Transforming Organizations to a Recovery Orientation

Remarks by: Steve Coe, CEO, Community Access &
Donna Colonna, CEO, Services for the UnderServed

Presented at NYU Mental Health Recovery Conference

Mental health programs are increasingly promoting recovery, wellness, and resiliency. Many have taken steps to re-train staff and hire individuals with recovery experiences as service providers. These trends can result in a genuine shift in methods and actions by staff that reflects a true collaboration with the individuals being served. Community Access and Services for the UnderServed have worked on transforming their organizations and their service models based on the belief that people with serious mental illness can make meaningful choices in their lives and successfully overcome the barriers to their wellness and recovery.

The key to making this transformation a success is developing the program around the organizations core values and mission. It is imperative that all current staff, board members and consumers truly believe in the mission and values. The mission should drive the organizations recruitment, training, performance evaluations, hiring, job descriptions, etc. This may involve additional training and communication sessions with all three groups separately. Examples would be organizational development meetings with the staff around being “consumer centered”, board retreats to engage the board, and starting dialogue with consumers around them having control of their life course.

To maintain this vision and ensure its success everyone involved must; talk it, walk it, measure it and work it. The organization must acknowledge that this is an ever changing process and it will take continuous commitment and dedicated resources from everyone involved. The vision should be built into the language of any document that outlines the duties and expectations of the staff, consumers and board, i.e. the performance evaluations, the operational policies and procedures and marketing. A good example of “talking it” would be to engage consumers in dialogue about their programs and invite them to evaluate and take surveys about the program. Peer- to- peer counseling is a perfect transition from consumer to facilitator, and often leads to employment of the consumer by the organization. Finally, to ensure that the model is working, aspects of it should be measured and evaluated. If something is not working it should be re-evaluated and changed. Those committed to the change should be provided positive reinforcement and acknowledgement. Recognition of these individuals will encourage others to recommit and become engaged, and will discourage people from “drifting” away from the mission.

The transition from “command and control” to “we’re all in this together” approach has transformed the lives of employees and those served by SUS and Community Access. We encourage other organizations with a similar goal to have their staff re-evaluate and assess their mission and values and commit to becoming more “recovery oriented”.

Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR Matters

By: David L. Hertz, SUS Chief Development Officer

In today’s struggling economy it’s harder for corporations to look beyond the bottom line. However, more and more companies are seeing the benefit of doing just that and empowering their employees to give back to the community that they work in.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has evolved over the years. The classic conservative definition was recently expressed in The Wall Street Journal (August 2010): “where private profits and public interests are aligned, corporate social responsibility is irrelevant…in circumstances in which profits and social welfare are in direct opposition, an appeal to corporate social responsibility will almost always be ineffective.”

Companies such as Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks, HSBC, Vodafone and The Body Shop disagree. They are all adopters of a more progressive definition of CSR; corporate performance= shareholder value + social responsibility + environmental sustainability.

These companies voluntarily go beyond maximizing profits and strict compliance with laws and regulations to achieve positive impacts. The relationships between the corporation and its customers, shareholders, the communities in which it does business, and its employees are defined by their CSR mission.

Promoting a socially responsible workplace moves the company from impacting its employees, to being impacted by its employees. The company supports and recognizes those individuals who- give (philanthropy), act (volunteerism), include (employment), and conserve (environment).

Corporations implementing CSR find that employees report improved job satisfaction, retention rates will be higher, and that they attract a more talented workforce. When volunteering is offered as part of the workplace employees develop skills that they can take back to their jobs, as well as take satisfaction from being able to benefit a non-profit organization. The following is an interesting video on CSR benefits given by the Heads of CSR at a number of large British companies. http://bit.ly/d5um3c

We encourage companies to see how they can empower their employees by connecting with SUS or another non-profit.