Two Very Special People

James B. Conant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bryant_Conant), a great educator and President of Harvard University, once said that 'Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy, based on excellence of performance."  I want to bring to your attention to two members of  Sound Community Services' "aristocracy"-  Donna Millette-Fridge and December Heffernan.

Each year the Board of Directors of Sound Community Services accepts nominations for the Donna Millette-Fridge Memorial Award.  For those of you who did not know Donna, she was a First Step employee for many years, her last position was as the  Director of Employment Services.  Donna was preparing for her promotion to Associate Director at First Step at the time of her tragic and untimely death. Let me tell you  about Donna.

Donna epitomized the values of social  work!  She always exhibited a very strong work ethic, strong leadership, and was an advocate for all of our clients. Donna's special interest was in young people experiencing behavioral health challenges who would be transitioning from their high school years into adulthood where many would be unprepared to face the stigma associated with mental illness which so many of our clients must deal with on a daily basis. She had dedicated her life to helping those young people become productive members of  the community.

Donna was admired and respected by her clients and her colleagues. Shortly after her tragic death the Connecticut Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers posthumously awarded to Donna a Lifetime Achievement Award.  Upon the presentation of that award it was noted that, " Her social work colleagues saw in Donna woman who lived the values of social work. She had a vision that one day individuals with psychiatric disabilities would be fully integrated into society and have available to them the same opportunities and benefits we all enjoy.  Her belief in, energy and enthusiasm for individuals with psychiatric disabilities to become productive members of society were contagious and inspired coworkers throughout her agency. agency."  Donna was the "founding" member of  the Sound Community Services "aristocracy." And after her death our Board of Directors established an award in her name- the Donna Millette-Fridge Memorial Award.

The Donna Millette-Fridge Memorial Award is the most important that Sound Community Services gives as it acknowledges the work of an employee who demonstrates the values that Donna brought to her work.   This year there were several nominees all of whom were noted to bring a high level of care for persons served and professionalism to their work.

In nominating December Heffernan, Mat Waldo wrote, "I have only been here at Sound Community Services for five months and during that time I've worked with a number of dedicated and effective colleagues. One person who continually strikes me as an employee who goes the extra mile for clients and who embodies  excellence in social work practice is December Heffernan, LCSW.  Her job of engaging mentally ill clients in the shelter system and in the streets of New London and providing them with services to improve their  circumstances is difficult at best but, time and time again, December appears to be able to provide an empathetic support for clients which provides them with some dignified value. A number of homeless men and women on my caseload have spoken about how they look forward to meeting with her in the shelter serving the community:  they know they will be respectfully listened to and that their needs and concerns will be met by someone who will do her best to remedy the problems. Working in collaboration with December as a fellow colleague is enjoyable-she exhibits dedication to the Sound Community Services mission, a strong working professional ethic, and brings excellence to the interchange which positively impacts the outcome.  I know that when she is involved my clients are in good hands. I feel that December is a good candidate for the Donna Millette-Fridge Memorial Award and know that many formerly homeless clients would agree with this nomination.   This year's winner of the Donna Millette-Fridege Award is December Heffernan.  Please take a moment to thank December for all her hard work on behalf of those we serve and congratulate her on being named the 2010 winner of the  Donna Millette-Fridge Memorial Award.


Be well!

The First of Many!

WELCOME to Sound Community Services new Home Page.  Many of you commented on how difficult it has been to find some the links that were previously easy to find and have asked why we have changed the Sound Community Services Start Page.  Many of you- me included- had become quite comfortable using the Start Page to access the agency policies from the Policy page,  review new job postings at the Human Resources page or post purchase orders on the Fiscal page.  Well, what really happened was that Google decided to replace existing Google Apps (we are a Google Apps agency) Homepages with the new iGoogle page that now appears when you log on to what was our old start page.  And while this change caught us by surprise, we hope that you will find our new homepage better designed, more current and easier to use.  We welcome your suggestions for additional links or design changes that might be helpful  so please don't hesitate to send your comments and suggestions to Mike Reynolds m.reynolds@soundcommunityservices.org or me g.lawson@soundcommunityservices.org .  We hope that the new homepage will let us all do a better job of sharing information and communicating with each other.

Strategic Planing update:    We have begun strategic planning.  For those of you  new to the agency we engage in strategic planning every three years or so and this will be the third strategic plan that we have developed since the merger of First Step and Integrated Behavioral Health.  Our 2007 -- 2010 strategic plan was completed this past June with about 80% of the goals and objective completed.  This year strategic planning is led by Cindy Kirchhoff and Emily Reynolds and we are fortunate to have a volunteer facilitator John Foley from leadership Greater Hartford,  http://www.leadershipgh.org . We have included a Strategic Planning "link" on our Home Page-  please visit that page to get detailed info about this year's strategic planning  activities and to see a list of the strategic planning team.

In order to prepare for strategic planning,  Emily and Cindy asked the management team to survey program staff as to the strengths and weaknesses of the agency.  While many items that we do well were noted, it was interesting to me that many of those who responded to the survey noted that communication  within the agency was a weakness.  Even more interesting was that each time we have engaged in strategic planning in the last several years communication was noted as a weakness.  And more interesting still is the fact  as part of the last several strategic plans that were developed- including those for First Step- much time was spent on developing and implementing strategies to improve communication!

As an agency we have tried many things to improve communication: management meetings, all agency meetings, program meetings, newsletters, email accounts for all staff, program intranet  pages  etc. Despite all these efforts many staff continue to cite communication as an agency weakness.  When the results of the survey were shared during a meeting last week and Google unceremoniously erased our Start Page,  I decided that it was a good time to take another "whack" at resolving our communication conundrum. During the strategic planning meeting our very smart facilitator John Foley noted that many businesses have given up on the newsletter approach and replaced it with a weekly or biweekly e-mail updating staff on important happenings within the agency.  In thinking about his suggestion it seemed that a brief weekly electronic communication added to a re-designed home page would offer a possible solution to the communication issues that have plagued the agency.  

So what you are now reading is the very first edition of the Sound Community Services blog which resides on our newly designed Home Page. A blog is a type of website or part of a website that is usually maintained by an individual or group of individuals with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other material such as graphics or video entries.  Typically blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order.  The goal of a blog is to provide very current information in real time or as close to real time as possible. So, on an ongoing basis, for a least a few months, I and other members of the executive and senior senior management team will give blogging a try with the goal of improving communication within the agency.  After three months or so we will try the survey again and see if communication has improved.

And by the way, if  any of you would like to try your hand at blogging I will be happy to relinquish the computer keyboard to guest bloggers!

Be well!