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If you are looking at this site because you have an order from a criminal or traffic court or a probation department to do community service or volunteer work, you just call the Court Referral Program at 707/573-3360 to start the process to complete your assigned hours.
Program Information
The Volunteer Center Court Referral Community Service Program is the referral agency for residents of Sonoma County who are assigned community service work by the courts or probation. The program provides placement, follow-up, monitoring and reports on offenders referred to complete community service work. Those referred to the program may be from Traffic Court, Adult Diversion Services, the Adult and Juvenile Probation Departments, or directly from the criminal and civil courts with conditional sentences. Referrals for community service work are made in lieu of fines or jail, as a condition of diversion or dismissal, or as an independent, sometimes mandated sentencing option.
Work assignments are made on the basis of a face to face interview to determine the client's skills, availability and limitations. Clients are matched to a community not for profit agency to do a wide variety of tasks. All of these tasks enhance the ability of the agencies to provide services to the community. The work assignment involves the offender with the community in a positive, constructive way that benefits both the offender and the community.
Interviews are done by appointment and only at The Volunteer Center in Santa Rosa. Work assignments are available in all parts of the county.
A program fee is charged for each referral. The fee is based on the number of hours of work assigned. Contact program staff for the current fee schedule. Waivers or reductions in fees must be arranged with the Program Director.
A person sentenced in Sonoma County, who lives outside of this county, should contact program staff for instructions on how to arrange to do the assigned work where he lives.
A person who was assigned community service work in some other county or state and lives in Sonoma County should arrange a transfer to this program from the sentencing jurisdiction. For assistance, telephone program staff.
Program Accomplishments
During the 2006/07 fiscal year, the Court Referral program received 4,690 referrals to the program; 3,481 adults and 1,209 juveniles. Ninety-four percent (94%) of these came from Sonoma County courts. The remaining six percent (6%) were referrals for Sonoma County residents sentenced in other jurisdictions and transferred to us from other community service programs. In return, about six percent (6%) of those referred to our program by Sonoma County courts were transferred through our program to do their assigned community service hours in other California jurisdictions or in other states.
During 2006/07, Court Referral staff interviewed and arranged work assignments for 3,364 clients. Eighty percent (80%) of all clients that were interviewed and placed at work assignments completely finished their assigned hours of work. Juvenile clients were closed with a success rate of 83%.
Court ordered workers through our program provided 106,826 hours of work to sites throughout Sonoma County in 291 or more non-profit or public, tax supported agencies. Juvenile clients worked 30,138 of the hours. The work includes many different kinds of tasks all over the county; manual labor in parks, graffiti paint-out, help with mailings, data entry, coaching youth teams, serving meals to the elderly or indigent, sorting food at the food bank, helping in thrift shops, phone line work, friendly visiting with hospitalized elders and many other tasks.
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