iCarol is your help line software company that is here to make your job easier as Executive Director or leader of a non-profit contact center. Whether you have a crisis, help or 211 referral line, we are here to help you help more people in your community. Read more…
2-1-1 Texas Information and Referral Network has two positions now posted for a Program Specialist IV and a Resource Specialist (PS V). Please see below for more information.
Program Specialist IV
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) seeks highly qualified candidates to fill the Program Specialist IV position within the Access and Eligibility Services (AES), 2-1-1 Texas Information and Referral Network (2-1-1 TIRN). AES is driven by its mission to connect Texans to people, services and supports by helping individuals and families in need of food, medical care, cash assistance and other social services. 2-1-1 TIRN connects Texans to services by providing information and referral to community and governmental resources online at 211texas.org and by phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The ideal candidate will thrive in an environment that emphasizes: a passion for service, innovation through new ideas, customer-first thinking, consistent and reliable service provision, embracing our differences as a source of strength, accomplishing more through partnership, and learning for continuous improvement.
The Program Specialist IV reports to the Program Manager, who is supported by the to the 2-1-1 Service Delivery Team Lead for 2-1-1 Texas Information and Referral Network (TIRN). The Program Specialist IV works with 2-1-1 TIRN staff, contracted Area Information Center (AICs), and other stakeholders to support contact center service delivery and telephony. The Program Specialist IV provides programmatic support, research, and project management for the 2-1-1 TIRN program. Responsibilities include providing support, guidance, and technical assistance on service delivery and telephony; project management for special initiatives; conducting and interpreting research; preparing implementation proposals; identifying and documenting best practices; and establishing quality assurance and performance measurement tools and protocols. This position will also work with program staff to engage internal and external stakeholders and partners to enhance community access.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) seeks highly qualified candidates to fill the Resource Specialist (Program Specialist V) position within the Access and Eligibility Services (AES), 2-1-1 Texas Information and Referral Network (2-1-1 TIRN). AES is driven by its mission to connect Texans to people, services and supports by helping individuals and families in need of food, medical care, cash assistance and other social services. 2-1-1 TIRN connects Texans to services by providing information and referral to community and governmental resources online at 211texas.org and by phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The ideal candidate will thrive in an environment that emphasizes: a passion for service, innovation through new ideas, customer-first thinking, consistent and reliable service provision, embracing our differences as a source of strength, accomplishing more through partnership, and learning for continuous improvement. This position reports to Program Manager, who is supported by the 2-1-1 Texas Database Administrator.
The 2-1-1 Texas Resource Specialist provides broad programmatic support, research, analysis, and project management for initiatives and projects focused on improving the quality of 2-1-1 Texas resource data and expanding how Information & Referral services are delivered using technology. Responsibilities include project management; conducting and interpreting research; preparing implementation proposals; identifying and documenting best practices; and establishing quality assurance and performance measurement tools. This position will also work with program staff to engage internal and external stakeholders and partners to enhance community access.
n4a is a is a 501(c)(3) membership association representing America’s national network of Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) and provides a voice for the Title VI Native American aging programs. iCarol serves many organizations who are Area Agencies on Aging and therefore members of n4a, as well as other agencies in the aging and disability space. Aging and Disability Resource Centers, helplines that curb senior isolation and loneliness, and senior-focused information and referral services choose our solution because we empower them to:
Invite and document contacts from clients and their caregivers over a variety of communication channels: phone, in-person, web forms, and our integrated Live Chat and Texting.
Encourage No Wrong Door initiatives by enabling them to securely send information to partners, make warm transfers, and dispatch additional services.
Create and curate simple to complex community service inventories to share with clients and caregivers by phone, email, Text/SMS, and during Live Chat sessions.
Share searchable resource information on their own public websites, or the websites of partners such as senior centers, local libraries, and hospitals.
Engage in ongoing client contact to track client history and progress, ensure needs are being met, and to document customer satisfaction and outcomes.
In some cases, Area Agencies on Aging and Aging and Disability Resource Centers are using statewide software systems, and local centers may not be empowered to use iCarol as their sole solution for service delivery. However, even in these instances iCarol can still help! Some centers use iCarol to provide important capabilities not included in a statewide solution, such as live chat or SMS/texting capabilities that expand services to a wider audience, public intake or eligibility screening forms, or web searches of available community resources.
For more information on how iCarol helps senior serving agencies, click here. If you’ll be at the n4a conference, please stop by and see the team at booth 203 so that we can discuss how iCarol can help you. If you’re not in New Orleans for the conference, we welcome those interested in learning more about the iCarol solution to contact us to ask your questions or have a quick meeting to talk about your challenges so we can see how iCarol might help.
This week, the National Conference on Problem Gambling holds its 33rd National Conference on Gambling Addiction and Responsible Gambling. This is the largest and oldest conference of its kind bringing together leaders in prevention, education, treatment, responsible gaming, research, and recovery.
Problem gambling helplines do wonderful work to strengthen families and improve health and wellness by reducing the economic, social, and personal costs caused by problem gambling. With the growing popularity and reduced legal barriers to sports betting, focus on awareness, education, and prevention are more important than ever.
NCPG has also focused its efforts on supporting members of the military after their research found that 56,000 servicemembers meet the criteria for a gambling disorder and that military personnel and their families are exposed to more than 3,000 slot machines on military bases located Outside the Continental United States (OCONUS) where over $100 million is gambled away every year. Research showed that military personnel are up to 2-3 times more likely to experience problem gambling. Yet, due to the stigmas associated with the disorder, less than ten percent of those with gambling problems seek help. The lack of protections against gambling addiction extend beyond active duty members: a 2019 study of veterans with gambling disorder discovered that they are twice as likely to attempt suicide as compared to veterans who do not have a gambling addiction, and 40% of veterans seeking problem gambling treatment report suicide attempts.
NCPG leadership influenced the introduction of a bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Gambling Addiction Prevention (GAP) Act of 2019. The proposed law would require the US Department of Defense to develop policies and programs to prevent and treat gambling problems, in coordination with the Department’s other behavioral health efforts. On military sites where gambling activities take place, such policies and programs would include providing educational materials and promoting responsible gambling behavior. It also requires the Department to update its regulations, instructions, and guidance to explicitly include gambling disorder within 180 days of the passage of the Act.
iCarol is the chosen provider for a national chat and text collaboration platform for the National Council on Problem Gambling. Several centers and organizations from around the U.S. participate to provide help in states where they provide services. Help seekers from around the U.S. can contact the NCPG National Helpline through phone, SMS/text, or live chat, and are routed to centers serving their local community whenever possible possible. If there is not a designated center available, a trained back-up center helps the person in need. Contact us if you are interested in a model like this at your organization or network.
Collaboration is becoming a necessary part of not-for-profit work. Ensuring a partnership is successful for everyone involved takes careful planning that starts long before you begin the work with your fellow collaborators.
The team at iCarol has been helping our customers have smoother collaborations since the software’s creation, through a variety of tools that include sharing resource database for the purposes of both maintenance and referral giving, contact form sharing to help with after-hours outsourcing and network building, and features like the Contact Record Outbound API and Resource API that allow data to be shared directly with other applications.
For several years, before they even worked for iCarol, Senior Product Manager, Crystal McEachern, and Director of Business Development, Polly McDaniel, have offered guidance on collaboration building at industry conferences. They have over 20 years of combined experience on both sides of collaboration—as I&R professionals working with their fellow non-profit organizations and as iCarol staff members helping customers build collaborations.
Now, you can learn from their expertise through an all new eBook authored by Polly and Crystal. In it, you’ll find step-by-step guidance on building a collaboration, including tips for the planning process and important things to consider that are often overlooked. Does the prospect of writing an MOU make your head spin? We have you covered! The eBook even includes a workbook for use in your own personal collaboration planning.
Best of all, the eBook is completely free — we’re sharing it with you in hopes our experience and guidance can help you successfully deliver services to even more people in your communities.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a funding opportunity for research studies that examine how state Medicaid programs are using managed care payment and contracting strategies to address enrollees’ social needs; the ways MCOs are responding; and the effect of these activities on enrollees, plans, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders.
The deadline for letters of intent is July 2, 2019. Full proposals are due on August 12, 2019.
Health Affairs, a leading peer review journal of health policy thought and research, recently issued a request for abstracts on Integrating Health and Human Services.
Description from Health Affairs website:
Health Affairs is planning a theme issue on Integrating Health and Human Services, to be published in April 2020. We thank the Kresge Foundation for its generous support of this issue.
The social safety net includes a variety of health and human services programs that have the potential to improve health and promote health equity by meeting health and social needs and supporting economic advancement. Some of the major barriers to realizing the potential of these programs relate to gaps in coordination across sectors.
Our issue will explore collaboration between sectors that provide health and human services, with attention to infrastructure, policies, and practices within and across these sectors aimed at meeting the needs of the people they serve by reducing sectoral barriers.
We plan to publish approximately 20 peer-reviewed articles including research, analyses, case studies, and commentaries from leading researchers and scholars, analysts, industry experts, and health and health care stakeholders. We encourage author teams that include representation from multiple sectors/professions… Read More
The deadline to submit your abstract is June 24, 2019.
Recognition of the impact of social risks on health has spurred widespread interest in social risk screening across the US health care sector. Although the goal of this screening is to improve patient care and connect patients to resources to help address social risks, the sensitive nature of social risks raises concerns about the potential for screening to stigmatize patients and create opportunities for discrimination. To date few studies have evaluated patient perspectives on social risk screening. This SIREN webinar will present results of a new multi-site study (papers in progress) that examined the acceptability of the Accountable Health Communities (AHC) social risk screening tool among patients in diverse health care settings in nine states.
iCarol would like to extend our congratulations to our friends and customers at North Carolina 2-1-1, who were selected to receive Innovation Awards in the Disaster Preparedness category, and also voted the overall winner of the Innovation Awards. This was the first year for these awards, given by the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems (AIRS).
NC 2-1-1’s submission stemmed from their experience as North Carolina’s disaster response portal, having experienced two major storms in two years’ time.
NC 2-1-1 first took on the role of disaster portal during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. During this historic storm and flooding that followed, many of the county’s 9-1-1 systems were knocked offline, causing residents to call 2-1-1 requesting life-saving intervention including water rescues necessitated by the flooding. This required quick thinking on the part of NC 2-1-1 staff and leadership to establish protocols in how to handle these calls and inform appropriate services to ensure the callers received appropriate assistance as quickly as possible.
While their quick action in the face of emergency surely saved many lives, there were some weaknesses in the process that became apparent. Namely, the 2-1-1 staff did not consistently receive follow-up or confirmation that NC 2-1-1’s referrals to emergency operations were successfully received and addressed, or that callers got the help they needed. In such high stakes situations, this added to the already heightened stress experienced by the 2-1-1 team during this disaster.
Post-disaster briefings provided both NC 2-1-1 and North Carolina Emergency Operations with the opportunity to talk through the situation that played out during Hurricane Matthew, and assess what should be done going forward to improve response during future disasters.
They decided that in future disasters they would implement changes, including:
The use of an internal web form by 2-1-1 staff that documents vital information about the caller, their location, contact information, emergency request, etc.
Completed forms would be sent directly to the Commander for Emergency Operations for distribution to the appropriate ground response team.
2-1-1 staff would receive immediate confirmation that transmitted forms were successfully received.
The new, formalized protocols that emerged during the post-disaster briefings were quickly put to the test when Hurricane Florence arrived in September of 2018 and some 9-1-1 systems experienced technical difficulties in the face of unforgiving wind and flooding. This time, the 2-1-1 staff felt there was more accountability in the entire process thanks in part to the ability to track the movement of referrals to emergency operations. Confirmation that life threatening situations were successfully handed off from 2-1-1 to emergency services also helped reduce stress on 2-1-1 staff and lessen any unease that might have previously come with the lack of closure they received regarding the 9-1-1 calls.
We are extremely proud of the efforts of North Carolina 2-1-1 for their leadership on the topic of Disaster Response and service to the residents of North Carolina before, during, and after natural disasters. Their Innovation Award is certainly well-deserved, and we look forward to seeing them presented with the award at the AIRS Conference this week.
On Wednesday and Thursday, April 24th and 25th Rachel Wentink, Vice President, Operations for iCarol, will be in Denver, Colorado attending the 52nd American Association of Suicidology (AAS) Conference.
The conference is a convergence of professionals working across the spectrum of the suicide prevention industry, from those operating crisis centers and other direct care services, to professionals working in academic settings conducting suicide prevention research, and advocates focused on education and awareness.
So we can continue to be aware and closely in touch with the topics that most impact iCarol’s customers, on Wednesday Rachel will attend the pre-conference program for Crisis Centers, followed by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline update session.
Having supported crisis centers since the earliest days of the Lifeline network, and serving a large portion of the network that are iCarol customers, we have witnessed the Lifeline’s growth year after year, both in the number of participating centers and the volume of contacts the Lifeline receives through calls, chats, and other forms of communication. We suspect the update provided at the conference will show continued expansion in 2018. Unfortunately 2018 was another year with well-publicized deaths by suicide of a number of celebrities, including Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, and Avicii. These losses always result in a spike in volume and without fail the participating centers always step up to meet the challenge and provide help and hope to the people prompted to reach out for themselves or loved ones.
The Lifeline update also promises to provide information on developments in Lifeline initiatives such as Follow-up Matters and the Lifeline Safety Assessment. These and other projects directly inform iCarol’s strategy and product development in the coming months and years, which ensures we will continue to meet the needs of suicide prevention centers everywhere, providing the tools they need to do their life-saving work.
Finally, on Wednesday evening Rachel will attend the Crisis Centers Reception, which provides the chance to network and catch up with crisis center staff and leadership and hear all about the important work they are doing.
If you plan to be at the AAS Conference, Rachel would welcome the opportunity to chat with you about the needs of your suicide prevention service and answer your questions about iCarol. As always, we also welcome you to contact us at your convenience to share your challenges or projects and explore how iCarol can be of assistance.
iCarol Director of Business Development, Polly McDaniel, is attending the Aging in America Conference, presented by the American Society on Aging, from April 15th through April 17th in New Orleans, Louisiana.
This is iCarol’s first time attending this conference, and we currently serve many organizations in this industry, including Aging and Disability Resource Centers, Area Agencies on Aging, helplines that curb senior isolation and loneliness, and senior-focused information and referral services. These organizations choose our solution because we empower them to:
Invite and document contacts from clients and their caregivers over a variety of communication channels: phone, in-person, web forms, and our integrated Live Chat and Texting.
Encourage No Wrong Door initiatives by enabling them to securely send information to partners, make warm transfers, and dispatch additional services.
Create and curate simple to complex community service inventories to share with clients and caregivers by phone, email, Text/SMS, and during Live Chat sessions.
Share searchable resource information on their own public websites, or the websites of partners such as senior centers, local libraries, and hospitals.
Engage in ongoing client contact to track client history and progress, ensure needs are being met, and to document customer satisfaction and outcomes.
If you’ll be at the conference, please stop by and see the team at booth 604 so that we can discuss how iCarol can help you. If you’re not in New Orleans for the conference, we welcome those interested in learning more about the iCarol solution to contact us to ask your questions or have a quick meeting to talk about your challenges so we can see how iCarol might help.
While their quick action in the face of emergency surely saved many lives, there were some weaknesses in the process that became apparent. Namely, the 2-1-1 staff did not consistently receive follow-up or confirmation that NC 2-1-1’s referrals to emergency operations were successfully received and addressed, or that callers got the help they needed. In such high stakes situations, this added to the already heightened stress experienced by the 2-1-1 team during this disaster.
