The San Diego County Board of Supervisors chambers was packed. The Suicide and Homicide Audit Committee (SHAC)-

a team of public and private service providers, law enforcement professionals, and children's advocates-reported that most child deaths occurred during the "critical hours" after school-between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.

"Dozens and dozens" of people testified in support of after-school programs-from health, social service, law enforcement, and school officials to the Chamber of Commerce to parents and kids themselves, recalls Dr. Robert Ross, then head of San Diego County's Health and Human Services Agency (HHS). Then came the shoes.

Empty shoes

As the names of more than 100 suicide and homicide victims were read, kids came forward and, for each, placed a pair of shoes on a table. By the end, "shoes were falling off the table," remembers Sandra McBrayer, CEO of The Children's Initiative, the nonprofit that brought key players together.

Victims' parents claimed their children's shoes and talked about what they could have become. Then, unscripted, several youth "took off their shoes and put them on the floor," says McBrayer. "They said, 'We're on the edge. We could be next.'"

The supervisors responded with $1 million for Critical Hours after-school programs at county middle schools and have continued funding since then.

"We'll never have enough money to deal with the tail end of the criminal justice system," reflects Supervisor Greg Cox. "We all realize that we're much better off trying to put money into the preventative end."

After-school advocacy

Large-scale county support for after-school care "was unheard of" before Critical Hours, says Barbara Ryan, director of government relations for Children's Hospital of San Diego. Advocates took their model to Sacramento and helped create the Before and After School Learning and Safe Neighborhoods Program, which this year allocated $70 million to schools serving low-income children.

Then, says Ryan, "Instead of every school district filling out their own application and competing for those tax dollars, we came together and submitted a proposal for the entire county."

"We used the mantra, 'teaching grown-ups to share,'" says Judy McDonald, board member at the Parker Foundation and cofounder of The Children's Initiative. It took "unbelievable perseverance," but the payoff was huge: $5.6 million, the largest after-school grant in the state.

With this money added to local programs, 25,000 elementary and middle-school children at 353 sites now attend free before- and after-school programs, run by a regional consortium that The Children's Initiative coordinates.

Private-sector partners

"In San Diego, a notoriously conservative county.there was no way we were going to advance a children's agenda by a call for bigger government. Public-private collaboration was 'mission critical,'" reflects Ross, now CEO of the California Endowment. "It doesn't matter whether you're liberal or conservative," adds Dr. Rodger Lum, current HHS director. "Children require a lot more help.and we need to identify partners in the broader community who could either volunteer their time or provide funding."

Today, private partners contribute to San Diego's children in many ways:

• By bringing community-based organizations together to figure out what each could contribute, school districts created 37 Critical Hours programs, twice the number expected, says Supervisor Cox. "We got a lot more for our money."
  
  
• Qualcomm, Inc. and other private donors came up with financing to build San Pasqual Academy, a residential high school for foster youth proposed by a juvenile court judge and county supervisors.
  
  
• Price Charities donated $18 million for the City Heights K-16 Educational Pilot, in a partnership with San Diego State University, the teachers' union, the school district, and communities to "close the achievement gap" at three struggling schools.
  
  
• The Children's Initiative, in partnership with San Diego's Promise, uses an innovative web site to match small businesses, which can contribute volunteers or in-kind donations, with children's agencies' "wish lists."
  
  

The Children's Initiative

It wasn't always so. In the early 1990s San Diego's "movers and shakers. didn't work in tandem," says McBrayer. "They had their own silos." Philanthropic leaders began convening public- and private-sector leaders to brainstorm ways to improve outcomes for children.

In 1996, with money from local and national foundations, United Way, and San Diego County, The Children's Initiative was founded. Having this private-sector "neutral convenor" was "absolutely critical," says Ross. "We were asking.people to give up control. You needed to have a safe place.to have those conversations."

"The Children's Initiative is the umbrella for a lot of the changes we've seen," adds Cox. And its successes encourage collaborative approaches at every level.

"There's no question that collaboration helped us" garner a bigger share of after-school dollars, says George Cameron, superintendent of the National School District. Through local collaboration, he adds, "We've been able to bring people into the system-residents, parents, members of the community-who never really shared their voice before."

Lessons learned

Use data to build partnerships: The SHAC data helped advocates argue that after-school hours are "a shared responsibility," says McBrayer, involving health as well as educational and law-enforcement issues. Now the county puts $1.8 million health dollars annually into Critical Hours. SHAC also engaged law enforcement leaders-who have "far more political currency in San Diego than do health and social services," says Ross. "It puts a different face on [the issue] when you can say to the community, 'This is part of our crime control strategy,'" says former San Diego Police Chief Jerry Sanders, now CEO of United Way of San Diego. Because health and law enforcement leaders were involved in gathering the data, their buy-in was assured.

No blame, no credit: As a convenor, says McBrayer, "We don't say, 'You've done wrong.' We say, "How can we make this better?'" Collaboration, adds Mary Jo Buettner, director of the Chula Vista Coordinating Council, means "keeping egos out of the way and not being territorial."

Find common ground: "Often people see advocacy as 'us against them,'" says McBrayer. "What we have found most influential in San Diego County is that each elected official has a pet concern. [We] find out what it is" and speak to that. When the after-school initiative was proposed, "everybody was afraid of teenagers," says Sanders, "and people were looking for answers." So after-school programs "seemed like a reasonable solution."

Identify sources of funding: The "shoes" presentation was a "tear-jerker," says Ross. But drama "doesn't work unless you have some resources to move." Before the presentation, advocates identified surplus funds that enabled the county to create Critical Hours without having to "tax anybody or go into deficit spending," and previewed the strategy with key supervisors, says Ross.

Sustaining collaboration

Despite San Diego's successes, "it takes a lot of time and energy.to keep people glued together," says McDonald. Cameron, who hired a coordinator for National City's collaborative, says it's been hard to fund the position. "The funding world needs some kind of measurable outcome," says McDonald. "I don't think we have been very good at figuring out how to measure the impact of collaboration."

• The Children's Initiative, 858-581-5889, www.thechildrensinitiative.org