State of Minnesota, Department of Human Services
Report date
August 2019
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
We recruited and created buy-in from staff and executive leadership across DHS and established a Bush cohort consisting of DHS staff and community members to lead us in this effort. In a complex and expansive organization such as DHS, fostering agency-wide participation and buy-in is essential to making lasting change. We held five community engagement events: aging and adult services with Somali elders, culturally responsive practices in the African American community, historical and current trauma and its relational impact with DHS and American Indian urban communities and Tribes, health care administration engagement with community health workers, and how to best access human services in Minnesota using technology.
Assistant Commissioners attended the events and participated in debriefs. Having senior leadership at these events and their willingness to allocate money and staff time suggests a commitment toward increased community engagement the agency. The cohort wrote an event report for each of the five events, detailing the event design, outcomes, and feedback, and distributed them to event participants.
Assistant Commissioners attended the events and participated in debriefs. Having senior leadership at these events and their willingness to allocate money and staff time suggests a commitment toward increased community engagement the agency. The cohort wrote an event report for each of the five events, detailing the event design, outcomes, and feedback, and distributed them to event participants.
Grant participants in the Bush cohort attended two participatory leadership trainings focused on creating inclusive and open engagement, honoring all perspectives and cultural practices. These skills not only allowed them to facilitate the community engagement event required by the grant, but also allowed them to apply and share their skills with their colleagues moving the work forward. This sharing of knowledge is an essential component of the grant goals of continuing to embed authentic community engagement in DHS culture and business practices, with a focus on reducing inequities. We were intentional about planning and evaluation work. We conducted two surveys and included both DHS staff/leaders as participants to gauge the readiness, quality, and use of authentic community engagement practices at DHS. Learnings from these surveys were shared with DHS Senior Management Team, the Bush cohort, the Cultural and Ethnic Communities Leadership Council (CECLC), and others. A Process Evaluation Report was also produced through community relations and shared with agency leadership and highlighted results from interviews with DHS and community leaders, survey results, and more.
The Bush cohort held strategic planning sessions (two retreats using Technology of Participation). The facilitated conversations fostered feedback/analysis from each member of the cohort. At these retreats, the cohort evaluated their work, identified internal structures and systems to focus on modifying for greater impact, and created work groups for four strategic directions moving forward in this work. Finally, the cohort organized a series of grant closeout events, to follow up and be accountable to both community members and DHS on the work and accomplishments achieved under this grant, and where they see the work moving forward. We held events (World Café) at each of the two central office locations for DHS, as well as a community-focused close out event at the Hallie Q. Brown center in the Rondo community. We held a community event in Austin, MN focusing on Latinx experiences with human service programs and providers, and discussing the current context/climate for immigration/immigrants in the United States. We partnered with our community cohort members to screen Rondo Beyond the Pavement and participate in the annual PEACE celebration in Saint Paul.
Key lessons learned
One lesson that we learned as project managers is the need for clear, and often redundant, communication about expectations of grant participants. When we realized that participants were experiencing confusion about the exact expectations and their role in accomplishing the goals of the grant, we responded in several ways. We devoted two of our monthly cohort meetings to addressing confusion, using the World Café and Technology of Participation techniques that grant participants were trained in, to facilitate honest discussions and allow for more clarity of expectations and grant goals.
We also developed roles and responsibilities and community engagement event planning resources and met frequently with groups to guide participant’s planning and implementation of community engagement events according to the goals of the grant.
We also developed roles and responsibilities and community engagement event planning resources and met frequently with groups to guide participant’s planning and implementation of community engagement events according to the goals of the grant.
Another lesson that we learned is the difficulty of managing a project across a large, complex agency, and the need for flexibility as well as focus on what you can control. With participants from various administrations across the agency, each with their own executives, managers, priorities, and work cultures, it is a delicate balance to allow participants and their colleagues to identify topics and set timelines that work for them, but also adhere to the expectations of their work internally and of the grant. In other cases, the timeline proposed in the project charter has not been feasible for participants or their administration. We learned that through flexibility and negotiation we can still accomplish the goals of the grant, despite unforeseen delays.
Reflections on the community innovation process
Inclusiveness is key to the success of our project. The meaningful engagement of key stakeholders by going into communities experiencing inequities and authentically engaging them in a culturally appropriate manner was a central goal of the events, The events were collaborative in the way the meetings are facilitated; there was not one person speaking or lecturing, but instead active participation of everyone guided by questions prepared in advance with staff who know the communities. We endeavor to appreciate the knowledge and wisdom in the room of our community events, cohort activities, and beyond by engaging in active listening (a skill learned and practiced during the training sessions). The approach to each event, training, and discussion that the grant cohort held has been to set a living room space in which all are invited, food is served, and very short presentations are made to set the context. These methods of community engagement have not been the norm across DHS and the cohort modeling shows what can be done when we are intentional about creating welcoming spaces for community engagement.
Progress toward an innovation
Our work has reaffirmed the need for more authentic and meaningful engagement with communities in order to close the disparities gap in human services. It has given DHS staff and executive-level leaders an opportunity to engage with communities of color in truthful and often emotional conversations about trauma and differential experiences between communities that lead to inequities. Building capacity for community engagement and understanding of racial justice issues are essential to addressing inequities. These conversation led to positive responses from DHS employees and are steps towards establishing a culture of engagement at DHS. Monthly meetings of the grant cohort were held to continue to build team cohesion and learning. In 2017, DHS implemented an agency-wide Policy on Equity, where authentic and equitable community engagement is one of the tenets. An implementation plan was also adopted in 2017 and outlined the work and best practices as established and conducted by the Bush cohort in order to move our agency toward more authentic practices.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
Managing participants, each with their own full time responsibilities, supervisors, and executive level leaders, is difficult. Outlining clear methods and accountability for equity work within the day-to-day work of DHS employees will help move this forward. Also, through this work, we identified the need to include more supervisors, managers, and directors. While the staff doing front-line work and those in leadership have shared experiences and lessons from these activities, there is a need to engage with those who manage line staff and program activities in order to fully integrate equity and engagement into their program areas.
What's next?
Participants in the Bush cohort have communicated their wishes to continue this work through technical assistance, advice, and trainings. The group has renamed itself (post grant) as the Community Engagement Advisory Group at DHS. These individuals, along with DHS strategic plan action team members and the Community Relations Division at DHS, will work on how we institutionalize the knowledge gained through these activities to have lasting impact at the agency.
If you could do it all over again...
One piece of learning through this grant that would have been helpful at the start is to be mindful and plan for transitions, and how the cohort and the division will handle change. Some change is always anticipated – in government, we are doing this work across elections and administrations, and will always have leadership turnover. However, we can also be more mindful about the transition of cohort members and leaders themselves (some have left DHS or state service during the course of the grant). This includes a conversation, plan, and understanding of how/when/what it means to incorporate new members of the cohort, and how do we bring everyone up to the same understanding and focus on the work. We also had the unfortunate experience of two of our cohort member elders passing away during the course of this grant. We work to incorporate their wisdom and contribution in our work as we move it forward, but we have also learned to take time to grieve and appreciate their place in our work.
One last thought
In 2018, DHS formulated a strategic plan (2018-2020) and a key strategy area is community engagement. This strategy area formed an action team that meets regularly and identifies ways to create and/or modify structures and systems to facilitate more widely-practiced authentic community engagement in the agency. These structural reflections of the work the Bush cohort has conducted since 2015 show the impact of community voices and efforts toward shared decision making are having at DHS. The relationships across DHS through the continued work and growth of the cohort help break down silos in our work and provide more comprehensive understanding of each other’s role in eliminating inequities in human services.