Jennifer Miller
2-1-1 Resource Center Manager
United Way of Greater Kansas City
Kansas City, MO
I have attended multiple AIRS conference in years past and gotten a lot of good information and training. This year was unique in the focus of the workshops I attended; many of them focused on individual agency experiences and innovations that covered a broad range of topics.
The Innovative Collaborations workshop featured several I&Rs from around the country that were partnering with outside organizations. Tampa Bay Cares is partnering with their homeless services system to provide prevention and diversion services. One of the forms it takes is call specialists providing almost immediate financial assistance in qualified situations. In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Call for Justice (a legal I&R) is partnering with the local United Way 2-1-1 to provide greater access to legal referrals through regular training on legal resources for 2-1-1 staff who can field the calls. Something that both partnerships endorsed was continual convening of the partnership and communication to ensure quality service and improvements.
Other call centers were partnering through shared quality projects and contracts for providing service. Iowa Nebraska AIRS members have begun several projects within their affiliate. They have approached creating a shared resource database between several aging, disability and 2-1-1 organizations. They have also created a "mystery call" type call monitoring project that encompasses multiple organizations, which allows them to monitory quality standards across the states. The Epilepsy Foundation found a partner in Heart of Florida United Way, who could provide coverage of calls for their national hotline. This partnership helped the Epilepsy Foundation reach the staff coverage they needed, and provided funding diversification, training and recognition for Heart of Florida United Way.
These collaborations and partnerships were inspirational in a way; they reminded me that there are many ways to accomplish a task, and that not all of the burden for a project has to be carried by a single organization (or person for that matter!). I brought a lot of ideas and questions back to the office that I plan to look into. Things like... what more can our affiliate be doing? ... what services in my community can I help to increase access to? ... and skills do my staff have that I am not taking advantage of?
No comments:
Post a Comment