Safe Passages/Youth Ventures JPA Makes Public Systems Work for Kids

Safe Passages is an inter-governmental partnership including the City of Oakland, the County of Alameda, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), philanthropy and community-based partners that is committed to advocating for children, youth, and families with a special emphasis on vulnerable populations within the County of Alameda.

The Safe Passages Board of Directors includes elected county, city, and school district officials, as well as agency directors, high level administrators, and community leaders. Today over 65 governmental agencies, community service providers, schools, early childhood centers, and philanthropic organizations work together under the Safe Passages umbrella to design, fund, implement, and evaluate programs for poor and vulnerable families in Oakland, particularly those exposed to community violence.

Safe Passages/Youth Ventures JPA's core functions include:

Policy Development, Implementation, & Advocacy
Facilitate improvements in the health and well being of children, youth, and families within cities and the county as a whole. Safe Passages does this by guiding collaboration agreements among public entities and by helping to find new resources and strategically redirect existing ones.

Coordination
Facilitate cross-jurisdictional coordination of efforts targeting children, youth, and families. This is an effort to reduce duplication of efforts and maximize both new and existing resources.

Communication
Safe Passages disseminates information regarding policy development, research, best practices, resource development, and new and existing initiatives. It also markets services to target populations and potential funders. It is an advocacy effort for needed systematic changes.

Research & Evaluation
Safe Passages conducts data gathering, integration, and analysis to continuously assess the well being of children, youth, and families as well as the effectiveness of new and existing strategies to meet the needs of those populations. In addition, Safe Passages conducts ongoing research to Identify and stay current of best practices.

Design & incubation of innovative service delivery systems
Safe Passages use data and best practices to guide the development of innovative cross-agency approaches to better meet the needs of children, youth, and families. It assists in the design of funding/leveraging plans to support implementation, administers the start-up and implementation of strategies to test viability and evaluate effectiveness. It helps to build capacity within public systems to implement innovative strategies, and facilitates the institutionalization of effective strategies within partner entities for long-term implementation.

Resource Development
Administer and coordinate resource development strategies to secure new resources and the redirection of existing resources to perform the functions of the proposed organization and support long term implementation of innovative service delivery systems for children, youth, and families.