This week one of our previous clients, Chester County’s Decade to Doorways, had a community meeting. It was a great example of people with an intention of improving the system taking action and learning together using the collective impact model.
Decade to Doorways is a cross-sector initiative with a goal of ending homelessness in the county by 2022. They are four years into their ten-year plan. Many actions have been taken to work toward this goal. Those actions have happened by individual organizations, between organizations and across the system.
The purpose of this meeting was to roll out a shared assessment tool. This tool will be used across all shelters in the county. The goal of the tool is to ensure that the most vulnerable are helped and to increase the understanding of who is not being served. The meeting was open to anyone in the community with an interest in the initiative. There were service providers, government agencies, leaders from faith communities, funders and citizens who care about this issue.
The meeting reflected collective impact principles in a number of ways:
- Taking action based on data and research: Decade to Doorways is implementing a new tool that was built based on research and has been implemented in other communities successfully.
- Coordinated action through planning: Stakeholders have worked together to plan implementation of the new tool and have processes in place to support a smooth roll out.
- Attitude of learning: The leaders of the change expressed that there will be unanticipated issues that arise and appealed to the community to work together to address them. But they have determined that they need to take action to learn more. Some of the questions they hope to find answers to include:
- Does this tool help us better understand the population experiencing homelessness?
- Who are the most vulnerable? Is the answer what we expected?
- Are we prepared to help them?
- By addressing their needs differently, are we able to resolve chronic situations more effectively?
- Does this also free up resources to help even more people experiencing homelessness?
- Staying away from blame: One of the presenters began her talk by appealing to the whole community to work together to improve the system without blaming each other. This tenor continued throughout the meeting. For example, after someone in the meeting expressed frustration about hitting barriers when helping their clients, an initiative leader committed to hosting a meeting to learn more about the barrier. Another person quickly reminded everyone that the leaders of the office posing the barrier were doing their best within their current limitations, gently calling the conversation to stay out of blame.
- Shifting resources: One provider explained how they were adapting to the new process by shifting their staff resources to implement the new approach This was enabling the system to change without waiting for new funding. Based on what they learn from the implementation, they will consider the next iteration of staffing and services and potentially seek new funding to expand their hours again.
Collective impact done well is about people and organizations from all sectors committing to moving the needle on large issues. We appreciate the great work being done by all the partners to make Chester County a better place to live for all.
