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Nearly a year after county supervisors shuttered the detention center, Del Norte County’s Youth Opportunity Center is still a building in transition.

Tucked behind the county’s agricultural department on Williams Drive, the old juvenile hall still bears the trappings of an institution down to the neutral-colored linoleum on the floor and the concertina wire encircling the recreation area outside.

But the Youth Opportunity Center can help steer kids in a good direction even if they’re not under formal court-ordered supervision orders, Assistant Chief Probation Officer Jordan Anderson said.

“We have the formal case loads and then we’re working with families that need additional resources for behavior issues,” he told the Wild Rivers Outpost. “Issues that parents are seeing that’s beyond parental control — curfew issues, truancy issues — they’re non-criminal offenses, but are still at-risk.”

On Friday, while his re-entry staff, Robert Arriola and Ben Valley, played cornhole with two kids at an end-of-summer barbecue, Anderson gave the Outpost a tour of the facility.

The Youth Opportunity Center currently serves between 20 and 30 youth ages 12-17. It gives them a place to shower and do laundry, study and play video games. They can access anger management and financial literacy workshops, yoga and art groups and make up missing school credits.

Anderson, who began his career in probation at Bar-O Boys Ranch in 2005, sees the Youth Opportunity Center providing a variety of services under one roof.

This includes turning the commercial kitchen into a classroom of sorts where teens can earn a food handler’s certificate while preparing a meal they can share with friends and family. They’d learn how to cook and how to work within a budget, Anderson said.

The Family Resource Center of the Redwoods has even spoken of expanding the area’s small greenhouse, adding a few raised beds to create a farm-to-table program that ends with youth earning something they can put on a resume.

Anderson also envisions coopting juvenile hall’s medical room, partnering with the Public Health Branch and offering vaccination clinics and, maybe, a teen health clinic.

“We’ve had Public Health in here a few times doing vaccination clinics with us. That’s proven useful for some of our kids,” he said. “We know that transportation is a barrier for our youth. We’re a rural, spread-out county. We’d really love to continue partnering with our community providers and bring them in here as kind of a one-stop shop for youth services, whether that’s our Behavioral Health, Public Health, DHHS and [Alcohol and Other Drugs]. Bring them in here and let those kids that are receiving services be able to [meet with] those people all at one time.”

In October 2022, Anderson’s superior, Chief Probation Officer Lonnie Reyman, recommended closing juvenile hall, telling supervisors he was unable to meet state staffing regulations.

It took a year for the Board to officially eliminate the juvenile hall division. At Reyman’s recommendation on Sept. 12, 2023, the Board of Supervisors declared the juvenile hall unoccupied and directed staff to notify the Board of State and Community Corrections of its transition to a Youth Opportunity Center.

Reyman told supervisors that this action would allow the county to avoid the state’s regulatory pitfalls should the detention center reopen. The probation department would also maintain annual state fire marshal and environmental health inspections, which would also make for a smoother reopening.

The Youth Opportunity Center officially opened its doors in October 2023, though the detention center stopped housing youth in July 2023, according to Anderson.

Incarcerated youth from Del Norte County are currently in custody at the Humboldt County juvenile hall or at Shasta County juvenile hall.

As of Aug. 8, 2024, two Del Norte County minors were in custody in Humboldt County and one was in custody in Shasta County, Reyman told the Outpost. He said those numbers are pretty low.
Reyman said there are 14 youth under formal court-ordered supervision with his department.

Since transitioning to the Youth Opportunity Center, Reyman said his staff have been conducting walkthroughs with youth and families to let them know how the center could help them.

“Once a kid and a parent agrees that they want to participate, we sit down and work out a case plan of what they’re struggling with, what we are offering and how we can help them connect with some positive things that might address those issues,” he said. “We had the first [family] fully sit down and go through and put down a case plan this last week.”

Reyman said his office has received more than 150 referrals from Del Norte Unified School District as a result of the truancy prevention work it does. If a child is struggling with attendance, he said, they’re able to make up any work they’re missing at the Youth Opportunity Center.

“We’ve been contacting families, contacting kids,” he said. “We’re starting to see some fruit bloom out of that, which is cool.”

According to Anderson, one challenge he and his colleagues have been working to overcome is the idea that a person’s child has to be in trouble with the law to participate in programs at the Youth Opportunity Center. He acknowledged that after nearly a year of operating, the center had its first parent and youth voluntarily commit to a case plan. But there have been more since then, he said.

Developing a case plan involves asking the parent and the youth to open up about what it is they think they need the most, whether it’s working through a trauma in the family or offering positive social engagement.

“When you’re dealing with a kid in an institution, it’s all about heavy programming. It’s like these are what you’re doing while you’re in here, but at the heart of that is building a great rapport with those kids so you can help steer them in a good direction,” Anderson said. “Here, I don’t feel like it’s a big leap. We’re dealing with them outside of custody and I feel like that can build a better rapport because there’s not this authoritative, ‘You have to do what I’m telling you to.’”

Just before transitioning to the Youth Opportunity Center, Reyman told supervisors that involved making cosmetic changes to the building. Nearly a year later, those cosmetic changes are still materializing.

The Probation Department is working on a request for bids for a project manager to oversee a new paint job, lay down new flooring and install new doors, Anderson said. New landscaping is planned for the building’s exterior; this includes planting new apple trees and succulents, Anderson said.

And since no one’s staying in what had been the facility’s residential units, building and maintenance is tackling issues “that you couldn’t address while you’re dealing with the population in there,” Anderson said.

“Showers are being repainted, floors are being redone, plumbing, ventilation, stuff like that to keep it up and running,” he said. “It’s still a county building. We still need to maintain it and make sure it’s functional even if it’s not being used to its original design.”

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