Module 9: Implementing Policy, Regulatory, and Partnership Changes (Business Acumen)
Overview:
Both agencies and provider organizations play a key role in addressing system change initiatives. These change initiatives can be as broad as implementing policy and regulatory issues, or as focused as developing partnerships between one another or understanding the business of your own individual organization.
Staff have not always been adequately trained to be able to understand the business side of the work that organizations do. This often creates awkward tension when organizations make some of their business decisions, especially those difficult ones impacting programs or services.
In today’s environment, those organizations that can effectively operate as a Mission-driven business will succeed. Leaders and staff can no longer view the business side of the organization as a backroom function. The business side of the organization needs to be sophisticated and competent, and all staff should understand and support that side of the organization as well as the service delivery side because the two go hand-in-hand.
Many of the very important things that leaders will be called upon to do to prepare for a successful future for their organizations are business related. Organizations should find ways to “bridge the divide” with staff so they can be prepared to become partners with the organization in its Mission-driven business.
Every organization has times when things didn’t go as financially planned, or when public policy or regulations seem to conflict with current operations, and that is when an informed workforce can help manage change.
The things that organizations might choose to do to advocate for regulatory or policy changes, or diversify their funding streams and service offerings, need to be understood so they can be supported by staff. If organizations have a business plan, they should share it. If they don’t have a business plan, one should be developed and then shared. The business plan for an organization may prove to be the most important plan that they develop.
Strategies:
- Implementing System Change
- Implementing Partnership Changes
Resources:
- Maximizing Social Work’s Policy Impact in a Changing Political Landscape
- How Policy Analysis Can Inform Efforts to Improve Social Programs, Judith E. Barnstone, New Mexico Highlands University
- BBI article on System Change Approaches
“It’s really hard to make significant systemic changes if the system isn’t ready to support you. We are expected to ensure success after a youth leaves residential treatment, but there are no funds available to support what we need to do to ensure that success.”
Introduction
Implementing Policy, Regulatory, and Partnership Changes, often described as business acumen, requires an understanding of many issues and areas, from those at the local, state, and national levels to those at an individual organization. Establishing partnerships to address these areas also becomes a critical part of the process.
1. Implementing System Change
There are four basic guidelines for changing any system:
- Follow the policies
- Follow the regulations
- Follow the practices
- Follow the funding
Systems are established and then maintained by designing policies, regulations, practices, and funding to enable them to accomplish their desired purpose.
System change usually starts with policy. Policy is a formal statement of the vision that expresses the desired purpose of the system, what is expected to be accomplished through coordinated systemic efforts. Regulation is the framework of rules and procedures that guide and direct the efforts to implement the vision. Practices are the specific efforts that are developed to operationalize the vision. The funding enables the efforts to implement and realize the vision.
There are two broad categories of Systems Change – Evolutionary and Transformational. Evolutionary Systems Change tends to be incremental. Transformational Systems Change is pervasive.
EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS CHANGE
Most systems were originally designed to permit evolutionary change. Most systems, over time, develop what has been called “maintenance momentum,” which is a defensive force within all systems that works to maintain the status quo. Changes are permitted within policy, regulations, practice, and funding, but these changes tend to be minor adjustments that don’t significantly disrupt the established patterns of thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors within the system.
TRANSFORMATIONAL SYSTEMS CHANGE
Transformational change is not incremental and not minor. It requires the development of new patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. When the desired purpose of the system change is transformational, all elements of the four key components (policy, regulations, practice, and funding) must be coordinated together, or if not, they could easily work against the desired purpose of the transformational change. If not coordinated, the old system’s structure and defenses will mediate against the effective implementation of the system’s new desired purpose. The change in Child Welfare Policy is an excellent example of Transformational Systems Change.
- POLICY
Policies are crafted to answer two important questions, “What is the desired purpose of this system?” and “What is that desired purpose seeking to accomplish?” It is relatively easy to accommodate to evolutionary changes in policy. It is far more difficult to accommodate to transformational changes in policy because they impact everything.
Transformational changes require a significantly higher level of coordination and collaboration among all participants in the system. Everyone involved must share in the responsibility to help to identify what must change and then agree to help to implement those changes.
Child protection was, for many years, driven by a policy on child removals to ensure child safety. As a direct result of this policy, children were often removed from their families when reports of abuse or neglect were verified to ensure the safety of the children involved. This policy caused many children to be removed from their families, grow up away from their families and to not return to their families until they were eighteen years old.
Then the policy changed in a transformational way. Children were to be supported in their own homes or in the homes of relatives whenever possible with additional resources being provided to help to strengthen their families and increase their levels of wellness and stability.
When children needed an out of home intervention for purposes of safety, it would be for brief periods of time. The new policy stressed the importance of ensuring that children would grow up with the active support of families. Families were to be full partners in the services they received.
Much of the regulatory, practice and funding infrastructure of the Child Welfare System had been designed around supporting children in out of home care. The transformational change in policy forced a reconsideration of the entire infrastructure of the Child Welfare System.
- REGULATION
Regulations are crafted to answer two important questions, “What is allowed and will be promoted within this system?” and “What is not allowed?” It is easier for regulations to evolve than it is for them to transform. Regulations, once installed, tend to remain in place.
After sixty years of developing regulations to oversee children living for long periods of time in out of home care, some of the regulations that had been in place often made it difficult to reduce the lengths of stay. Some of the regulations assumed that youths would “grow up” in out of home care. Some of the regulations assumed that families were the problem and not the solution and restricted family visiting and discouraged involvement of families. Some of the regulations restricted youth involvement in their communities.
Transformational systems change requires all parties to come together and review the appropriate regulations and decide which regulations need to be changed in order to advance the new policies and to help the system to achieve its desired purpose.
- PRACTICE
Practices are the ongoing activities that are performed to help to achieve the desired purpose of the system. Many of the practices that were developed over the years in support of the former Child Welfare Policy were designed to help children to learn how to live successfully in out of home care. When out of home care is to be accessed under the new Child Welfare Policy, it is to be brief, family-focused and designed to help prepare youths for success with families after they leave.
The supports and resources that are being made available to families to help serve youths in their own homes will help to ensure that those youths who are need an out of home intervention for brief periods of time will be youths with higher levels of need. Most of the youths referred will have experienced much higher levels of trauma.
The emphasis for this work practice is more on learning new skills and on healing from emotional pain than it is on the expectations and rigid patterns of accountability that had been the centerpieces of the former practices. The practices in out of home care under the new policy must be trauma informed. Families must be intimately involved in every stage of the process. This requires a significant change in patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors for everyone practicing in this work.
- FUNDING/FISCAL/BUDGET
Transformational policies cannot be installed unless and until the funding patterns that will enable their installation are in place. The new Child Welfare Policy states that families will be supported by additional resources to help children to safely remain in their homes or in the homes of relatives whenever possible. Without the funding to permit those resources to be accessed by families, the policy is not viable.
All parties involved in the system need to be engaged to determine what new patterns of funding will be required to help to support the achievement of the desired purpose. Transformational change usually calls for a measure of flexibility in funding that is not customary within most existing systems. It is essential that organizations adapt their fiscal practices and budgets to address any changes that occur.
The four components described are depicted in the following diagram identified by the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (now Social Current) who noted that successful system change is achieved through the intentional alignment of practice, policy, fiscal/budgetary and regulatory issues across all stakeholders and systems as noted below.
3 Adapted from Susan Dreyfus presentations, Alliance of Strong Families and Communities, available at: http://www.alliance1.org
“The challenging part is helping our staff to understand why these changes are needed. I get that we have to make these changes, but it feels like a slap in the face to our staff. They think that people are telling us that what they have been doing for such a long time was somehow all wrong.”
2. Implementing Partnership Changes
Policy, practices, regulations, and funding changes are best accomplished in partnership between oversight agencies and provider organizations working together to implement change. As David LaPiana notes “There are many ways to collaborate, and collaborations aren’t mutually exclusive. Organizations can and do collaborate with multiple organizations, often from multiple sectors, on a range of initiatives. In fact, today more than ever organizations must collaborate, both broadly and deeply, because that is what it will take to address the complex challenges we face”.
4 David LaPiana. https://www.lapiana.org/the-collaborative-map-making-sense-of-nonprofit-partnerships/
This collaborative circle depicts a number of possible collaboration opportunities.
All the regulations need to be reconsidered. There are so many regulations that are working against us as we try to implement these changes.