Total Dollars Awarded
by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2000 to 2004):
$ 477,000
Grantee: National
University, La Jolla, CA
Co-funders: Alliance
Health Care Foundation and The California Endowment
Primary Objective:To
address the mental/behavioral health needs of the
four East African Refugee/Immigrant communities located
in San Diego, California
Accomplishments:
- Successfully completed assessment and education
and provided clinical services through outreach
to more than 1,000 community members
- Successfully helped juveniles complete
probation without any further offense
- Successfully advocated for families to receive
housing aid they deserve
- Successfully applied for aid for individuals
who are diagnosed with mental illness
- Successfully educated and completed diagnostic
assessments and helped individuals receive mental
health treatments while they received traditional
treatments
- Successfully supplemented and created working
relationship with Juvenile courts, Social service,
and San Diego city schools, psychiatric health
providers
- Successfully completed workshops and trainings
for different agencies on the project model and
culture of the four communities which has resulted
in the model being identified as a promising practice
model to serve all other communities
Challenges:
- Misrepresentation of the project service and
philosophy by other agencies to derail and confuse
community members
- Request for service by community members outside
working hours
- Community members putting blame on the project
staff because of misunderstanding of entitlement
- Gaining acceptance within the service providing
agencies
- Keeping with what is acceptable and what the
individual community member wants
Lessons Learned:
- Develop clearly stated MOU with fiscal agency
- Budget to hire project administration staff
- Budget to contract with full time forensic psychologist
- Do a better line item budget for evaluation
- Budget for project manager
- Budget for grant writer
Sustainablilty: To
Identify grants and to identify billable services
Graduates
2003
