CSUF Social Science Research Center’s work with nonprofits recognized

Excerpted from the Orange County Register

By Greg Mellen

"When Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the new HOPE Center in Fullerton a few weeks ago, he gushed about the facility as an example of what can be accomplished with collaboration that is “all about data, all about outcomes.”

The  Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement Center brings together an array of social service and mental health providers and personnel, law enforcement, and public safety services. Teams can be dispatched quickly when and where needed to connect individuals experiencing street homelessness with immediate aid and appropriate services, and gather and share real-time data for positive outcomes.

To date, the HOPE Center is perhaps the pinnacle achievement of the North Orange County Public Safety Collaborative, a coalition of police, local government and nonprofit groups from 11 North Orange County cities.

For all the political capital that can be drawn from the opening of something like the HOPE Center, it merely underscores an emphasis on collaboration and regional approaches to what the governor described as “vexing societal issues."

Much of the groundwork for the collaboration, collection, analysis, and sharing of data and improving outcomes, is being conducted by the CSUF Social Science Research Center (SSRC) and its director, Laura Gil-Trejo.

Working from classrooms in the basement of McCarthy Hall on the Cal State Fullerton campus, Gil-Trejo and her staff have been working for the past five years with the Collaborative to help support projects such as the HOPE Center.

State Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, helped form the Collaborative in 2017 and has been instrumental in raising $27.8 million in state funding for the coalition, 60% of which has gone to 60 community-based programs focused on youth violence prevention and intervention, reentry services for the formerly incarcerated, and homeless outreach."

Read the full article here.