In San Diego, the most promising work in youth mental health is not happening in silos. It is happening in partnership.
That was the message Saturday night as three organizations received official proclamations from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for bringing trauma-informed care to the young people and families who need it most: Community Wraparound; Learn4Life and its Trauma-Resilient Educational Communities (TREC) model; and Resiliency Technologies, Inc. The evening also marked the formal entry of Community Wraparound, TREC and Resiliency Technologies as Live Well San Diego Recognized Partners. Recognized Partners make a formal commitment to the county’s vision of a region that is Building Better Health, Living Safely and Thriving, joining a network of organizations whose aligned efforts give residents tools to be self-sufficient and, together, do far more than each can do alone.
Each honoree brings something different. One is a street-level mentoring program run by people who have lived what their mentees are living. One is a network of public high schools that rebuilt its culture around trauma science. One is a technology company that helps partner agencies coordinate care and puts peer stories of resilience in front of young people at the moment they need them. Together, they make the simple case that trauma-informed care works best when done in partnership rather than in silos.
Fifteen years of turning lived experience into leadership
The linchpin of the evening was Community Wraparound, which is celebrating 15 years of guiding gang-involved youth into trauma-focused programming. What sets the organization apart is who does the guiding. Its mentors are leaders with lived expertise: people who came up through gang life, experienced life in custody, and came home determined to keep the next generation out of prison.
Community Wraparound founder Pastor Jesus Sandoval marked the milestone sharing powerful stories of hope and healing, and Sonny Sandoval, frontman of the San Diego band P.O.D., delivered a passionate keynote.
That work happens hand in hand with law enforcement. Community Wraparound partners with the San Diego Police Department on community safety coordination and neighborhood-level violence interruption, and it receives municipal funding from the City of San Diego, including through the city’s Peacemaker Project. With the police department and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, the organization helped launch “Peace in the Park,” which reclaims neighborhood parks for families and brings medical, educational, mental health, employment and social services directly to residents.
The mentors fill a gap no agency can. They stay present in the neighborhood long after probation closes a case and stops checking in.
That collaboration was on full display last night. San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl grew emotional as he spoke about the power of Community Wraparound’s work alongside community policing.
When a teenager describes a gang as the only family that ever showed up, a Community Wraparound mentor can answer from direct experience. The organization’s vision is communities restored by leaders with lived-experience community mentoring, juvenile justice and family stability case management, youth civic leadership, and programming that brings whole families into the process.
Underneath it all is a principle the field has come to accept. Many young people in the juvenile justice system carry significant childhood adversity, and Community Wraparound’s stated goal is to break the cycle of re-traumatization.
Learn4Life and TREC: reaching hearts before heads
Learn4Life is a network of nonprofit public high schools committed to breaking the dropout cycle. Its students have often struggled in traditional classrooms: many are behind in credits, working, parenting, or returning after dropping out. Learn4Life meets them with personalized, one-on-one instruction, flexible schedules, career training, and wraparound services, all delivered through trauma-informed practice.
The engine behind that practice is TREC, the Trauma-Resilient Educational Communities model, which Learn4Life built on the science of adverse childhood experiences in collaboration with ACEs pioneer Dr. Vincent Felitti. Its guiding idea is that before a school can reach a student’s head, it has to reach the student’s heart. TREC took root more than a decade ago at Diego Valley East Charter School in El Cajon. Today every Learn4Life employee is trained and credentialed in trauma-informed foundations, schools use restorative approaches instead of punishing behavior that may be a trauma response, and educators can earn a Trauma-Resilient Professional certification carrying continuing education units through UC San Diego.
The results show up on transcripts. Learn4Life has reported that students who engage with TREC resiliency programs earn 17 percent more credits per learning period than students who do not.
The partnerships already run deep. Community Wraparound has trained Learn4Life teachers and staff to recognize the phases young people move through on the way into gang involvement, so educators can step in earlier.
Resiliency Technologies: peer stories at the point of need
Resiliency Technologies, co-founded in 2014 and led by President and CEO Robyn Hussa Farrell, carries the same mission into the digital space. RT is the company behind Sharpen® DTX, a clinical decision support and triage platform for pediatric behavioral health, built on 20 years of research in trauma-informed best practices that helps schools, clinics, and community organizations connect young people to the right support and comprehensive mental health literacy training, with a focus on suicide and substance use prevention.
At the heart of Sharpen® DTX is its library of more than 700 modules and 4,000 videos, which centers peers and people with lived experience describing what helped them through moments of resilience, of strength, and of deciding to reach out for help. For a young person who would never walk into an office and ask for help, hearing someone who looks and sounds like them talk about getting through can be the first step. The approach is backed by more than 30 studies across more than 20 research partners and institutions.
The fit with the evening’s other honorees is direct. Community Wraparound proves the power of lived experience face to face. TREC builds trauma-resilient cultures inside schools. Sharpen® DTX extends those same principles to the health system partners young people need, supercharging the counselors and clinicians who support them before, during or after a moment of crisis.
Resiliency Technologies research partners from the San Diego State University School of Public Health joined the celebration. They are working with the company on programs to be implemented at San Ysidro Health – a reminder that the partnerships celebrated last night reach from the street and the classroom all the way to the clinic.
Better together
Partnership was the word of the night, and it may be the most important word in prevention. Trauma does not stay inside one system. It follows young people from home to school to the street to the clinic, and the response has to follow them too.
The room reflected that. Alongside the honorees were District 1 County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, whose district includes San Ysidro; San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl; Pastor Jesus Sandoval, founder of Community Wraparound; and Chida Warren-Darby, Director of the City of San Diego’s Office of Boards and Commissions, which administers the city’s Peacemaker Project.
Last night’s honorees showed what prevention and resiliency building looks like at scale: mentors who have been there, schools built to heal, and tools that put hope within reach.
Sources
Business Wire: Learn4Life mission https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210506005289/en
City of San Diego: Peacemaker Project partner page https://www.sandiego.gov/staging/peacemakerproject/partners/community-wraparound
Community Wraparound https://communitywraparound.org/
Community Wraparound: About Us https://communitywraparound.org/about-us/gang-prevention-and-intervention-mentorship-youth-development-in-san-diego-6459234
Community Wraparound: Network of Partners and Supporters https://community-wraparound.ueniweb.com/
Community Wraparound: Peace in the Park https://communitywraparound.org/services/community-services/community-empowerment-and-family-unity-150369714
County News Center: New County Supervisor Sworn In, Board Chair Named https://www.countynewscenter.com/new-county-supervisor-sworn-in-board-chair-named/
KPBS: Conference Is Latest Effort To Professionalize Street Outreach By Ex-Offenders https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2018/09/20/conference-latest-effort-professionalize-street-ou
KPBS: San Diego beefs up police patrols in Gaslamp Quarter sweep https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2026/09/15/san-diego-beefs-up-police-patrols-infrastructure-in-gaslamp-quarter-sweep
Learn4Life: Can Mentoring in High School Keep Teens Out of Gangs? https://learn4life.org/newsroom/press-releases/can-mentoring-in-high-school-keep-teens-out-of-gangs/
Learn4Life: Trauma-Resilient Education https://learn4life.org/about/programs/trauma-resilient-education/
Live Well San Diego: Become a partner https://www.partnerportal.livewellsd.org/become-a-partner/
Live Well San Diego: Learn4Life's Focus on Trauma-Resilient Education https://www.livewellsd.org/Home/Components/News/News/393/153
Live Well San Diego: Why become a Recognized Partner https://www.livewellsd.org/i-want-to/partner/become-a-partner
PACEs Connection: TREC https://www.pacesconnection.com/g/learn4life-aces-connection/collection/trauma-resilient-educational-communities?nc=1
PACEs Connection: TREC website launch and Trailblazer Award to Dr. Vincent Felitti https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/our-trauma-resilient-educational-communities-trec-model-s-website-launched-on-1-25-24-with-our-award-ceremony
Resiliency Technologies https://www.sharpenminds.com
Trauma-Resilient Educational Communities (TREC) https://www.treceducation.com
"In San Diego, the most promising work in youth mental health is not happening in silos. It is happening in partnership."
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