Communication Strategy

Jamie:

We had the same kind of participation. The “Purple Team” was made up of staff from public and private agencies, and they went to individual staff meetings to prepare participants for the mini-summit.  Everyone knew what we’d be talking about, what they were to bring to the table, and so they were able to come ready with some ideas. We actually used the family team meeting model and applied it to the mini-summit, and it really paid off in participation!

We were able to delve right into the strategy development phase, which is what everyone really wanted most. Many ideas were centered around clarifying expectations.  Because of the collaborative nature of the mini-summit, the conversations we had were so informative. No one needed to be cautious with questions or realities – everyone stayed professional and honest, and we figured out ways to establish that clarity.

The other piece was communication, and again – the environment made it possible for everyone to have realistic conversations and produce some great ideas.

It was the same story when we looked at our challenges, strengths and strategies for improvement. We’re all working toward the same goal, but an increase in communication and collaboration on the front end is going to get us closer to the goal. In our strategies, we literally wrote in shared responsibility for communication.

Where can we really create change?

Connie:

We let the team determine the major areas that we should talk about. First we wrote down everything that we could think of that we thought we could improve. Then we asked ourselves, “What can we take off from this list that will really create change?"

The team landed on family team meetings and family interactions – really looking at that process and coming up with a common understanding among all the professionals involved, and strategies to improve the process.

We purposefully mixed up the discussion groups for the maximum diversity of roles, experience, and background, and then went to work.  One really impressive observation I had was about the discussions themselves. We had identified champions of the collaborative process early on, and they had been a part of the monthly planning sessions leading up to the mini-summits, with the understanding that they would act as facilitators. But it ended up we didn’t even need the facilitators to guide discussions back on track!

Focus on Safe Case Closure

Jamie:

For the “Purple Team,” we focused on Family Safety, Risk, and Permanency (FSRP) Services for our work at the mini-summit, really zeroing in on safe case closure, which is the outcome we want for all FSRP cases.

While talking about how we could improve our services, a key issue that kept popping up was “proactive relationships,” so we decided to devote considerable mini-summit time to creating strategies for more proactive relationships.

We identified many strengths, especially around the contribution of different ranges of expertise and working together around specific issues.  We also identified areas of improvement, and a great deal of that revolved around communication.  As partners, we could see the potential for improvements.