By LESLIE BROWN

Staff Writer

How rampant is drug and alcohol use among Island teens? How frequent is domestic violence? What are the Island’s assets, and how can they be better deployed to build a stronger and more vibrant community?

Several Islanders, with funding from the state, are in the process of creating a community-based network in an effort to answer such questions and facilitate a community-wide conversation about the kinds of programs and interventions the Island needs.

Called the Vashon Healthy Community Network, the collaboration is a reincarnation of a group that existed several years ago but fell apart for a variety of reasons, including the state’s inability to continue funding it.

The new network, a citizen-run group working closely with Vashon Youth & Family Services (VYFS), has received a $70,000, two-year appropriation from the state to enable it to get off the ground and begin the work of assessing Vashon’s needs and communicating them with the wider community.

“We really don’t know what our situation is,” said Claudia Gross-Shader, the communications chair for the newly formed group. “We don’t really have hard data on how many are living in poverty or the frequency of domestic violence. … A real benefit of this network is to set some community priorities around actual, quantifiable statistics.”

“There’s a need for us to know more about ourselves on Vashon,” she added. “And the network could play a great role in that.”

The network, funded by way of a state agency called the Family Policy Council, won’t provide direct services. Rather, it will work closely with VYFS and other service providers on Vashon to determine the issues in need of research, provide grants to individuals or agencies to undertake that research and support agencies in finding the funds to offer the kinds of services or programs the research suggests the Island needs, said Carl Winge, who chairs the group.

“It’s a long-term effort, and we’re not in a hurry,” he added. “Our priority is to sustain the effort over a long period of time.”

The Vashon Healthy Community Network has, however, already begun its work.

The first order of business is getting a better handle on teen health by fully analyzing a recent state-issued survey of Island youth, which explores a wide range of issues, including young people’s feelings about safety and violence, their attachment to school and their attitudes towards drugs and alcohol. The raw data is in but is hard to comprehend because of Vashon’s small sample size, said Sam Collins, executive director of VYFS. So with support from the new network, Collins has brought in a University of Washington graduate student to pore over the results and offer a meaningful interpretation of them, he said.

“The hope is that when we present the data, the community says ‘Wow, this is what’s showing up for us,’ and (service providers) can then use that information to write some grants and start some programs,” Collins said.

Under the Family Policy Council’s guidelines, communities are supposed to focus on a handful of issues of importance to children, youth and families, choosing from among seven problem areas established by the council. Vashon’s network hired a consultant, Debra Boyer, to interview 30 key people in the community to help it identify those issues, Gross-Shader said. The four the network came up with as a result of the interviews are: youth substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect and dropping out of school.

Vashon is better off than a lot of communities in its list of social ills, she added. But even at that, she said, it’s clear there are many people on the Island who are struggling, she said.

“One of the things that came out in the interviews is that families are experiencing stress — and stress is something that can be experienced at all economic levels,” she said.

But the goal is not simply to look at what’s wrong on Vashon, she said; the Island has a lot of strengths, she noted, and the hope is that it could become a model for other communities.

“The state recognizes that Vashon is so uniquely positioned. We have so many wonderful, dedicated professionals on the Island,” she said. “The state sees that as a huge asset, and they’re expecting great things from us.”

Such networks are in place in 39 communities across the state, all acting as community-based laboratories that can help social service providers and public agencies tailor services to fit their community’s needs and bring a range of both professionals and concerned citizens to the table, said Laura Porter, the staff director to the state’s Family Policy Council.

The networks, she said, are seen as quasi-governmental agencies or special purpose districts, with a goal of reducing the major social problems afflicting families and children. Launched about a decade ago, the approach has won accolades across the country, and some states have followed suit, Porter said. What makes this approach stand out, she said, is that it’s one of the few that brings both professionals and citizens together in a collaborative fashion and gives them the tools to test out their theories by measuring outcomes and results.

“It’s a learning lab at the local level,” she said.

Vashon lost its funding for its previous network, called the Vashon-Maury Island Community Public Health and Safety Network, in 2001 in large part because funds to the council were cut, and the Legislature directed the agency to focus its funding on the “highest performing networks,” Porter said.

“We would expect that with any collaborative entity, there are years when things are sailing along and years when people are regrouping,” she said. “We caught Vashon in that down cycle.”

Despite its eventual collapse, the prior network made a difference on Vashon, Collins said. Research generated by the network identified the Island’s great weakness in serving children birth to five, leading VYFS to launch what is now a thriving array of programs for families with young children.

When the network folded, the Island’s social service professionals — therapists, counselors, public school leaders and VYFS staff — were already meeting as the Vashon Island Prevention and Intervention Team and partially filled the void the defunct network left, Collins said. But because VIPIT is comprised only of professionals, it doesn’t bring elected officials, community representatives and other key players to the table — which is the beauty, Collins said, of a community network.

Collins, who co-chairs VIPIT, said that initially there was some friction between the budding network and VIPIT, but that has largely dissipated, and the two groups are now working collaboratively.

“Over the past year and a half, we’ve been able to define rolls that are symbiotic,” he said.

Meanwhile, the network is poised to release some of its data and begin the work of pulling the community together.

In February, Gross-Shader said, the network plans to host what she calls “a community conversation” — an event that she hopes will draw hundreds of people together to examine the results of the Healthy Youth Survey and discuss ways to respond to it. After that, she said, the group plans to hold a “stakeholder symposium” — a smaller gathering of professionals, community representatives and elected officials, some of whom will likely form the group’s new board.

Porter, from the state’s Family Policy Council, said she’s pleased with the network’s approach.

“The level of commitment is very impressive,” she said. “And that’s what it takes. Vashon has rich resources in its people. As people understand what the network is supposed to do, I think you’ll have many people who can and will offer a lot.”