Narrations
Ingham County System of Care Initiative
Lansing, MI
Background
“Planning the working and working the plan,” embodies the approach that Impact, Ingham County’s System of Care initiative has taken to promote the culture change necessary for any successful project. Ingham County has embarked upon a comprehensive goal to develop an integrated system of care for children with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and their families. This planning involves extensive collaboration with Community Mental Health, Ingham County Department of Human Services, the 30th Judicial Circuit Court-Family Division, schools; the state-wide family organization, the Association for Children’s Mental Health; private agencies; and most importantly youth and families. We are designing a sustainable family driven & youth guided system of services and supports that allows families the benefit of accessing the type and amount of services they need, when families need them. This partnership seeks to build on the current systems’ strengths and to create community-wide collaboration to better serve youth with SED and their families. The partnership’s strategic plan incorporates ongoing evaluation of activities and expected outcomes to allow Ingham County to assess its progress, and prioritize the most needed changes in the services offered through our system of care. The material offered here is a guide to our work, specifically our attempts to democratize the process and the data. All planning, execution of activities, the evaluation of those activities, as well as the changes needed (based on the data) are captured on our ever evolving theory of change. Hopefully, through this, we will have conveyed the role that planning the work plays as well as a continual commitment to work the plan. This requires that stakeholders are invested in the work, kept informed of ongoing progress, and share a commitment to utilizing the theory of change.
Narrator Biography
 |
Laura Ray
Parent Representative
