Programs

Martha Madrid
Associate Director

Non-Clinical Services

Welcome to the Orange County Bar Foundation's Non-clinical Services! As Director of our Diversion, Health Education and Mentoring services, I am proud to say our organization is providing nationally recognized best practice and culturally sound programs that Orange County families can truly benefit from. The Foundation continually remains apprised of the changes taking place in our community, its demographics, crime statistics, campus trends and it's rapidly changing environmental factors. Today our young people are faced with tremendous pressure to engage in behaviors such as dropping out of school, gang involvement, substance abuse and early sexual activity. As an organization we are constantly working to develop best practice models that offer families prevention as well as intervention programs in order to help our youth succeed.

Giving young offenders an opportunity to maintain a clean juvenile record, our flagship programs SHORTSTOP and Programa SHORTSTOP have for over 20 years provided culturally competent legal awareness in lieu of prosecution for juveniles and their parents. These court approved programs have a combined 88% success rate that those graduating the program do not re-offend.

To encourage and support high school students to pursue higher education the Foundation assists young women to graduate from high school and prepare for college with its Higher Education Mentoring Program. Providing each participant with a role model / Mentor, over 55 program graduates are currently attending universities throughout California and back East! This year the program expanded to now includes young men from Santa Ana schools.

A startling change in our community is that Orange County Latinas are one of the fastest growing populations to become infected with HIV/AIDS. The majority are not IV drug users or prostitutes; they are heterosexual females whose partners have HIV/AIDS. Through The Hermana Project the Foundation is giving participants the knowledge, pride and skills to actively protect themselves from becoming infected. Evaluation of the program and the data collected shows we are making statistically significant changes in the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of our participants.

Nazly Restrepo
Associate Director

The Youth & Family Clinical Services

The Youth & Family Clinical services offer family and individual therapy for youth and their families in Orange County. Our clinical services provide substance abuse prevention and treatment, behavioral issues and prevention of Hep/HIV/AIDS for at-risk and/or re-entry youth. We also provide clinical assessments and case management services. Our clinical programs use evidence-based models and best practices to ensure the best program was chosen for the target population. In addition, our clinical programs have rigorous evaluation components to continue quality assurance and provide outcome results. Our clinical programs include: Stop Short of Addiction, Youth Transitional Intervention Program and Chicas Con Fuerza.

Our therapists are registered with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences and are supervised by a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Our staff are guided by the National Association of Social Work Code of Conduct. We also provide internships opportunities for MSW and BSW students in our clinical programs.