In recent weeks, a group of volunteer advisors have brainstormed and collaborated to help us increase our impact in the community. While our dual mission of parent support and community education remains the same, our goal is to increase the quality of everything we do. Thus, we have looked at increasing our impact in all our areas: 1) parent support group; 2) Monthly Pathway Sessions; 3) Our Annual Community Addiction Awareness Vigil; 4) Our website complete with resources, news and events; 5) Collaborating with providers and local community members; and 6) Using all communication tools including email and social media to increase visibility.
As part of our process to improve our services, we held an extremely-productive Best Practices Session with Be A Part of the Conversation of Pennsylvania (conversation.zone, or CZ). Kim Porter and Pam Roberts were so kind to not only share insights but also to make their resources available for us to use. You can find handouts that CZ uses in their support meetings here: https://bit.ly/Helpful_Handouts_CZ.
Below are some of the many take-aways from our discussion held on Friday, February 11:
- CZ partners with local therapists. It’s a win-win, as CZ gets parent referrals to their support groups.
- CZ frequently has guest speakers at their support meetings, which encourages some new parents to attend.
- CZ parents commit to different jobs—there is a service aspect to being a group member, at least for the long-time veterans.
- Kim and Pam offered to make their materials available to us, many of which you can find here and here.
- There is a newcomer letter and packet that a meeting leader will send to the parent.
- Kim and Pam shared two interesting videos on boundaries. See here and here. They also have boundary handouts like this one.
Given the input not only from our volunteer advisors but also outside organizations that I would term “best-in-class”, look for continuous improvement in our outreach this year.