Community Collaboration Experience CoOccurring Collaborative of Southern Maine

1
Community Collaboration ExperienceCo-Occurring
Collaborative of Southern Maine

• Catherine S. Chichester, Executive Director
• [phone]
• CChichester_at_ccsme.org

2
Why build a Collaborative

• Provides for a larger scale and scope of
  resources to address system issues
• Fits with a greater decentralized service
  delivery system and flexibility
• Can define a common purpose for the greater
  good/build consensus
• Supports boarder expertise and participation
• Aids in eliminating barriers
• Builds motivation, creativity and cooperation
• Opportunities for grants, projects and programs

3
How Maine the Collaborative Got Started

• Broadly based state-wide training
• State task force
• Pilot community collaborative projects
• Demonstration project
• Continuation of the Collaborative

4
Context for Readiness

• Knowledge
• Timing
• Commitment Political and personal
• Vision
• Perceived need and rewards

5
So the Collaborative

• Invited all relevant agencies to participate
• Involved key stakeholders and committed clinical
  leaders
• Created tasks and committees
• Honored consumer voice
• Nurtured one to one relationships
• Worked through conflicts
• Celebrate victories
• Develop clarity in vision, roles, processes,
  decision making
• Infrastructure with staff
• Conduct periodic self review

6

• Real listening shows respect. It creates trust.
  As we listen, we not only gain understanding we
  also create the environment to be understood. And
  when both people understand both perspectives,
  instead of being on opposite sides of the table
  looking across at each other, we find ourselves
  on the same side looking at solutions together.
• Steven R. Covey

7
The Collaborative Mission

• advocate for best practices, encourage
  professional development, maximize collaboration
  and facilitate integrated mental health and
  substance abuse services for adults and
  adolescents and their families

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Goals

• Enhance collaboration and the exchange of ideas
  among stakeholders related to co-occurring
  disorders of mental health and substance use
  disorders
• Provide cost effective training and education
• Support creative interagency problem-solving
• Create opportunities for interagency resource
  sharing and development
• Provide advocacy

9
Structure and Membership

• Agency and individual members
• Consumer/family members offered stipends
• Geographically defined service diversity
• Membership agreements support of mission,
  willingness to alter structures, active
  participation, identification of empowered
  liaison, signature of CEO/ED
• Board of Directors
• Bylaws voted by membership
• Monthly adolescent and adult committees
• Various subcommittees

10
Products and Activities

• Conferences
• Cross-training programs/training collaboratives
• Technical assistance
• Training monographs video
• Action planning committees
• Dual Recovery Anonymous
• Community Service Review Team
• Incorporation as not for profit corporation
• Grants
• Evidenced based models
• Advocacy
• And more

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How the Collaborative Continues

• Sustained leadership
• Formalization
• Personal commitment
• Maintenance of agency and political support
• Collaborative knowledge valued and utilized
• A sense of membership and importance
• New goals set
• New ideas and people

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• It must be remembered that there is nothing more
  difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor
  more dangerous to manage than the creation of a
  new system.
• For the initiator has the enmity of all who would
  profit by the preservation of the old institution
  and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain
  by the new one.
• Nicola Machiavelli