Senior Reach
Esta presentción ha sido seleccionada como finalista del desafío
Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing .
Senior Reach is an innovative program providing mental health treatment to adults (aged 60+) who are isolated, frail, and/or at-risk needing mental health and/or care management services. We provide a unique combination of outreach, treatment, and education to the community to identify and refer older adults.
Sobre ti
Sección 1: Sobre ti
Nombre
Vicki
Apellido
Rodgers
Correo electrónico
Website URL
Country
Estados Unidos
Sección 2: Sobre tu organización
Nombre de la organización
Jefferson Center for Mental Health
Sitio web de la organización
Teléfono de la organización
303-432-5093
Dirección de la organización
4851 Independence, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
País de la organización
Estados Unidos
Tu organización es
OSC/ONG
tu idea
Name Your Project
Senior Reach
Country your work focuses on
Estados Unidos
Describe Your Idea
Senior Reach is an innovative program providing mental health treatment to adults (aged 60+) who are isolated, frail, and/or at-risk needing mental health and/or care management services. We provide a unique combination of outreach, treatment, and education to the community to identify and refer older adults.
Innovación
What makes your idea unique?
The outreach component of Senior Reach has enhanced the community's infrastructure to serve older adults and has improved collaboration between agencies and the speed of older adults receiving needed services. Also, the penetration rate of services to this population is generally low because of stigma, access concerns, and we have now exceeded the goals set by the Medicaid authority. A single entry point for referrals has simplified the referral process and resulted in more timely services or linkages to other community programs. A secondary benefit of outreach is the increased visibility for mental health concerns in the senior community and more awareness of mental health issues throughout the community. The program received about 900 referrals from Community Partners and provided direct services to about 800 older adults. This improved community understanding of the needs of older adults resulted in 43% of referrals coming from community members who, prior to receiving Senior Reach training, did not know what to do or who to call to help a senior. One of the highest compliments to this program is that even with the stigma of admitting to someone else that you have accessed mental health services, over 82% of those responding to a Customer Satisfaction Survey state they would recommend Senior Reach to someone they know. More important than anything are the positive outcomes and testimonials that seniors really do get better in this program!
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impacto
Esta presentación se trata de
What impact have you had?
The following outcome measures demonstrate the impact of the program in these five ways:
• First, we sought to understand customer satisfaction ratings. Senior Reach has a component of home-based care which is important to seniors in a customer satisfaction survey but apparently not as important at seniors being able to talk openly, feeling that they are listened to, and returning phone calls timely. Understanding what is most important to seniors has allowed us to train staff in the best service approach for seniors. To sum it up in one word - Respect.
• Second, we have been seeking to more broadly disseminate outcomes for the program so other communities may start a Senior Reach program to help meet the coming demographic changes in the senior populations across the nation. As evidenced by the significant outcome results, the education, outreach, and treatment components of Senior Reach appear to be a just-right combination to meet the needs of older adults experiencing a mental health concern.
• The rigorous implementation model of Senior Reach is informing the best practices for moving this program from science to service. Using the Plan-Do-Study-Act method, we have employed feedback from clients, family members, partners, agencies, consultants, and funders consistently to improve processes along the entire continuum of implementation and development of a fidelity model.
• Seniors needing appropriate after care or services designed specifically to support them in the community led us to develop a full array of wellness services, such as, in-home fall prevention, life review groups, regular depression and anxiety screenings in senior locations, nutritional microwave cooking, and art expression classes.
• Finally, knowing that primary care physicians (PCP) are the point of contact most often before an older adult suicides, we developed a pilot partnership to study the impact of providing assessments and therapy at Wheat Ridge Medicine.
Problem
Older adults are reluctant to access mental health services and many do not share their concerns but rather suffer in silence. However, by educating and helping community providers and members to understand the warning signs that quite often will be exhibited, they can refer an older adult to Senior Reach as a preventive measure before more serious problems develop. The Senior Reach staff respond to the older adult in a personal manner that is elder-friendly and about 90% of the referrals accept services from Senior Reach to help them through a difficult time. Another problem is the community capacity for mental health providers with an expertise in older adult concerns which Senior Reach has addressed by this innovative approach in 5 Metro Denver counties.
Actions
Senior Reach has helped to fill a known gap in research and a programming concern about access to mental health that was identified in the Spokane model. The program success is being measured by TriWest Group, an independent, professional evaluation company. Three evaluation tools are used and administered on a voluntary, pre/post basis to all Senior Reach consumers, including the Care Manager Survey, the Geriatric Depression Scale Short Form, and the Colorado Client Assessment Record (CCAR) Excerpt.
TriWest reports that Senior Reach data has demonstrated significant (p<.05 - probability that these results happened by chance are less than 5%) client outcomes indicating:
• Better overall level of functioning,
• Increased optimism about the future,
• Increased positive activities with others,
• Reduction in social isolation,
• Decreased emotional disturbance,
• Decreased risk for suicide, and
• Better outcomes on the Geriatric Depression Scale.
Results
Senior Reach has provided education and training to over 8,000 Community Partners in the past 3 years plus an additional 4,200 through booths and fairs. Community Partners are trained to understand the special needs of older adults and when to refer someone from their community to Senior Reach for assistance. The innovative program that has been built through Senior Reach has brought over 800 seniors to our attention who most likely would not have received services from a mental health professional. Senior Reach serves rural, suburban, and urban areas with equal success. The Senior Reach partnership and collaboration with so many community partners has resulted in:
• Senior Reach has worked through more than 325 organizations, congregations, businesses, and agencies to provide community education.
• Senior Reach collaborates with the senior community by enlisting them as volunteers and consultants.
• Better overall services to older adults,
• Good research-based evaluation outcomes,
• Less fragmentation in service delivery
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
For this program to be successful over the next three years, it will need to be recognized as an evidence-based practice. We will be submitting Senior Reach to the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices in October 2009 and believe that we have met the required criteria. Once a program receives this status, ut becomes more widely recognized by funders across the nation as a good program to fund because there will be consistent results and outcomes for clients and the community. Once this recognition is achieved, we will need to develop technical assistance for program implementation at this new level through updating the Senior Reach Implementation Manual.
We will need to develop better technical assistance for other implementation sites regarding billing payers beyond grants, such as, Medicaid, Medicaid, and private insurance.
We will need to develop methods for marketing and dissemination so that other older adult treatment programs have accurate, up-to-date information about Senior Reach to increase replication sites.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
It would prevent Senior Reach from being a success if we were unable to replicate it successfully at other sites. That is why we need to develop more technical assistance, update the implementation manual, and dissiminate information about the program broadly.
Lack of sustainability options and funding sources would serious cripple the outreach and education efforts of Senior Reach.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001‐10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Sí
Sustenibilidad
¿En qué fase está el proyecto?
Operando entre 1-5 años
In what country?
Estados Unidos
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Sí
If yes, provide organization name.
Jefferson Center for Mental Health, The Mental Health Center Serving Boulder and Broomfield, and Senior's Resource Center
How long has this organization been operating?
Más de 5 años
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Sí
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Sí
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Sí
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Sí
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Senior Reach has an Advisory Board representing more than 30 agencies or organizations in our communities that work for older adults. Through these members of the Advisory Board, information about Senior Reach is disseminated to the community, and ideas, comments, and concerns are relayed back and forth. Senior Reach has become an integral part of the community and the Advisory Board members have become integral parts of Senior Reach. Also, we have worked with over 300 local businesses, non-profits, and governmental agencies to provide education to their staff and communities about the unique needs of older adults. Through this mechanism, people learn about how to refer to Senior Reach whenever they may need to in the future. Finally, we work in concert with our community and Advisory Board to develop programming and help plan strategically for the coming demographic boom of older adults rather than just seeing Senior Reach as an isolated program.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1. We need to continue to develop the program model to be identified as an effective evidence-based practice with positive outcomes for clients.
2. We need to continue to develop the revenue and expense structures to be identified as an efficient evidence-based practice.
3. We need to develop the technical assistance capacity to help other communities replicate Senior Reach with a high degree of sustainability, outcomes, and easy implementation.
La historia
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
It was clear to Vicki Rodgers that out of the multitude of treatments for mental health, that few were targeted for older adults, were not aimed at meeting the holistic needs of the seniors, and did not include the community in a commitment to support our elders. There was a program developed in Spokane, Washington in 1978 called the Gatekeeper model. It has robust outcomes but consistently the research literature identified the gap in needed services as access to mental health. The dream for Senior Reach was to fill that gap by making the mental health staff the lead in outreach, training, and education to the community, being the first point of referral and home outreach, and identifying early in the process what mental health needs are present to address early on in the process.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Vicki Rodgers, MS, LPC, is the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Jefferson Center for Mental Health, which serves Jefferson, Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties in Colorado. Vicki supervises a variety of administrative and clinical programs including Program Evaluation, Practice Management, Navigation, and Senior Services. For the past four years she has also been the Project Director for Senior Reach, a SAMHSA Targeted Expansion Grant, lends her expertise on mental health issues affecting older adults through a variety of state and local events, and authored the Senior Reach Implementation Manual. Her passion for older adults is evident in the presentations she has provided at local, state, and national conferences. Vicki is an active member of numerous state mental health committees including the Behavioral Health Transformation Council, Adult and Older Adult Planning Committee, Programs and Standards Committee, Legislative Community Action Committee, and the Subcommittee to Study the Mentally Ill in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System. She also serves as the HIPAA Privacy and Corporate Compliance Officer. For the past 14 years Vicki has dedicated her life to advocating for persons with mental illnesses. Vicki received her Masters in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at Tyler and holds certificates in gerontology and practice management.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Newsletter from Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | 128 weeks agoVicki Rodgers said: We train regular people (UPS, bus drivers, bank tellers, grocery store clerks, pastors, etc.) on the special needs of seniors and then ... about this Competition Entry. - leer más > |
| 128 weeks agoNaveen Shakir said: On November 20, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing ... about this Competition Entry. - leer más > |
| 130 weeks agoSenior Reach has been chosen as a finalist in Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing. |
| 136 weeks agoTyler Ahn updated this Competition Entry. |
| 136 weeks agoVicki Rodgers updated this Competition Entry. |
| 136 weeks agoVicki Rodgers updated this Competition Entry. |
| 136 weeks agoVicki Rodgers updated this Competition Entry. |
| 136 weeks agoVicki Rodgers updated this Competition Entry. |
| 137 weeks agoVicki Rodgers submitted this idea. |