The Impact Difference
2 011
W OR D S O F IMPACT
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.
SEPTEM B ER
The Impact System of Care Journey Will Continue By Matt Wojack, System of Care Project Director
Committed Leadership Key to Impact Success By Deb Nolan, Vice-Chairperson Ingham County Board of Commissioners
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
—Lao-tzu
This proverb was often cited when we began our System of Care work here in Ingham County. It seems as relevant today as it did six years ago when we started. Back then we wrestled with our shared values. Could we really strive to be family-driven when we were focusing on youth and families being referred from the Department of Human Services or the Family Division of Circuit Court? What would we call this initiative that sought to change how our county supported youth with mental health and behavioral challenges and their family members? What we discovered was that through our System of Care we could do more, and get better outcomes, than any of us could on our own. Sure, this has made the roles of frontline staff more complicated, with even more pieces to manage. Yet the outcomes are irrefutable. After a few years of working together, we saw a significant reduction in residential placements. There were far fewer children being removed from their families and placed in foster care. Many more youth and caregivers in Ingham County have been connected with needed services to support their families. We have expanded services, adding community-based respite through a licensed facility. We’ve started Therapeutic Foster Care, which further allows more youth to be successfully maintained in the community. We’ve had success in partnering with state agencies to maximize and expand funding, which has allowed us to serve more families than we could have otherwise. All the while, we’ve demonstrated strong outcomes. We have a great county, with outstanding leadership and dedicated frontline staff, all of whom are committed to continually challenging ourselves to improve the outcomes for youth and families. So as we wrap up our funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, let’s celebrate our many accomplishments and recommit ourselves to this shared endeavor, realizing that together we can do more than we can apart, and that we have a community of dedicated people with whom to share the work. The journey of 1,000 miles continues.
Visit www.impactsystemofcare.org for a current calendar of Impact meetings and events and a gallery of Shining Star Award winners.
I joined the Ingham County Board of Commissioners the same year that Impact started as the county’s System of Care. During the past six years, I have watched the initiative successfully navigate the complexities of pulling together child-serving agencies to better help families. As a member of the board’s human services and finance committees, I am responsible for oversight of both the services that we provide to residents and making good use of taxpayer dollars. Impact has really made a difference for children with mental health challenges and their families while saving money by providing the needed services in the home. Serving youth in the community is far less expensive than sending them to residential treatment elsewhere. Another unique feature of Impact is that youth and family members are included in the decision-making, which helps the agencies that make up Impact provide individualized care. I have been moved by the success stories told by families when they have periodically attended commissioner meetings and made reports to the community. We are fortunate that the leadership of Community Mental Health Clinton-EatonIngham, Ingham County Circuit Court – Family Division, and the Ingham County Department of Human Services have committed to providing a System of Care to Ingham County residents. I encourage their continued commitment to this important initiative.
Youth and families are encouraged to participate.
M O RE AR T I C L E S
www.impactsystemofcare.org
Partner Commitment to Impact Is ‘Impressive’ Families Make Difference Daily in Impact Cultural Proficiency as a Journey Staff Dedication Helps Quality Assurance
Being Youth Guided Makes Impact Special Learning Community Supports Skill Development and Agency Collaboration Impact System of Care Recognized at the National Level
Youth Voices Youth Voice Youth Voices Youth Voices
“ The people throughout Impact have made working with them enjoyable. We only wish we could do it more.” “ Impact has accepted us for who we are and don’t judge us for what we have done.” “The last six years have given me memories and stories I will always cherish.” “ The Speak Your Mind Youth Council and the Speak Up Speak Out Youth Speakers Bureau have been a social network for me. The people have become family. Many don’t know, but a lot of us would be in jail without these groups.”
Partner Commitment to Impact is ‘Impressive’ By Marilyn Miller, Project Secretary Impact has definitely been life-changing for me. I have learned much from my co-workers, as well as from partner agencies, family members and youth. One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is the collaboration between system partners. Collaborative work with Ingham County Circuit Court – Family Division, the Ingham County Department of Human Services, Community Mental Health of Clinton-EatonIngham, along with other community agencies, helps to more effectively serve the youth and families of our community. Such collaboration promotes feelings of respect and trust among partners, which helps develop positive and sustained relationships. I am so impressed by the work that system partners have put into the System of Care and their commitment to providing high-quality services for the families of Ingham County. For me, it’s very sad to see Impact’s grant funding end. But I know that our county’s System of Care will continue to thrive, benefiting not only system partners but, more important, the families and youth of our community.
Families Make Difference Daily in Impact By Tiffiany Leischner, Lead Family Contact One thing that I have learned while working at Impact is that I am constantly learning new things. I continue to learn new skills, new perspectives and multiple ways of getting to the goal. After successfully navigating systems, establishing relationships with professionals and working toward common goals for my own daughter, I thought that I would be able to do the same for the next generation of families and for the whole community. I learned that while one person can make a difference, a team can inspire and a community can make a much bigger difference. I would have loved to have had the System of Care philosophy, the values and the team approach for my own family so many years ago. To have professionals to rely on in some of the most challenging and heartbreaking times that you face as a family. To have professionals who can lift you up when you have lost your hope. To have a support group of other families going through the same
thing. To have professionals to help you find answers and a way to go when you feel lost and like a failure in your most important job of being a parent. I see and understand the importance of good communication, being transparent, working through challenges together to get to a common goal – success. I think the most important lesson families continue to teach me is to be grounded and not to forget who I am. I am inspired by the professional who says “to be honest I don’t have an answer either, but we can figure this out together”; the mom who rode her bicycle in a couple of inches of snow to get to a workgroup meeting; and the couple who took four little kids on two buses across town because they wanted desperately to meet other family members. In one sense, it was easy to be the Lead Family Contact because I believe that families can and do make a difference in the system every day, just as professionals do.
Cultural Proficiency Is a Journey By Juaquin Sanchez, Cultural and Linguistic Competence Coordinator When I first started in my role as the Cultural and Linguistic Competence (CLC) Coordinator, we didn’t have a clear indication as to what the CLC Coordinator’s role was. We had data pointing toward disparate treatment of children of color in Ingham County’s systems of care, with a great number of youth being steered toward Juvenile Justice, many of whom potentially had an undiagnosed mental disturbance. Knowing that our grant was time-limited, we decided to create learning opportunities that could be sustained long term, as long as all of our system partners carried part of the load. At the stakeholder level this meant committing their staffs as both participants and facilitators.
Quarterly facilitator trainings were developed to steep the facilitators in the System of Care Values, to help them understand the role that power, privilege and oppression play in our everyday lives, and to give them the tools to become effective module facilitators. The most recent data results from the FY 2011 Agency Discussion Groups state that participants expressed strong support of the Cultural Proficiency Modules and would like more of their peers to attend these learning opportunities. Family members and youth also increasingly state that they feel they are treated with dignity and respect. We have nine facilitators who come from various child-serving agencies, aided by parent representatives who have had children in our System of Care. As we get closer to the end of our grant, we have a clearer understanding of the importance of cultural and linguistic proficiency. We are hopeful that our System of Care Values weather the test of time, and that our system partners will see the benefit of continuing to support the Cultural Proficiency Series.
Impact Values
• Family-Driven • Youth-Guided • Accessible and High-Quality Services
• Culturally and Linguistically Competent Services • Individualized Care
STAFF Dedication Helps Quality Assurance By Katie Van Dorn, Quality Assurance Coordinator Quality assurance has been woven throughout our Impact System of Care (SOC) over the past six years. When Impact was first developing in Ingham County, quality assurance was put into place through a comprehensive Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) process. This CQI process allows for regular review of and conversations about many different aspects of the SOC by using evaluative information. Both the effectiveness and implementation of the SOC values, as well as the services and supports that carry forth those values, are examined through CQI. This commitment to quality can be seen in the staff’s dedication to their families and in the support that managers provide their staff, thus ensuring families get the highest-quality and most responsive care available. For example, all families are offered an appointment within 14 days of having their intake with Community Mental Health of Clinton-Eaton-Ingham. In offering this appointment and having contact with the family, it was assumed that families were
starting services in an acceptable and timely way. However, when looking at the information more intensively, managers saw that most families connect with services quickly, but a few families were not eager to engage in services. Additionally, managers believed that it would be possible to connect all families to services even more quickly than what was currently happening. After collecting this information and then reviewing it as a team, processes were improved and an emphasis was put out to all staff to connect with families more quickly. Now, families are being assigned to staff sooner and they are being seen sooner by those staff than was occurring a couple of years ago. It was the dedication of the managers in recognizing the use of evaluation data to improve services that allowed these changes to occur, thus providing a higher-quality and more responsive service to families and youth.
Being Youth-Guided Makes Impact Special By Jessica Leese, Youth Engagement Specialist Involving youth in the System of Care over this past year and a half has not only been a job for me, it has become my passion. I have always loved working with youth, but being a part of Impact has given me a new appreciation for the extraordinary strength demonstrated by youth with mental health challenges as they face various problems on a day-to-day basis. The youth who have become such a large part of my life have taught me life lessons that I will take with me in whatever life brings my way. I have been taught that patience is not just a virtue; it is a necessity in order to empower and encourage the youth to move forward and to overcome the obstacles within their lives. I have learned that the challenges I see as difficult in their lives are not necessarily the challenges they think are a top priority. I have come to realize that as much as I think I can teach them, they will always be there to teach me more than I can imagine if I keep an open mind and truly listen
to what they are telling me. I have discovered that youth, though still young and with a lot to learn, are the ones who must put their best foot forward to achieve their goals, even if I know I can get them there more quickly. When working with youth, we adults often are challenged to step outside the box. We are frequently confronted with choosing between making sure youth don’t fail and letting youth make mistakes. As professionals, we are sometimes more preoccupied with getting the job done on time and correctly rather than stepping back to look at the bigger picture. The values and principles on which Impact has based its work will continue to guide Ingham County. Keep at the forefront the importance of involving youth in every way. I am confident that given the chance, youth can make good decisions and can be a part of their service planning and part of the decision-making boards across systems.
• Coordinated Care • Collaborative Care
Learning Community Supports Skill Development and Agency Collaboration By Gwenda Summers, Training/ Technical Assistance Coordinator The Learning Community workgroup consists of representatives from partner agencies. It works to identify learning opportunities that are needed in the community and then collaboratively develops a comprehensive training plan to address those needs. The Learning Community works to emphasize training structures that support sustained learning with tailored curriculums, local facilitators and coaching. Each learning opportunity is offered to all partner agencies to participate in jointly. Staff members from partner agencies facilitate each training session. These cross-agency training teams emphasize collaboration and continued skill development of facilitators, create champions for each content area and punctuate the importance of embedding expertise into our local community. Bringing agencies together for joint learning opportunities emphasizes shared learning and collaboration, encourages the understanding of each agency’s perspectives and mandates, and strengthens relationships across systems. Structuring learning opportunities in ways that develop staff over time — by building in coaching, mentoring and modeling — all contribute to a better product. Impact has improved how we, as a community, support our staff to improve services that are offered to youth and families.
www.impactsystemofcare.org
Ingham County’s System of Care 5303 S. Cedar Street, Building 2 Lansing, MI 48911-3800
Mark Your Calendars
Impact System of Care RecognizeD AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL Impact System of Care won three national awards at the Summer 2011 System of Care Community Training held in Chicago last month. The awards were: • Gold ECCO Award in the internal communications category for the 2010 Report to the Community Calendar, newsletters and redesigned website • Bronze ECCO Award in the Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day event category for the 2010 youth art and talent show • Silver HEE Award in the data dissemination category for the 2010 Report to the Community Calendar
www.impactsystemofcare.org
Impact System of Care 5303 S. Cedar Street, Bldg. 2 Lansing, MI 48911 millerm2@ceicmh.org 517-346-9597
The Excellence in Community Communications and Outreach (ECCO) Recognition Program is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Caring for Every Child’s Mental Health Campaign of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services Program for Children and Their Families. The Honoring Excellence in Evaluation (HEE) awards are sponsored by SAMHSA’s Caring for Every Child’s Mental Health Systems of Care public awareness team.