Member
Profile
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L'Tesha
Gamble, Administrator of Continuous Quality Improvement, A Second Chance, Inc.
-Primary services provided
-Accredited? By Whom?
-How long has your organization had dedicated QI/QA staff?
-How is your QI/QA function organized? Reporting Structure, Staff, Teams, Responsibilities, etc.
-Describe your process or plans to measure outcomes, compare to benchmarks, etc.
-Describe your data collection system in relation to QI/QA
-What memberships and/or resources have you found to be valuable in your work (books, organizations, people, tools, etc.)
-What do you enjoy most about working in the QI/QA field?
-How has the Quality Leader's Network been of value to you?
Size of your organization (total staff, total revenue)
Total
staff – approximately 110, Total Revenue ~10 Million
Primary
services provided
Kinship
Foster Care and Related Services
Accredited?
By Whom?
Not
yet, making application to COA in June, 2001
How
long has your organization had dedicated QI/QA staff?
A
total of three years, however, in the current format only 1 year, the prior two
years the staff was QA and only concentrated on file reviews.
How
is your QI/QA function organized? Reporting Structure, Staff, Teams,
Responsibilities, etc.
The
department consists of one administrator, two managers, one administrative
secretary, and a file clerk. We
will soon be expanding to include a client satisfaction specialist and a client
satisfaction aide.
The file clerk reports to one of the managers, the client satisfaction
aide reports to the client satisfaction specialist who reports to a manager, and
both managers report to the administrator.
The department responsibilities include:
1) Ensuring the agency’s compliance to DPW regulations, PA CPSL, our
contract with our funders, and internal policy and procedure through file
reviews and visits to the homes of our clients.
2)
Reviewing the outcomes of all of the programs of the agency through focus
groups and other reporting processes, and providing unbiased, practical, and
thorough written and oral feedback with a focus on quality improvement.
3) Implementing and maintaining the central filing system (of the over 1100 case files) known as the Records Management Department.
All agency staff members are involved in the CQI process through the use of quarterly focus groups and through forums called Caseworker Task Action Committee (CTAC) and Fiscal & Operations Task Action Committee (FOTAC). These forums take problems or issues, known as improvement opportunities, and resolve them using a group process. Some of the accomplishments of these groups have included - obtaining a personal day off holiday for each staff member on their birthday, obtaining additional dress down days and dress down summers, reducing and revising paperwork used by the casework staff and paperwork given to our families to complete.Describe
your process or plans to measure outcomes, compare to benchmarks, etc.
The
process that we are currently using began in about July of 2000, and we began by
completing a thorough review of each of the agency departments.
The review included an all agency wide focus group, a review of the
department manual and any regulatory or contractual responsibilities that the
department needed to comply with, and a meeting with the department to develop
their benchmark and expected outcomes.
We are currently in the process of reviewing our initial work, and this information will be presented to the CTAC and FOTAC, as well as the Leadership Team of the agency.
Describe
your data collection system in relation to QI/QA
We
collect data relevant to current operations as well as initiatives that the
department would like to review.
We utilize instruments such as the program specification matrix and the
outcomes tools that we developed to meet our needs.
What
memberships and/or resources (books, organizations, people, tools, etc.)
have you found to be valuable in your work
When
beginning this process my staff and I attended COA CQI training and CWLA, read
the books by Dr. Fontena Zirps and her associates, and searched the Internet for
information.
The COA standards were also instrumental in helping us to develop a
written framework for all of the work we are completing.
What
do you enjoy most about working in the QI/QA field?I enjoy empowering the departments to make change from the inside. Many times, people become satisfied with the status quo or exhibit the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude. This job has allowed be to work with people to help them realize that, even when they are doing what is required, options exist for improvement. One of my favorite quotes reads, “the race for quality has no finish line!!”
How
has the Quality Leader's Network been of value to you?
Because of where I live, I have only been able to attend one
[Philadelphia area] meeting,
however I check the website often for tips and ideas.
The meeting that I attended affirmed some of the initiatives my
department is spearheading and helped me to see that I am on the right
track.
