No Wrong Door: City Plans Realignment Of Human Service Delivery System

(Friday) March 12, 2010

By Carla Branch
alexandrianews.org

Realignment of Human Service Departments (Courtesy Image)

When Councilman Rob Krupicka asked how much money was being spent on services to youth and families during last year’s budget deliberations, he began a discussion and a process that has led to plans to realign the Department of Human Services, the Alexandria Community Services Board and the Office On Women.

“I knew we were spending a lot of money on services to youth and families and that those services were not being delivered in a coordinated manner but I did not realize just how much money we were spending over a number of departments until I asked the question,” Krupicka said. “I learned that we are spending about $25 million a year and that we are not obtaining the outcomes we should be getting for that amount of money. Our school dropout rate is too high and our teen pregnancy rate is too high. We need to do a better job delivering and prioritizing services that will positively effect our youth and families.

“We have duplicate administrations and duplication of efforts. If we break down the government silos and stop pointing fingers, our kids will be the beneficiaries,” Krupicka said.

To that end, in August 2009, three collaborative realignment planning groups began meeting regularly with a focus on housing and shelter services, youth services and aging and disability services. As these planning meetings continued throughout the fall, it became clear that to realize the maximum benefit from the ratio of services to administrative cost, there should be a consideration of completely realigning services in the three departments.

According to a March 11, 2010, City staff memo: “Consolidating these three departments will take full advantage of resources by delivering programs and services in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. The resulting larger department will be similar to the ones found in Arlington County and Virginia Beach. In December 2009, and January 2010, the three department heads held meetings to discuss the overall proposal; they agreed that consolidation could accomplish the goal of developing more efficient and cost-effective services. Also in January 2010, each department head met with senior staff members to create proposed organizational charts for the proposed consolidated department, identify ideal benefits from merging the three agencies and list questions and concerns,” the memo said.

These meetings resulted in several conclusions, according to the memo. Merging the three departments:

• provides an opportunity for an improved consumer experience, more efficient operations, and improved client outcomes;
• will make it possible to establish consistent philosophies and approaches that take a broader view than currently exists;
• will permit review of existing services and structures so that potential efficiencies can be identified and redundancies eliminated;
• will allow training activities to be coordinated in support of a shared mission;
• will eliminate artificial “silos” as information flow improves;
• will lead to services being coordinated more efficiently
• will allow staff to recognize gaps in service delivery more accurately and develop more effective plans to bridge those gaps.

On February 2, 2010, the City Manager approved proceeding with the plan for integrating the services and administrative supports for the three departments. The next step was to create five research groups focusing on designing model organizational structures without paying attention to the individuals who might occupy particular slots (especially at the senior level). Each research group was tasked with designing the ideal administrative structure for delivering services and administrative supports. The research groups were asked to use organizational information, best practices, industry information and institutional knowledge and expertise in accomplishing their work.

The five research groups are addressing adult behavioral health services, child, family, and prevention services, economic self-sufficiency, fiscal services and administration. Once the research groups have arrived at their recommendations for organizational structures, the next step will be to work with Human Resources to assign appropriate grade levels for the individual positions and then go about the task of selecting the persons to fill the various slots. The goal is for the research groups to complete their designs by the end of April. Throughout this process, staff members will be provided opportunities for contributing ideas, suggestions and questions about the merger and will be provided regular progress updates.

Assistant City Manager Debra Collins is the director of the Department of Human Services. “As we began meeting, we realized that we have many clients in common and that we could serve those clients more effectively and efficiently if we work more closely together,” Collins said. “The goal is to make this new department more client centered and to ensure that there is no wrong door for those clients. No matter where they enter the system, they will be provided the full array of services that they need and want.

“Also, this realignment will give us the opportunity to cross train staff and reduce duplication of effort. All of us have outreach workers in the schools, for example. Maybe, if we cross train those outreach workers, we will only need one or two instead of three or four in the school system,” Collins said.

One of the first questions the group had to answer was, are there legal impediments to this realignment. “There are certain entities such as the Community Services Board that are legally mandated but we have a great deal of flexibility about the structure of the entity that delivers those services,” Collins said. “We did some research and found that Virginia Beach is doing something very similar to what we are considering and we plan to speak to them extensively.”

When the five research teams have concluded their work, Collins, Mike Gilmore from the ACSB and Lisa Baker with the Office On Women will report to the City Manager and then to Council. “We hope to have something to Council in May with the goal of beginning the implementation at the beginning of the fiscal year,” Collins said. “This will take time because it is a significant change from how we do things now but it will be better for our clients.”