REGION 2 UPDATE

Region 2 Year in Review

Region 2 word of the year for 2022 was resilience. R2, we are resilient. We never give up on one another and assist clients with the best service we can provide. We promoted 19 employees and hired 109 new employees. We implemented enhanced in-take for all R2 and included more I & R. This has been a game changer in how we process intakes.

Bronwyn Freer, Social Service Program Manager, retired, and we hired Peter Hinze as the new PM. At home, the staff is dealing with provider shortages and holding on to cases longer than expected. Still, they are real heroes, and I am very proud of them. In-home units hired 3 NCCs. They assisted the ACH teams and helped RCCM teams with conversions.

We added five new units to social services. 1 Acute Care Hospital team, 2 Residential Care Case Management teams, a Behavioral Health Personal Care team, and an in-training unit.

Our training team is terrific. They had to reconfigure trainings from in-person to virtual. This includes doing staff shadows of client assessments. They facilitated three series of Applied Practice trainings and trained over 60 new staff.

Our Behavioral Health teams continue to work hard with WSH clients. They had 57 discharges from WSH and 98 WSH diversions. Our resources development team had 1601 referrals. This team assisted their peers in finding appropriate residential facilities for clients.

RCCM employees did 592 initial assessments, 3152 annual assessments, and 2422 bed holds.

Our PBS staff processes over 8000 requests for benefits. Caseloads of over 500 clients and still maintain excellent QA results. Go PBS!

Acute Care Hospital onboarded 17 new employees and completed over 950 assessments.

We graduated 16 employees from our Leadership Development program.

Our customer service units continue to support our internal and external customers with a smile.

NFCM received 3290 intakes, completed 1335 assessments, and had 780 discharges.

Erin Klones, DRA, put together an outstanding PowerPoint which outlined R2 2022 year in review. Thank you, Erin.

As you can see, R2 is resilient. And we will forge ahead in 2023.

Acts of Generosity and Kindness

We are wired for generosity and kindness. The benefit of generosity, kindness, and support is a triple win that helps everyone as:

• Showing and giving kindness benefits the giver,

• Receiving kindness benefits the receiver,

• Witnessing kindness benefits the witness. (Davisdon, 2022)

I want to thank those who have stepped up to offer generosity, kindness, and support to our Region, other offices within our Region, and their co-workers. There is no way to capture ALL the hard work and support provided over the past year in this short article. This is just a tiny glimpse of the teamwork we have witnessed. Thank you to:

Region 2 Intake generously allowed two full-time Intake staff to help our Intake team catch up! Region 2 also had volunteers to do overtime to assist with our intake backlog! We are so grateful for the help and support from the wonderful Region 2 team!!

Our Intake team has seen skyrocketing numbers and loss in staff and supervisors but stay resilient and persevere! They have continued to work fast and furiously to catch up and have worked overtime to manage the high volumes of work.

Our clerical teams have helped with Lexis Nexus reports, worked on default and mystery mail, provided hiring support to our supervisors, and provided mailing support to our social services teams to ensure our clients receive the best possible service. We could not do what we do without you!

Our Public Benefit Specialists (PBS) who were able to remain calm and effective while under stress due to the Intake backlog and carrying caseloads in the 400s.

Knowing Intake was struggling with the increased number of referrals, our PBS staff quickly jumped into action by assisting with screening in their assistant units. This creative solution helped alleviate some of the burdens of Intake. It demonstrated their outstanding teamwork and dedication to our vulnerable clients.

Our North area social services teams (Port Angeles and Tacoma) for their teamwork and support in assisting each other to reduce caseloads. Both offices went above and beyond, completing countless assessments for other offices throughout the Region. Port Angles recently took on 90 additional cases from another office. This support was crucial in making sure our clients received timely assessments!

Our Central area social services teams (Tumwater, Aberdeen, Shelton, and Bremerton) have gone above and beyond to help the Shelton and Bremerton offices, who were hit particularly hard with staff shortages and high intake volumes while dealing with their staffing shortages. This team supported and crossed over to help other offices and programs to ensure we met our client’s needs!

Our South area social services teams (Vancouver and Kelso) have sustained the longestrunning staffing shortages in our Region. This team has managed for an extortionary length of time under the stress of high caseloads and very few staff to do the work. Residential went into the full-time rotation twice for eight months to support the inhome team. These offices showed exceptional teamwork and support by stepping up to help each other meet the needs of our clients!

Our NFCM team regionwide have been supportive and generous with their help! Offices supported other offices by taking on additional facilities due to staff vacancies. The NFCM team has helped with in-home assessments, file reviews, and transfers throughout the Region. The SME team has also helped with WSH and hospital referrals and taking on inhome assessments. They have continued to volunteer for overtime to help with struggling in other areas.

Our RSW team persevered through high caseloads and staffing shortages regionwide, particularly in the Tacoma area. Region-wide offices have supported each other by helping each other with intakes, providing coverage when another went on leave, and stepping in to do in-person assessments when someone was sick. They also supported each other by being available for questions and supports on work processes. Great teamwork!

Our SHPC teams onboarded 107 new employees in 2022, a record number. On top of that, the social services team took on new innovative projects such as the OneNote Lean Project, the Stat Tracker Workgroup, and the CDWA Implementation, which spanned over nine months. Both Financial and Social Service SHPCs have regularly supported the offices’ workload by doing overtime to help with intake, carrying caseloads, and helping with supervisor transfers. They continually go above and beyond in their support of the Region.

Our regionwide management team has supported each other and helped each other manage high volumes of work, filling in coverage gaps, interviewing, hiring, tracking, onboarding, and training 88 new SSS3, NCC, and PBS4 employees in 2022. Our supervisors have and continue to carry entire caseloads due to staffing shortages while doing their other duties and onboarding and training new staff. Our supervisors provided incredible support to their teams as well as each other!