Helpline Center CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

There were several components that were instrumental to our project making progress. Increasing the collective understanding of the need for a coordinated social service system in our community was critical to moving our project forward. We were able to accomplish this through building a collaborative of social service organizations and we were also able to accomplish this through outreach to other community groups. When people had a better understanding of the need, our project made sense to them and they were more likely to offer or voice their support. The facilitator spent time with the collaborative sharing data and expertise that outlined the need for a coordinated social service system, which lead to great conversations and a better understanding. We were also given the opportunity to present to several influential groups and boards that gave us the platform to build the understanding. We were able to present to board of directors for the Chamber of Commerce, a community board for a large health care system and to the housing consortium whose membership included financial supporters, landlords and social service organizations.

Another component that was instrumental to making progress was engaging the collaborative to generate a solution to address the need for a coordinated social service system. The collaborative immediately looked to a solution that was technology based to allow agencies to easily communicate with each other and to establish a centralized data system. The part of this solution that we did not realize at first, was the benefit to smaller agencies of having a sophisticated software to better track their clients and services provided. Many of the smaller agencies that were part of the initial small pilot project were using a spreadsheet or paper/pencil to track client service data. The coordinated software gave them the opportunity to track client data, services and outcomes that they previously had not been able to track. This benefit was instrumental to the project progressing as the agencies could immediately see the direct benefit of being part of a coordinated social service system.

Another aspect of our work that was instrumental to our progress, was the overall support and collaborative spirit from the four social service agencies that were part of the small pilot project. These agencies were true partners in testing the solution and willingly invested a tremendous amount of energy and time into the pilot project. They were patient and understanding as new data points were added into the system, procedures were revised and reports for their data collection needed to be modified or updated. The project would not have progressed without their collaborative spirit.

Key lessons learned

One of the key lessons we learned was the need for patience. We learned that change and innovation can not happen overnight and needs to happen in a slow incremental manner to make sure that everyone is supportive of the change and stays on the same page through continued modifications. Our excitement to see the amazing solution generated by the collaborative come to life had to be tempered as we learned the need to be patient was critical. The step from generating the idea to the step of testing the idea involved many meetings and conversations with collaborative members. This process was difficult at times as it moved slowly to ensure that everyone was heard as they provided input from their perspective.

Another key lesson we learned is that change is difficult for people, even when they are supportive of the change. When we began implementing a very small pilot project to test the solution we learned the importance of moving slow and providing constant support to staff at the pilot agencies. We found that it was important to walk along side staff at the pilot organizations through the change process to provide support, answer questions and make modifications as they learned the new system and developed new internal procedures. In many cases, the new coordinated network completely changed how an organization completed an initial intake with a client. We were able to have our collaborative facilitator provide a change management training for all of the pilot agencies, which was very helpful.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The community innovation diagram related to the work we completed through the grant project on several different levels. We definitely built capacity through increasing collective understanding of the need. The diagram depicts this as a continuous process which is so true. Even after we were generating potential problem solving ideas or even testing a small piece of the solution, we were constantly increasing the collective understanding with other key stakeholders and members of the community. Continuing to build the shared understanding has been essential to moving the project forward. The other part of the diagram that we found directly related to our work was the testing and implementing solutions. We had put together a very small pilot project and were constantly learning and then regrouping to improve the process so we circled through that loop multiple times.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

An element that was not included in the diagram was a positive unintended change that occurred through the innovation process. This element of a positive unintended change was instrumental in completing our work. Our identified need was to create a more coordinated social service system and as we worked on implementing this we quickly realized that a secondary unintended change was providing small non-profits with access to a sophisticated software platform. Having access to this software helped them on an individual level truly improve their data collection process, which provided them with tremendous information as they made programming decisions. This allowed change to happen at a system level and at an individual agency level.

Progress toward an innovation

We believe that after our grant project, we are definitely closer to achieving an innovative breakthrough but we still have more work to do before the innovation is effective and sustainable. The grant process allowed us to increase the understanding of the need for a coordinated social service system in our community, it allowed our collaborative to generate possible solutions and allowed us to test an identified solution on a small scale. We believe that the solution has begun to show positive results after a few months, but we don’t know yet the level of effectiveness since it was tested with just a small number of organizations and we have not yet been able to identify how to sustain the solution. We believe that as this project continues to develop long term opportunities exist to build the coordinated network to collect data at a system level on a large scale, improve communication among agencies, identify duplicative programming efforts and to identify unmet needs.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

The additional steps that would be required to reach the breakthrough include implementing and testing the solution we identified during the grant process on a much larger scale by bringing in several more organizations to join the coordinated network. And after additional agencies are added we would need to continue to learn and modify the system to build capacity to meet the data collection/analysis needs, staffing support needs and the software customization needs that would be required to operate the project with multiple partners on a larger scale. In addition, the other work that has only just begun and needs additional progress involves determining how to sustain the coordinated social service network. Even though the conversation of sustainability was started from the beginning, this has proven to be very challenging to secure sustainable funding. At the start of the project we had been hopeful that local governments would step forward, but funding shortfalls eliminated this as an option. Continued work on identifying other funding streams to sustain the project would be required to reach the breakthrough.

What’s next?

We feel it is critical to continue the Sioux Empire Network of Care project. The project has shown tremendous promise to grow in scope and scale to truly become a coordinated social service system in our community. Our next key step is working to identify sustainable funding sources for the project. We have been able to secure a small amount of funding to keep the Sioux Empire Network of Care operational for next several months in 2017 and have now focused our efforts on finding funding for 2018. If sustainable funding is found, our plans would include incrementally adding more organizations to the network over the next few years to build a larger scale for testing the solution. We also envision creating an annual report that can provide de-identified summary data on the number and type of services received by clients and a social service system analysis that includes identifying gaps in services and duplicative programming.

If you could do it all over again…

If we could go back to the start of our grant period and give ourselves one piece of advice…it would be that people really do want to work together to find a solution to an identified problem – they may have different opinions on how that should happen, but when people feel they are heard they are able to join together to make a difference to work on developing and implementing a solution.

One last thought

We have been honored to receive a community innovation grant and have found the overall experience to be rewarding, challenging and enlightening. The process has encouraged conversations about the need for a coordinated social service system in our community, not only among social service agencies but the broader community and that has been very positive.