet the GRYD Office made a deliberate decision to focus on specific gang reduction efforts through targeted prevention and intervention programs. The City did not transition the identified programs and funding from CDD to GRYD. Instead, CDD has proposed to redesign its Human Services Delivery System to mitigate the issues noted in the Blueprint. As of our review, the redesign proposal was still in draft and being discussed with City Council. GRYD management indicated that the CDD redesign would be assessed in three years to determine if it is appropriate to keep the redesigned youth and family programs within CDD.

It is understandable that absorbing all youth development programs by a relatively new GRYD Office would be a significant undertaking. However, the Blueprint proposed the consolidation of anti-gang and youth development services as a means to ensure a Citywide coordinated approach to provide the City’s youth and their families with a continuum of seamless care. Unless the GRYD Office develops specific plans and procedures to achieve a coordinated approach, the City will still lack a comprehensive strategy that aligns anti-gang services with general youth and family development programs, and cannot be assured that limited resources are being leveraged to the maximum extent possible.

The GRYD Office’s plans for the program evaluation of anti-gang services will not include other City department evaluations, and there are risks that the data collected by service providers may not be reliable or the most appropriate for future evaluation efforts.

The GRYD Office will contract with one firm to develop and conduct the evaluation of the prevention and intervention programs, under the oversight of an internal manager. As of our fieldwork completion, GRYD was still in the contract selection process for the evaluator. Therefore, we cannot comment on whether the proposed evaluation methodology is sound and appropriate.

As previously noted, one of the major themes of the Blueprint was to establish a well coordinated approach to anti-gang services. Program evaluation is a necessary step to ensure a strategy is effective and achieving success. However, the GRYD Office has no plan to evaluate other City departments’ anti-gang programs. Without a comprehensive evaluation of all coordinated efforts, GRYD cannot be assured as to the effectiveness of the City’s strategy towards solving the problem of gangs.

Programs funded through the GRYD Office will utilize the Integrated Services Information System (ISIS), which was developed by CDD, to capture and report GRYD client data. Prior audits have identified data integrity issues because service providers were not held to standardized protocols to input client data, thereby ensuring data accuracy and consistency. If GRYD does not ensure anti-gang service providers follow standardized data entry procedures, there is a risk that the data collected will be unreliable.

Lastly, due to the timing of selecting new prevention and intervention service providers, client data will be collected and submitted by contractors for several months before the program evaluator is formally on board, and has defined the specific data needs for an effective evaluation process. As a result, the data collected until that time, may not meet the specific needs of the program evaluator.

REVIEW OF REPORT

On February 12, 2009, a draft report was provided to the GRYD Office and CDD. We held an exit conference with GRYD management on February 18, 2009. GRYD generally agreed with the findings and observations. GRYD’s and CDD’s comments were considered before finalizing the report.