How stable and resilient is your agency, employees, and clients?
I have been working with an agency that serves foster youth and young adults, ages 3 years old to 26 years old, who are living with complex trauma. I have worked with this agency for over 20 years and with individuals living with trauma for over 30 years.
While the agency has been stable and serving foster youth since 1965, changes in state and federal legislation and then the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, seriously destabilized the agency, our employees, and the clients we serve.
As part of my roll in the agency, I helped create, facilitate, and direct a robust service of therapeutic activities that enrich our more traditional treatment services. We create opportunities for everything from music lessons, to gym memberships, to vocational training in our on-site gardens and orchard. Our most longstanding and successful activity is equine assisted therapy.
Our enrichment services are 100% philanthropy funded. We have steadily increased support from donors to expand enrichment activities.
We are seeing amazing results! Clients who previously resisted engagement in services are participating and building strong therapeutic relationships to their providers. Employees who were traumatized and burnt out now talk about how successful our programming is. The employees say they hear the clients speak of hope and a future. This has lead to higher job satisfaction and a greatly reduced employee turnover. All of which has lead to a more stable and resilient agency.
Is your agency, employees, and clients as stable and resilient as you like? Would it be great to reduce turnover and hear your clients speak of hope?
I am developing a new private business to offer consulting on program development, growing your own enrichment services, and training staff to support and facilitate an inclusive, trauma-informed, enriched treatment milieu.
Please contact me directly at enrichmentpower@gmail.com to discuss how I can enrich your program!
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