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After years of informal collaboration, the Executive Directors of three child welfare agencies, Carson Valley School, Childrenís Aid Society and Tabor Childrenís Services joined with Presbyterian Childrenís Village, Womenís Christian Alliance and Childrenís Home of Easton to develop a joint project with Philadelphiaís Department of Human Services (DHS) called Better Access to Seamless Services (BASS). Through BASS, these six agencies set out to improve the delivery of child welfare services by providing a seamless continuum of care and decreasing response time by centralizing their intake of DHS referrals. BASS received an administrative home with the incorporation of ServiceNet Inc. (SNI). Through SNI, the six member agencies developed a new program to help address a citywide need for step-down programs for children and adolescents from residential care, shared data to track the effectiveness of services, fostered collaboration of staff through interagency committees, and created a structure to enable cost-saving and revenue-generating initiatives.
Carson Valley School, Childrenís Aid Society and Tabor Childrenís Services were founded in the Delaware Valley between the years of 1885 and 1917. These respected agencies had deep pride in their long histories of providing high-quality, innovative programs for children and their families. All three agencies provided foster care services, in-home assistance to children and families, and a variety of other child welfare services. Carson Valley School also provided residential treatment. In the mid-1990ís, the annual operating budgets of these organizations ranged from $4 million to $8 million. The Executive Directors each had held their positions for over 20 years, during which time they developed strong personal and professional relationships with each other.
Over informal breakfasts, the three Executive Directors began to envision an alliance that would enable them to enhance services and increase efficiency. While the agencies were financially stable, well-respected, and maintaining a sufficient census for each of their programs, the Executive Directors wanted to ensure that they would continue their long histories and remain competitive despite environmental changes, such as the entry of managed care and for-profit service providers into the child welfare market.
The Executive Directors shared the belief that many children remained in the child welfare system too long. The need for DHS to contact numerous agencies to place a child and mediate the movement of a child from one service to another resulted in delayed or prolonged services, higher costs for DHS and a lack of available slots for new clients in need of services. They realized that a group of agencies could partner with DHS to increase the possibility of placing a child with a single contact and facilitate the movement of children from one program or agency to another.
The Executive Directors knew that they would need more partners in such an alliance to fill out their continuum of services and increase the likelihood that they would have available space for DHS referrals. To help ensure that the founding Executive Directors would be able to establish trust quickly with the additional partners, they searched for child welfare agencies with reputations, cultures, and leadership compatible with their own. In addition, they wanted to partner with agencies that could add services to the continuum. They invited four additional agencies to join the alliance. Presbyterian Childrenís Village and Womenís Christian Alliance accepted.
Gradually, the five Executive Directors developed an idea for a strategic alliance in which their agencies would partner with DHS. In 1995, they decided to meet with the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of DHS to determine the feasibility of such an alliance. During their tenures, the Executive Directors had developed positive relationships with DHS through their agenciesí contracts, as well as through professional and interpersonal contact on committees and at meetings. DHS knew from first-hand experience that the organizations and their Executive Directors were effective and able to create innovative programs to meet emerging needs in the community. DHS expressed interest in partnering with the agencies for a demonstration project.
Working with DHS, the Executive Directors and program/operations directors from the five agencies determined that the objectives of their demonstration project were to:
DHS was not receptive to a joint contracting arrangement in which DHS would issue a single contract for services provided by all of the partnering agencies. DHS could contract for services only with agencies licensed to perform them. Since none of the agencies was licensed to provide all services that would be offered through the alliance, joint contracting was not possible. Therefore, the Executive Directors and program/operations directors designed an alliance that would enable centralized intake without changing each agencyís existing DHS contracts. The agencies would rotate as the lead agency providing central intake for DHS referrals. The agency serving as the central intake would have a list of member agency openings and contact the other agencies as necessary before responding to DHS.
Since the agencies were already maintaining a sufficient census in each of their programs, this arrangement would not provide them with any immediate financial benefits. However, it would provide the children and families they served with enhanced, more timely services at a reduced cost to DHS. DHS often had to make several phone calls before finding an agency with space for a child. The demonstration project would greatly increase DHSís chances of placing a child in services with a single phone call. In addition, the alliance would enable children to move through a continuum of services more efficiently and with less involvement from DHS.
The five agencies met with DHS about once a month for a year to build trust and refine the strategic alliance. They named the project Better Access to Seamless Services (BASS), and Tabor Childrenís Services volunteered to serve as the first lead agency and hire a Central Intake Coordinator, the cost of which would be shared equally among the partners. The agencies committed that through BASS they would:
Because DHS had been involved in planning the demonstration project, it came as no surprise when DHS agreed with the proposed arrangement, and in May of 1996, the five agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The Childrenís Home of Easton was invited to join BASS in June of 1996 to fill the continuumís need for group home shelter beds. With Childrenís Home of Easton, the founding dates of the six agencies ranged from 1885 to 1919. All agencies provided foster care services; all but one provided in-home assistance to children and their families; and three provided residential services. Other services in the continuum included group home and residential placement, supervised independent living, therapy, adoption services, day care programs and a charter school. Five of the six Executive Directors of the agencies had been in their positions for over 20 years.
During its first year, BASS proved to be a success. BASS surpassed its goal of responding to DHS referrals within 24 hours and responded within 5 hours, and sometimes within ten minutes. Collectively, agencies accepted 99 percent of DHS referrals for in-home services, and the majority of children in foster care moved to permanent homes. In the first quarter of 1997, BASS was awarded $50,000 from the Knight Foundation to offset expenses and begin measuring the effectiveness of services across agencies.
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It had always been the intention of the founding Executive Directors of BASS to undertake a more formal alliance that would enable administrative collaboration such as shared information systems and training. As BASS was being developed, the three founding Executive Directors began the process of forming a joint new corporation called ServiceNet Inc. (SNI) with the following mission: ServiceNet Inc. is committed to providing seamless specialized professional services to children and families. These services are outcomes-based, family-focused, culturally-sensitive and cost-effective, with an emphasis on child safety, permanence and enhanced functioning. The partners are further committed to sharing program and administrative expertise and resources among themselves and with other agencies, and to rising above individual interest on behalf of children and families in need. |
The Board of SNI would consist of the Executive Director and Board President of each member agency, with the option for each agency to add a second Board member, and the Executive Committee would consist of the Executive Directors of the member agencies. A lead agency, which would rotate among members every two years, would provide SNIís infrastructure by supplying space and administrative services. Expenses and revenue would be shared equally among the members, with the lead agency billing and/or crediting the members every quarter. Tabor Childrenís Services would expand the role it was currently serving as central intake for BASS and become the first lead agency for SNI. They utilized Tabor Childrenís Serviceís lawyer to file the necessary paperwork for incorporation.
SNI became a 501(c)(3) organization in July 1997, and the founders invited the other members of BASS to become members of the new organization. By September 1997, all six agencies had joined, and BASS became a program of SNI.
The Executive Committee initiated additional committees to start up and operate SNI initiatives. These committees included the Operations Group made up of the individual responsible for overseeing program operations from each agency, the Intake & Referral Committee, the Fundraising/Public Relations Committee, the Recruitment Committee which had the charge of enlisting new foster families, the Training Committee and the Technology Committee. Each committee consisted of staff from the appropriate departments of each agency. Meeting locations rotated among agencies.
Staff reactions to BASS and SNI were mixed. For some, the alliance created excitement, while others believed it simply created more work. To increase staff understanding of the mission, accomplishments and plans of BASS and SNI, the SNI Training Committee held a retreat for staff involved in the alliance. The retreat was so effective in engaging staff in BASS/SNI objectives that SNI decided to hold a similar event every year.
In 1998 SNI received a grant from the Connelly Foundation to hold a two-day conference on BASS and issues in child welfare for direct service staff of the six agencies and DHS. Staff appreciated the opportunity to experience direct personal benefit from SNI. In 1999, SNIís Training Committee began delivering quarterly SNI/BASS orientations for new staff. The orientations provided a history of BASS and SNI, highlighted resources available to staff through the alliance and provided staff from different agencies with opportunities to interact. SNI also began issuing a quarterly newsletter to member agency staff.
As a result of the success of BASS, DHS asked SNI to address Philadelphiaís need for "step-down" programs that would enable children requiring medical treatment and counseling services to leave residential treatment to live with specially trained foster families. The Recruitment Committee began to focus on developing a new program to meet this need, and in 1998, SNI initiated NuDimensions, a treatment foster care program. DHS contracted with each agency individually for NuDimension services but at the same rate. NuDimensions enhanced services and reduced DHSís costs by placing children in foster homes after a shorter period of time in residential treatment.
While BASS/SNI resulted in almost immediate service improvements, the alliance did confront some challenges. It was difficult for the Executive Directors, who were busy running their own organizations, to make the intense time commitments required for some SNI initiatives. SNIís annual expenses amounted to between $70,000 and $100,000, and the Board was becoming anxious for SNI to pursue the cost-saving and revenue-generating initiatives that the Executive Committee had promised.
SNI needed dedicated staff to keep its initiatives moving. In early 1998, the Executive Committee opened a search and in August 1998 they hired an SNI Administrator. The Administrator reported to the Executive Director of the Womenís Christian Alliance, which succeeded Tabor Childrenís Services as the lead agency in July 1998, and was housed at the lead agency. In February of 1999 the Administrator hired an Intake Coordinator/Administrative Assistant.
SNIís Intake Coordinator began serving as the central intake point for DHS referrals and responded to DHS referrals within three hours, and often within 10 minutes. SNI began to enhance its image through the creation of a logo and marketing materials. The Administrator intensified the pursuit of cost-saving and revenue-generating initiatives.
While BASS had been successful in meeting most of its objectives, the project had not been as successful in tracking clients through the continuum of services. The first challenge was the need for the agencies to have compatible information systems in order to share data. Originally, the agencies had planned to use a common database structure to store client data. However, they found that agreeing on a database structure was too difficult due to the differing regulatory requirements imposed on each agency. In addition, the agencies had varying levels of technical capacity. As a short-term solution, all organizations transferred some of their data to Tabor Childrenís Services database for analysis. SNI employed a part-time Technology Coordinator for a short period of time who helped the agencies utilize the shared database and establish technical capabilities, such as e-mail.
However, providing outcomes-based services, a core component of SNIís mission, required more than a shared database. In late 1998, SNI received a grant for $92,000 from the William Penn Foundation to consistently define and track outcomes across the member agencies. SNI developed an Outcomes Team and hired a part-time SNI Outcomes Coordinator to research outcomes models, train agency staff on outcomes measurement, identify indicators and create procedures and technology, such as web-based applications, for collecting and analyzing the data. SNI is working with DHS to ensure that the indicators can be combined with external data to measure the effects of services after clients have left SNIís continuum.
BASS and ServiceNet have resulted in enhanced services for clients and more cost-effective services for DHS. In addition, SNI provides a structure that fosters a cooperative spirit among the member agenciesí staffs.
SNI has yet to achieve substantially increased efficiencies or new revenue for its members. SNI is exploring cost-effective practices such as joint training, interagency "borrowing" of staff to fill temporary staffing needs and joint purchasing. Potential revenue-generating programs include an innovative non-medication treatment program for children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and the delivery of consulting services to other child welfare agencies. ServiceNet Inc. enables the agencies to continue their long traditions of providing services for children, while providing a vehicle for exploring innovative ways of conducting business.
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This case study is one of a number of case studies, quick references and directories in the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation's Non-profit Strategic Alliances Project Materials. These materials were created to assist non-profit executives and Boards in the Philadelphia area explore how strategic alliances can help them address the growing challenges faced by their organizations. For more information on the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation or to purchase the Strategic Alliances Project Materials, contact Megan Vnenchak at megan@phmc.org. |