History of Placer Collaborative Network

Context
The 1990s were a time of great changes in the county:

• Population of Placer County was growing rapidly: In 1990, it was 175,477, in 2024 it was 429,000
• HHS was just emerging as an integrated department – no wrong door approach, seeking organizational structure to meet our shared outcomes across systems of siloed funding
• Very few CBOs served the county and those that did were mostly fledgling
• Hospitals were private and community based – Auburn Faith and Roseville Community were becoming part of the Sutter Health system and Kaiser was expanding its presence in Placer with hospital and clinics
• The new operative word in grants and funding sources was “collaboration”. We were at many meetings to meet these requirements. Foundations were looking for innovative approaches to service delivery and ways to measure impact.
• This was early internet days – data was hard to come by for grants or reports and was often years behind – there was no GIS mapping.

As the County departments were being reorganized for more comprehensive, coordinated and collaborative services, it was determined that the county's private- nonprofit organizations should also be included in the discussion of collaborative services.  Directors of the major nonprofit service providers were invited to meetings to begin collaborative service discussions among themselves and with HHS to monitor how we all were doing. The Directors were involved in the conversations to assure service integration was occurring and outcomes were monitored. 

The Greater Collaborative for Children Youth and Family Services was formed. Later, it included more adult services and was renamed the Placer Collaborative Network.

In addition to regular meetings to promote the collaboration, innovation and communications we had a camp off site in Tahoe area– the Collaborative Annual Meeting for Placer.

Our first meeting focused on children and family services and we discussed:

• The preventive approach to services - the "waterfall" diagram was an important depiction of trying to get services to individuals and families before they went over the waterfall and became immersed in "deep end" services.
  
• Comprehensive outcomes were agreed upon: Children, adults and families should be: safe, healthy, at home or having a home, in school or at work, and out of trouble.

We had difficulty competing for grants due to our small numbers and generally good outcomes, so we had to stand out for a different reason as our families needed supports that were not available. We were still mostly rural with a rapidly growing urban population – our innovative collaborative model including HHS and nonprofits provided that distinction supported by the Pocket Area Study that showed our geographic high risk areas.

We recognized the need to get together to get to know each other and to tackle issues in a safe environment. CAMP Collaborative Annual meetings for Placer was constructed with support from Child Abuse Prevention Council which became KidsFirst. The ED, Brooke Allison, sought funding from Foundations to support our efforts.

CAMP became an annual meeting that included:

• Leadership from HHS including supervisors and staff
• CBO EDs and managers
• Health care – hospitals were represented
• Line staff - managers, supervisors, CEOs
• City leaders
• Law enforcement from throughout the county/cities 
• Education
• Many others

CAMP was our chance to reconnect, recharge, refocus and innovatively tackle issues and it became our think tank.  A lot of networking, evaluation and innovation resulted from these meetings. This was sometimes difficult to measure but no less important as relationships continued to develop on an ongoing basis.
 
At these we:
                Focused on a current issue facing all of us with facilitation
                Brought together policy makers and leaders – some were topic specific
                Looked at the data
                Tackled difficult issues and looked for solutions and innovative approaches
                Included all stakeholders:

• Welfare reform
• Results based accountability
• Early childhood issues and passage of funding for First 5
• Youth resiliency
• Trust building
• Shared outcomes based on assets
• Effective communication – how to tell our story
• Reinforced our vision of prevention and shared outcomes
• Focus on how our systems impacted families

 
Ways the collaborative helped us in our work:

• A lot of trust building to carry over into rest of year
• Ready access to data – especially the Pocket Area study that gave us data by census tract so we could focus services and get funding for projects in those areas
• Developed relationships with partners to problem solve whether staffing or resource issues
• Partnered in grant writing and implementation
• Resources for community – 6 family resource centers – Central Roseville, Lincoln, North Auburn, Colfax, Foresthill, Kings Beach
• Easy to get letters of support for grants
• New programs – MDIC, PCIT, support groups for fathers, outreach to Latinx community etc.
• Support and ideas to tackle difficult issues

What we did:

• Consciously brought people together
• Focused on our commonalities and strengths
• Looked at the data
• Creatively tied programs together
• Problem solved within/across providers
• Wrote grants – sought funding (HHS provided funding)
• Developed models or sought successful models – evidence based
• Focused on prevention
• Looked for solutions – not “nos”

We learned how to follow the money without sacrificing our shared vision of prevention and collaboration to achieve the comprehensive outcomes. We held each other accountable for these values.

With this history of collaboration and continued leadership you can face the new challenges ahead.