Engaging Community Members

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Purpose and Target Population 

  • Mission: To make lives better through connecting our neighbors in Washington County to Community Resources 

  • Our Value: Responding to Washington County Neighbors’ needs with Care Connections, and options 

  • Focus is on two populations: 

  • All community members 

  • People (professionals, family members, etc.) supporting community members 

Planning and Implementation

  • Launched in 2020, TCI started taking requests in 2021, ongoing for the past five years 

  • Previously, two separate initiatives (Mentor Neighbor and Washington County Basic Needs Group)  

  • Mentor Neighbor is a concept envisioned and designed by the CCC for effectively connecting people with needed resources. Originating in a 2015 CCC Vision Day, the design included comprehensive partner and community input, but did not move into implementation. The Washington County Basic Needs effort included the Calais Rotary, legislators, the Public Health District Liaison, Washington County Emergency Management, and others who were working to solve similar problems at the onset of the pandemic. 

  • In 2020, people involved in these initiatives decided to join forces; they subsequently created shared mission, and values statements, and a combined branding strategy and logo. 

  • CCC offered to administer and staff the effort, and secured funds from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation to move the The Connection Initiative forward.  

  • Planning work included robust research of online platforms that could help them achieve the mission. 

  • Through a process that included all stakeholders, Zendesk, the #1 customer relations platform in the world, was selected as the platform for the initiative. 

  • A website was created to host the The Connection Initiative, resource guides, featured initiatives, and resource partner agency information. The site creates a public-facing tool for people to put in requests that seamlessly integrate into the Zendesk platform.  

  • The program manager, together with consultants, develop the workflows for receiving and responding to requests and for creating program reports. 

  • How it works: A person can call/text (207) 255-7786; email support@connectioninitiative.org; visit TCI’s Facebook page; or visit TCI’s  website to reach out for help. Once someone reaches out to TCI by any of these avenues, a  “ticket” or record of the person’s request is created and brought to the attention of TCI’s Program Manager, who consults the database of resources available through the TCI platform, and if necessary,  will consult "Resource Partners", who are providers trained to respond to TCI requests. These providers are trusted partners of the CCC who represent organizations throughout Washington County dedicated  to improving outcomes for community members through specific services. 

  • TCI may refer the request to one or more resource partners who will reach out to the person making the request. The program Manager will then follow up to ensure that the request has been resolved. 

  • Embedded protocols in the platform document types of needs, referrals made, factors that facilitate or hinder service access, individual needs met, and remaining gaps, among other key metrics. 

  • All TCI supports are free of charge. Funding has come from private foundations in Maine and Massachusetts. The Maine Medical Association Center for Quality Improvement in collaboration with the Hanley Center for Health Leadership & Education are supporting a two-year effort within The Connection Initiative to test the platform’s capacity to improve health outcomes for older adults and Tribal elders in Washington County through a Community Health Worker strategy that leverages TCI as a trauma-informed care coordination platform. A research team at the University of Maine School of Nursing is supporting evaluation of this effort. 

Best Practices  

  • CCC has developed and honed an approach to collaborative systems change that is both organic and place-based, and is informed by recognized theories of change concepts such as human-centered design, collective impact, and results based accountability. 

  • Significant community involvement and engagement is baked into The Connection Initiative through two committees, for which formal charters were created and adopted by consensus: 

  • The Resource Partner Group: people who use the platform regularly meet virtually every Wednesday at 3 pm and have done so consistently for five years. They check in on changes in the resource landscape, individual needs of clients or community members, and offer insight on their experiences in the TCI platform. 

  • The Strategic Guidance Committee: stakeholders committed to assuring impact and long-term sustainability meet monthly to review program data, stakeholder communication, and strategic direction. 

Challenges and Solutions 

  • Limited resources for implementation of two similar initiatives (Mentor Neighbor and the Washington County Basic Needs group) and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic provided the synergy to create a blended partnership 

  • Struggles about how to characterize needs (financial, housing, child care, transportation, substance use treatment, etc.) among community members led to the development of a sophisticated framework that uses Social Determinants and Social Drivers of Health to identify priority services or resources that are tailored to individual needs of clients 

  • With little guidance available about how to build formal agreements among partners who   work collaboratively on the online platform to engage in communication that respects client privacy and confidentiality and conforms to legal requirements of participating organizations, CCC spent considerable time and resources to build TCI’s formal organizational agreements (i.e. Collaborating Organization Agreement, Key Contact Confidentiality Agreement, Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy). 

Resources and Tools 

  • Featured Initiatives elevate special projects and partnerships that leverage TCI’s infrastructure.  

  • A Master Resource Guide is in development with a feature that allows a person navigating the guide to connect to TCI for assistance at any time.   

Contact 

The Connection Initiative (TCI) 

Washington County, Indian Township and Pleasant Point (Passamaquoddy Tribal Communities), Based at the Community Caring Collaborative of Washington County (CCC)