City to identify needed social services, streamline existing ones

BARSTOW • The City of Barstow is counting on its credibility as a government body to successfully create a master plan that would identify and streamline the social services available to residents, an endeavor that many non-profits have been unable to pull off.

“(There have) been attempts to try and quantify and identify existing services,” said Jeanette Hayhurst, the city’s former parks and recreation manager, who began her new duties as community services director on Oct. 12. Those duties include acting as a liaison between local non-profit service agencies like Desert Sanctuary and the Barstow Senior Center and the city.

“I believe the city will get tremendous cooperation,” she said. “There’s a power from the city government doing it instead of one of these separate agencies.”

The social services master plan would identify what services are available and determine what is needed. For example, the community doesn’t need another battered women’s shelter, Hayhurst said, but issues like access to transportation needs to be addressed. The master plan update referral lists, making sure the all the information is current. It will also work to identify funding sources to fund services not already available.

Even though she has already begun working on the plan, Hayhurst said completing it is one of her key goals for 2010. Ultimately the plan will be the work of collaboration between the city and executive directors from non-profits. Already the executive directors from New Hope Village, Desert Manna and Desert Sanctuary, and Jeff Eason, president of the Barstow Senior Center, are aware of the project and have agreed to participate, Hayhurst said.

As president of the senior center, Eason said the city’s social service master plan would be able to allocate available funds to where it’s needed. The plan will eliminate the burden of higher utility bills on the senior center, as well as help maintain its nutrition program to home-bound seniors.

“I’m on board with it all the way,” he said. “What I think the city’s doing is it’s allowing different non-profit organization sin our community to be able to allocate the funds for special projects.”

Desert Sanctuary Executive Director Peggy Fries said when it comes to identifying the services the community needs, there have been a lot of task forces and a lot of wasted time. The social services master plan is a team approach to addressing or even eliminating a problem.

“You can get the social service leaders, leaders of the school district and leaders of county offices to sit down and identify problems until the cows come home,” she said. “But when it gets to let’s figure out how to address them, the wheels come completely off. I think this is going to help tremendously.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com