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When Cornerstones of Care began its work with out-of-home foster care in 2019, it served 842 clients in Area 5 – Atchison, Leavenworth, and Wyandotte counties in Kansas. Today, those numbers have dipped below 600 clients receiving out-of-home services – a reduction of almost 30 percent.
This hopeful statistic is just one of many that help our team members track the efficacy of their work to ensure that our programs are hitting goals, fulfilling contracts and grants, and meeting the needs of children and families in our care.
Our dedicated team members are at one end of these impressive numbers, building relationships and serving families through programs like Family Preservation Services (FPS) and Intensive In-Home Services (IIS). On the other are our stakeholders – donors, contract providers, community members, and others who hear these numbers and make strategic decisions that guide their level of engagement with Cornerstones of Care.
Our Performance Excellence (PE) team is the essential middle piece, collecting and synthesizing organizational data and translating it for the public. They are the muscle behind the scenes, developing policies and procedures, managing databases, and making data-driven recommendations that guide our organization into the future.
“As one of the non-client-facing departments, we devote our time to supporting program staff,” said Paige Webb, Senior Director of Performance Excellence. “We do this by analyzing, sharing, and using data to develop and improve service plans to ensure best practice.”
The PE team started to take off when Cornerstones of Care obtained the Kansas Foster Care contract in 2019. Due to funding from the contract, the PE team primarily focused on helping prop up new programs in Kansas while continuing to provide high-level data for other programs.
Over time, awareness of the impact of the PE team increased, and Cornerstones of Care invested more into its identity as a data-driven organization. The PE team has nearly doubled in the past five years and, for the first time, is reporting directly to a member of the Executive Leadership Team, reflecting its slow shift to a more central role within the organization.
This growth has kickstarted a significant restructuring process within the Performance Excellence Team – a two-pronged team structure focused on two primary areas: Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement.
“Our Quality Assurance team is going to be looking at more qualitative data,” said Paige. “They’re supporting audits, policies, and overseeing the implementation of quality improvement efforts designed to improve performance and maintain compliance with the COA [Council on Accreditation], HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act], and other accreditation standards.”
Ashley Sloop manages the Quality Assurance team and is excited about how this change will allow her team to focus on specific areas of program needs by taking a deeper dive into the information for performance quality improvement and reporting process trends.
“I think it will bring more understanding and awareness for everybody, whether it’s related to performance improvement and outcomes or case record reviews and satisfaction surveys,” said Ashley.
On the other side, Ryan Yowell serves as Manager of Performance Improvement. His team does more with the organization’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, myAvatar, and will meet with team leaders regularly to identify opportunities for more intuitive and efficient workflows within the EHR.
“Our Performance Improvement team is going to be focused on ensuring our programs have the tools they need to not only complete the work outlined in our contracts but reflect on, build off of, and continually improve the services provided,” said Paige.
Evidence of the PE team’s impact can be seen in many ways, many of which will continue to be amplified in the coming years. Paige, Ashley, and Ryan are all part of a Client Experience task force collaborating with Lexicon Strategies, an Atlanta-based social impact firm. Lexicon was hired by Cornerstones of Care earlier this year to expand and amplify its WIDE (welcoming, inclusion, diversity, and equity) efforts.
The PE team also hired a team member to serve as the Kansas Informatics Liaison as the state develops a new child welfare information system.
“They have asked Cornerstones of Care to employ a subject matter expert to advocate for and be part of that process to help the state understand how different agencies are collecting and communicating the data,” said Paige.
Current team member Megan Richardson will step into this role and bring her wealth of experience from her time in Kansas Foster Care.
“She will get to be Cornerstones’ voice and seat at the table, which is very exciting,” said Paige.
Ultimately, the goal of this restructuring process is to expand the impact of the PE team so that they can understand the larger trends of the organization and serve Cornerstones of Care at a broader level.
“We want to provide more all-around meaningfulness for the organization,” said Ashley. “We want to help other teams, too, shift from being reactive to proactive in serving our families.”
To do this, the team will need to continue solidifying their role within the organization and articulate what they do and don’t do for specific programs.
“We don’t want to be compliance managers; we want to give managers the tools they need to make data-informed decisions and improve the quality services being delivered to families and communities,” said Paige. “We want to use data to tell our story and not just clean the data up.”
They also want to raise awareness of their capacity so that team members can truly take advantage of the services they offer.
“We are team players,” said Paige. “We hope programs see us as a tool and support to help problem solve and break down barriers. If we can help with something, we definitely want to do it.”