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Directors offer insights into organization of local social service groups
Whether it’s battling opiate abuse, preventing suicide, keeping youths off drugs or inspiring adults to make healthy choices, there’s a coalition for just about everything in the local social services world.
But there is a method behind the coalition “madness,” staff of the Mental Health Drug and Alcohol Services Board of Logan and Champaign Counties said at the board’s quarterly meeting Tuesday.
The approach is known as the Collective Impact Framework, which uses group collaborations to find solutions to complex social problems like drug addiction or obesity, Stacey Logwood, the MHDAS director of community development, told the board.
It relies on five conditions: a common agenda; shared measurements; mutually-reinforcing activities; continuous communication; and backbone support.
Locally, the effort to organize social services into this structure began prior to 2014, following collection of results of the first of two community health needs assessments conducted by Mary Rutan Hospital.
That data provided a starting point to determine the major social problems that are of high importance to the local community, Ms. Logwood said.
Read complete story in Wednesday’s Examiner.
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