San Juan County Readiness to Learn Program

The San Juan County RTL Program serves schools on Lopez, San Juan, and Orcas Islands. Each of the islands has two RTL Family Support Specialists who has mental health training and experience.

There is one school on Lopez, with 253 students K-12. The two family support specialist workers are part time in the school. One of them has a mental healthbackground, and the other has preschool background and experience but is currently working with the grades 6 through 12 students. Having previously worked with the pre-school, she knows most of the students. She works 15 hours a week, and provides tutoring for students during the first school period. She is also working to involve parents in the tutoring efforts as well. The family support specialist who has a mental health background serves the elementary school children, and because of her experience she is able to assess whether a child or family would benefit more from a referral or from working directly with her. For example, a child with behavior problems has benefited from a relationship with her whereby she can intervene and work with him immediately when he needs intervention. It has been gratifying to see this child who had no friends and no social skills now playing happily with others on the playground.

At the San Juan Family Resource Center, Joyce Sobel, the director has a full time family advocate, who works 20 hours at the middle school and 20 hours at the high school. Another advocate at the elementary school works 18 hours a week at the elementary schools.

Orcas Island has 3 advocates; one, who has a Masters in Social Work, works 16 hours a week in the elementary school which has an enrollment of 225 as the advocate and 8 hours as the school counselor. Two advocates are located at the middle school and high school (combined enrollment of 254), one for 12 hours a week and the second for 8.

The advocates receive referrals from the community, school counselors, principals and teachers. Often their first contact is with the child. Then the advocates contact the families and identify family needs. (Jane- Orcas does not have an active family resource center, so we do not refer families out to it, but work with them directly in our school offices). They try to have the parent do a lot of the problem solving and indicate what would work best for the family. Families are referred to the island resources that can best meet their family goals, but because resources are limited, theadvocates and family have to work creatively together to come up with workable solutions. In addition to family support, the Orcas program coordinates a Peer to Peer tutoring program which has won strong support from parents and teachers. Recently, the Orcas program has taken on the coordination of the Parent Class meetings which promote greater involvement in the schools, parent networking, and support.

The San Juan County RTL Consortium brings together RTL programs established on Lopez Island (population, 2600) and on Orcas Island (population 4500 to 5000) under separate grants since 1997 and one on San Juan Island (population 7000) in 1999. The Lopez and Orcas Islands each have their own consortiums, and San Juan's RTL program uses the San Juan County Family Policy Council Community Network as its consortium. This is now the consortium for the San Juan County RTL. The Community network is also serves as the reporting board for a number of other services and is composed of most of the services on the islands in the county, including San Juan Public Health, HCS, DSHS, DCFS, Orcas OPLE, Skagit Valley College, United Way, Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault, Parents and Disabilities, Orcas Island Prevention Partnership, DASA, Sheriff, Lopez Island School Board, and also county representation from ECAEP. At present there is no one from employment security or the Workforce Development Council.