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WO R D S O F I M P A CT The Impact Difference
Impact is a partnership of child- and family-serving agencies working together with youth and families to provide coordinated services for children with Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED). Impact strives to build and enhance home- and community-based services for young people, believing that a child with SED will become most successful in a fully supported home setting.
F E B R U A R Y
Impact part of national family dialogue Impact System of Care is participating in a national dialogue about the difference between Family Involvement, Family Engagement and Family-Driven and how family interaction in a System of Care fluctuates over time.
topic. They also have provided feedback to the Impact Learning Community for curriculum development.
Being Family-Driven is an Impact value, but not every Impact family will be at that level all of the time. And not every System of Care community defines the family interaction continuum in the same way.
• F amilies and youth are the “Engine of Change,” but they are not bulldozers. • Change occurs only when individuals take personal responsibility and begin to do things differently. • “I learned that I have a voice for my son and his care.”
These are some of the highlights that stand out from the past several months of input from resources and families:
For those reasons, the national work group is developing a talking-point guide that can be used in communities across the country.
• “Speaking up in a court hearing for my child is ok. I have the right to ask questions.” • “Making decisions together, talking things through as a team, ideas, concerns, struggles. It’s all of us together now.” The next step is soliciting national feedback on what has been done thus far and encouraging additional workgroup participation by community stakeholders. There also will be a half-day meeting on the topic in Chicago as part of the July Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health conference.
This effort began in July at the Georgetown Training Institute in Washington, D.C. Impact Lead Family Contact Tiffiany Leischner and Impact parent Jamie Morrow were part of the original session. Since then, a workgroup has formed called the Family Involvement Community of Practice (FI-COP). The workgroup has had monthly conference calls and met face-to-face in Atlanta at the November National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health conference. “This fit in very well with our own community and has been a great opportunity for us,” Tiffiany said. “Locally, the Impact Family Council has been working on Family-Driven care and what it means to us as families, along with what it means to our community.” Members of the Impact Family Council have joined the monthly conference call and reviewed multiple resources on the
Follow us to Facebook Watch the Youth page of impactsystemofcare.org for more information. M O RE AR T I C L E S
www.impactsystemofcare.org
I Received the Services I Needed to Help My New Son I Learned a Different Way to Interact with My Kids Mother of Four Appreciates Impact Support
Impact Has Helped Us Work Together as a New Family Impact Recognizes Partners as “Shining Stars” New Youth Note Cards Available at Jolly Java
FA M I LY - D R I V E N FA M I LY - D R I V E N FA M I LY - D R I V E N FA M I LY - D R I V E N FA M I LY - D R I V E N I received the services I needed to help my new son By Impact Parent Bobbie Hardy I was the mother of four older children until a few years ago when a young man came into my life. He was 10 years old and lived in St. Vincent’s children’s home. He had experienced a lot of hardships and losses. In May 2010, he legally became my adopted son at age 14. John has several behavior disorders. At times it made our life quite difficult. After John came into my life I noticed that we needed more services than what we had at the time. He was going to an individual counselor, but it wasn’t enough and I didn’t feel like I had the chance to be very involved. I wanted to help but it was hard when I couldn’t be included in the process to be able to know how to help. I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do. Love wasn’t enough. There was so much that John was trying to deal with, but couldn’t communicate how he felt. I was seeking help out in the community. I started going to different education seminars looking for solutions to help me cope. Things became so difficult that I wanted to give him back. This was my point of feeling hopeless, of feeling lost and not knowing what to do or how to help or was there even a place that could help. I cried and prayed, and asked
God for a solution. My answered prayer was the solution. John’s Department of Human Services caseworker introduced us to Impact System of Care, and what a relief. She knew how much I loved John and that he had found his home, but now we needed to find supports that could help him reach his potential. I had never heard of Impact before, but she had great confidence that Impact would work. Soon after our intake appointment to figure out what services we needed we had a whole team of people that came to us. We had a home-based therapist, a Family Advocate, a Wraparound facilitator, and we could invite anyone else to come and be a part of our team. For the first time we had supports in every area of John’s life and mine. I looked forward to seeing our team, working together for the benefit of strengthening our family and giving John the opportunity to have a normal life. For the first time we had hope; what a relief. I started to see improvement in John’s overall attitude. He started to be able to open up and communicate with me and others. He started using skills that his therapist taught him. Our team worked with the school and the juvenile and foster care system. He was getting in less
“ Family-driven is about
HEARING
what the family is saying and asking for, and
implementing
that in various different ways.”
trouble at school, which meant that he wasn’t getting suspended as much. He also started to think about what to do and what not to do when he became angry. He even got a mentor. He looked forward to seeing his mentor every week. He loved to go on their outings. He would come home and share about what they did. Eventually he started to see a psychiatrist through Impact. His medications that had been the same for four years were finally reviewed, some of his medications were changed and now he is doing much better. I thank God for Impact. All of the wonderful staff, the ideas, the support, the motivation, the encouragement, they didn’t judge us, they became part of our family. Whenever I needed them, they were always available. When we didn’t have the supports that we needed, before Impact, the feeling of hopelessness, the fear of the unknown, the level of stress you feel as a parent trying to help your child but it’s not working is heartbreaking. But as a parent you know that you can’t give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that there was a way that I could help John, I knew that there was a way to make things better. Fortunately, our caseworker knew about Impact.
I learned a different way to interact with my kids By an Impact Parent Family-driven care for our family was when my daughter was involved with the court system and they saw that we needed more support. So the Ingham County Circuit Court Family Division referred us to Impact and we utilized the services offered. My Family Advocate showed me that I was not alone and connected me to different resources. She taught me about the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and how to have my concerns heard in the school and helped improve my daughter’s school experience. My therapist was helpful in that she worked with my daughter and my family on the consequences of actions. She showed me a different way to interact with my kids.
Impact Values
• Family-Driven • Youth-Guided • Accessible and High-Quality Services
Mother of four appreciates Impact support By an Impact Parent I’m the mother of four children, with one child who has had many struggles and challenges. He had a terrible time in kindergarten, where he was supposed to have the best time of his life learning and meeting new friends. As time went by, my son had a difficult time following directions, staying in his chair and staying on task. He tried and tried very hard and at times he would put himself into a time out. My heart ached for him. I couldn’t understand why he was having such a problem and wondered if there could be hereditary medical or mental health challenges. I was adopted and didn’t have access to my own medical history. I made several appointments for us to see a therapist and tried to get the help we needed. Many times no good or bad answer was provided. We saw therapist after therapist and my son had many diagnoses. Help came in March of 2008 from the Ingham County Circuit Court Family Division. Later that year, we were introduced to Impact. Needless to say, we still had our bumps in the road, but we had a great supportive team to help us along the way. My son was in the court system and had a home-based therapist who he could talk to, a Child and Family Team to discuss what was working and what wasn’t working, and what we could do to improve. One of the changes made was finding a better school that knew how to work with a child that had Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) and
• Culturally and Linguistically Competent Services • Individualized Care
• Coordinated Care • Collaborative Care
“ Family-Driven
strive
means to for nothing but the
best of what
family members can achieve together and as individuals.” getting the support and plans in place to help him with the adjustment. During this period there were challenging moments, denial, and refusal to take medications prescribed by a doctor. This later became an order of the court as well. This meant as a family we had to stay strong and work together to accommodate this son while making sure my other three children were okay with accepting the change of a new safer environment and a better school system. My son began to improve and continued improving. Twenty-two months later, he was released from probation. As a family member, I appreciated the help the community, Court, and Impact services provided to keep our family together.
Impact has helped us work together as a new family By Impact Parent Katina Matthews My family consists of many different personalities and various traditions. We had to learn how to all work together to make our home more livable. When people living in the same home do not work together, it makes things very difficult at times. We had our Impact Child and Family Team help us with working together as a family. Family-driven, to us, means working together as a family and not singling anyone out. Family-driven also means we as parents, and professionals, and everyone involved work together. It is, as a family, having a voice in our children’s care and decisions in every aspect of their care. I am a strong believer in the idea of Impact bringing family members into the loop of the
decisions made for our children in the future. As many may know, for a very long time when parents had problems with their children, the parents were blamed for the children not going to school, getting into trouble, etc. The Family-Driven value that Impact has taken on is the best thing they could have done for our children. They will finally get the help needed. Also, we are strong believers, as Impact has helped our family a lot with how to be a family leader, how to advocate for our children, which is huge for foster parents who are very new to all the ways of dealing with things that challenge us every day now. Our team is family-driven and works with many agencies daily. They have helped our small children we are adopting with their diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, alcohol-
related neurological disorder, sensory issues, feeding issues, learning disabilities and more. Our Child and Family Team went to our child’s high school to meet with school officials about the steps required to help our child graduate. We feel that without the knowledge and compassion of Impact, we would still be having the same issues with no idea how to handle them. Now we know how to handle their everyday lives. We can finally make them feel comfortable in their own skins and that they can enjoy life with us. We look forward to working more with Impact and having the learning experiences they have and working with others.
www.impactsystemofcare.org
Ingham County’s System of Care 5303 S. Cedar Street, Building 2 Lansing, MI 48911-3800
Mark Your Calendars
Impact Recognizes Partners as “Shining Stars” The Impact System of Care staff has created a Shining Star Award to recognize individuals at partner agencies who go the extra mile to advance the initiative. Award winners are nominated based on the recommendations of the recipient from the previous month. The monthly award consists of a traveling trophy and notebook, in which peers write words of praise and encouragement. The latest recipients were:
• D ecember – Yasheema Marshall, Ingham County Circuit Court Family Division, Juvenile Court Officer (FSS Program)
• J anuary – Michelle Sanchez, Wraparound, Client Service Facilitator
New Youth Note Cards Available at Jolly Java Note cards featuring paintings created by Ingham County youth are for sale at the Jolly Java in the Community Mental Health Authority building at 812 E. Jolly Road in Lansing. The paintings were created in recognition of National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day. Explanations of the paintings are included on the backs of the colorful cards. The packet of six note cards is the second set produced to raise funds for Impact System of Care youth activities. The note cards also are available from Impact; contact LouKesha Lee at (517) 346-8108 or leelo@ceicmh.org.
Visit www.impactsystemofcare.org for a current calendar of Impact meetings and events.
www.impactsystemofcare.org
Impact System of Care 5303 S. Cedar Street, Bldg. 2 Lansing, MI 48911 schulz@ceicmh.org 517-346-9597
Youth and families are encouraged to participate.