Improving Client Care with Better Hand-offs
Hand-offs must be “clean” to win at certain sports, as seen in relay races or in football. The same is true elsewhere in life; a proper hand-off can mean a seamless career change, a joyful parenting experience, or a peaceful conflict resolution.
Unfortunately, our world has its share of flubbed hand-offs, fumbled opportunities, and too many things falling through the cracks, despite our best intentions. In the social service field, a lack of coordination and mixed signals often lead to frustrated clients and less-than-ideal outcomes for everybody. Even the most sophisticated nonprofit organizations are unable to do it all. Clients may thrive in-house with a detailed care plan, but may quickly falter once they leave your care, seeking a tangential service not in their orbit.
For a metro area as large as Salem/Keizer to make headway on large social problems, the social service sector would benefit from ways to coordinate care to reduce the gaps in service. So, for example, a person transitioning from emergency into more permanent housing would benefit from coordination between one living situation to the next. Beyond that, what about a hand-off that covers the clients’ needs for employment and transportation, counseling, and daycare resources?
It's possible, with existing partnerships and technology, to make that happen. But it takes a level of coordination and a shared database that is sometimes unreliable.
Imagine how the care plan from one organization could be seen by other, partner agencies, and adapted to further services. Then, consider how a shared database would allow for partner agencies to hand off the client without having to create a whole new care plan, from scratch.
This is only one aspect of whole-person care, which approaches social services from the viewpoint of the client, not the organization’s constraints. In the long run, whole-person care will make social services more effective, less expensive, and more adaptable to each client, and each client’s particular need.
With a more coordinated hand-off, clients will experience fewer hurdles, and partner organizations will experience more ease and better outcomes.