SUS Trainings and the Strategic Plan: Q & A with Luis Lopez
Steve Harrington, President of Board of Directors, ACTA, Luis Lopez, SUS and Cheri Sixbey, Executive Director of ACTA, at the ACTA Conference in Huntington Beach, CA.
The SUS Strategic Planning Department was created to address the changes in the human services field that will affect SUS, both now and in the future. Luis Lopez, Director of Best Practices and Recovery Based Initiatives at SUS, sat down to discuss his involvement in this important organizational effort.
Q: How has your job with SUS changed over the years?
A: I received the title of Director Best Practices & Recovery Based Initiatives in September of 2009 and, at the time, was a member of the Quality Assurance department. The change to the Strategic Planning Department came in February of 2011. Prior to joining the quality assurance department I was a team leader for the ACT Team for 3 years. In 2006 I was transferred to QA in the capacity of QA Specialist/Trainer. During that time the Mental Health Division was committed to training every single staff member in motivational interviewing. That became one of my first responsibilities. Also, during that time Donna connected me to the Wellness Self-Management Pilot Program being launched in New York City, as well as work that was being done at Dartmouth University on the topic of Co-occurring Disorders. It was my job to take these tools back to SUS and share them with the staff, making sure that they were trained on evidence based practices.
Q: How did the evolution of your training workshops affect SUS externally?
A: We were one of a very few agencies who were not only talking about recovery but were implementing the science to support recovery based services. Other agencies began to look at us to see what we were doing and how it was working. We talked about our implementation and understanding of co-occuring disorders and Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) in the residential setting. We began to get a reputation, not only with outside agencies, but with OMH. Every time OMH would do a presentation on Wellness they would call SUS, asking us to share and present on what we were doing. SUS was beginning to be recognized as a leader, and at this point training became about 90% of my job.
Q: Do you feel SUS is moving in the direction of being a training resource to other organizations?
A: We are partially where we’re at today because of the work we’ve done in training. This was clearly illustrated when we received two grants from SAHMSA to develop mobile units, similar to our ACT Teams, which would provide health services to individuals who would typically not be eligible for these services. The idea was to incorporate wellness self-management and IDDT for co-occuring disorders into the treatment, and create a new module that individuals could participate in. This was a very big honor for SUS, and it really put us on a whole new platform; we are now one of the leaders when it comes to recovery. SUS has established very strong roots in this community, now anything that is done when it comes to recovery or peer services the name SUS is there.
Q: What conferences have you presented at recently and on which topics?
A: I have presented on about 10 different topics, but the most popular is the presentation on IDDT. I think that is one of those topics that people are intimated by and want to know more about it. During 2009 and 2010 OMH contracted SUS to train ACT Teams all over the state of New York on the topic of IDDT. We have also received great feedback regarding our presentations on IDDT from the 2010 ACTA presentation. SUS was invited back for 2011 as a sponsored speaker. Columbia University invited us to do a two part webinar series on the topic of engagement, how to engage consumers who may not be ready for services. I’ve also been presenting regularly for the past two years at the Association for Community Living (ACL) conferences. This year I was asked to not only present at the regional conferences, but to be a key note speaker at the conference in New York City in June. This was a huge honor not only for myself, but for SUS as well.
Q: Where do you see training playing a role in the future of SUS?
A: We’re at a very interesting point because agencies are buckling up for the ride. There are things going on that human service providers see as major changes in the way we provide services. That means that training will have to address the changes that are to come. What I like about the training philosophy at SUS is that we have been implementing best practices required by care coordination, health homes, and Medicaid for years now and are more equipped to handle these changes.
I think part of my job and the job of other leaders in the agency, is to keep our commitment to recovery and the culture of the agency and somehow merge these with the new changes. We cannot forget that above all else, our commitment is to the consumer, regardless of all of the changes that are happening. The agency has to have great people to work with the changes, but you also have to have great people to continue the mission, and the mission is the smile, the hope, the handshake, the person-centered service plan, the graduation, or the relationship.
Other Resources:
http://www.aclnys.org/index.aspx
http://www.actassociation.org/
http://www.youtube.com/user/susincorg?feature=mhee#p/u/36/H8Oo4l22hvE