The excellent quality of the services provided to youth and families are driven by the quality and diversity of the San Diego CHOICE Program's personnel. The program is lead by experienced administration with several having over 20 years of experience in the human service field. Since its inception in 1996, the program has strived to hire staff with varied educational and experiential backgrounds to enhance the workings of the program. Forty-five percent of CHOICE personnel have second language capabilities, primarily Spanish.

To further support and train program staff in the delivery of their responsibilities, the CHOICE Program often consults or contracts with professionals including psychologists, college faculty, safety trainers, management specialists and licensed therapists. Our service staff is primarily comprised of young professionals dedicated to helping youth and their families throughout San Diego County. Staff is recruited from colleges and universities throughout the country with various backgrounds and skills. Former CHOICE Staff are often hired by public and private human service organizations such as probation departments, health and human services agencies, community based organizations and school districts because of the excellent experience and training received while with the program.

The concepts of the CHOICE Program are built on a service learning approach of hiring young professional and giving them an opportunity to gain valuable work experience while making a contribution to the greater community. The CHOICE Program has developed a comprehensive staff development program to give service and management staff the opportunity to learn skills necessary to become effective and successful human service personnel. We begin with the CHOICE Orientation during the first 30 days. Most of this period involves shadowing a more experienced team member. The new staff becomes acquainted with the youth and families that CHOICE serves, learn policies and procedures, and attend the following training seminars:

Ongoing staff development training is offered every Wednesday morning with CHOICE managers, professional consultants and trainers to address numerous topics including these in-service training components: 

YOUTH SERVICE WORKERS:

The CHOICE Youth Service Workers are recent college gradutes who agree to dedicate a year of service to the job. The position involves a very rigorous work schedule often spending long hours including weekends, actively working in San Diego County communities.

RESPONSE WORKERS:

The CHOICE Response Workers are experienced young professionals who manage an individualized caseload of 10 to 15 youth / families. Their interventions stablize youth and family behaviors as well as prevent out-of-home placements.

FAMILY SERVICES SPECIALISTS:

The CHOICE Family Services Specialists provide limited family and parent services to families throughout San Diego County. The Specialists use their group facilitation skills to conduct and coordinate formal family support activities including parent education and parent support groups.

STAFF RECRUITMENT:

The CHOICE Program continuously recruits recent college graduates from across the state and nationally. Our active recruitment plan includes attending several university job fairs, utilizing university recruitment resources, employment advertisements and other means of promoting the program to over 300 career centers. During a given year the program will hire over 40 workers from various backgrounds and academic majors. Among the colleges and universities that the CHOICE Program annually recruits from are:

contact us at: choice@projects.sdsu.edu
San Diego CHOICE Program , 4283 El Cajon Blvd. ,  Suite 115 , San Diego, CA  92105-1254  USA  Phone: 619.594.2525