Creating an empowering environment with the HOPE framework
With over 400 staff across 10 direct service programs, infusing the HOPE framework into the San Diego Center for Children is a feat, but the staff are well on their way. The Center provides a continuum of services in the behavioral health and educational realm, including enhanced care management, school-based outpatient therapy, foster care services, partial hospitalization programming and more. Their leadership says that the HOPE framework is a natural fit for what they do.
“It felt like it’s so values aligned. It’s so consistent with what we already do and what we want to be doing,” said Aisha Pope, HOPE Champion and chief programs officer overseeing community-based and outpatient programming. “It just felt really accessible…I really appreciate that we can define the terms as they relate to our environment.”
Pope says that they’ve been working through training the different departments in the introduction of the HOPE framework, starting with the direct service managers who received it well, “which is saying a lot because it’s a seasoned group.” After years in the industry, receiving trainings can feel like “‘just another thing.’”
“But this one, they got excited about,” said Pope.
Because it was so well received, the senior leadership team was trained next, and then most recently, the board.
“It was really empowering for staff members, feeling like this is the work that we do every day. But now we have a framework,” said Kristen Corcum, manager of training and quality practice at the Center. “We have research that shows us the impact of those ordinary magical moments, and I think it really energized people in a way that brought them more connected to our children, families and each other.”
Promoting employee wellness using the Four Building Blocks of HOPE
For their HOPE Champion project, Corcum and Pope explored how the Four Building Blocks of HOPE, the key types of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) central to the HOPE framework, relate to employee wellness at work. They sent out surveys to get a baseline sense of how their employees felt about relationships, engagement, emotional growth and environment.
“[We] really [enhanced] the interventions that we’re already doing to really help employees feel more connected to themselves, each other, and the agency as a whole,” said Corcum.
Connecting with clients in a deeper way with a HOPE-informed intake process
In addition to internal changes, the Center is using the HOPE framework across the continuum of services, starting with the intake process, the first point of contact and engagement with families. They built in language related to the Four Building Blocks “so it’s not just another assessment that people are going through, talking about needs and problems,” said Corcum.
A HOPE-Informed intake process includes questions like, “What does community look like to you? Who’s a part of that? What is your culture? What’s your experience of who you are, those traditions, those celebrations?” It’s about trying to understand, in a deeper way, who they are working with. But it goes beyond the questions themselves. It’s also about the human interaction between staff and clients.
“I think it’s how our intake engages with families too, not sitting behind a paper with all these questions, but really like engaging with the family, too,” said Corcum.
Staff members embracing the HOPE framework throughout the organization
At the Center, some children engage with the HOPE-Informed content directly. They talk with staff about what a safe environment looks like to them, answering questions like, “If you could shed your hyper vigilance of how you look at the world, how would it feel safe and inclusive?” They talk about PCEs and the Four Building Blocks. And it’s not just in the background — the children actually learn about it through HOPE-Informed language, which is not all that common.
“We’re trying to come up with some games too [to] keep [the language] fresh and alive,” said Corcum.
While not everyone in the organization engages with the HOPE framework in the same way, it’s making its way through nonetheless.
“Some folks are just embedding it in their work…and then some of our folks, especially the ones that are working with teens on the outpatient side, are using the language. They’re screening everybody for PCEs, and they’re explaining why they’re screening everybody for PCEs,” said Pope. “I think individuals are using the language to more or less extent, but I think most people are using the spirit in their work pretty regularly.”
The HOPE Champion project is complete, but Corcum and Pope are looking ahead to more years of embedding HOPE in the organization’s internal culture.
“Turning that ship around is going to take a couple of years, and we’re deep in the thick of it,” said Pope.
