1.1: Create a "No Wrong Door" approach for County services

Detailed Action Summary

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  • Within each of the County's social and community service agencies, establish No Wrong Door Liaison Teams with Department Ambassadors who will serve as frontline leaders who connect clients to services. Create a case manager system at each department to assist clients with accessing services and completing processes.
  • Build on the foundation created by the County's social and community service agencies to bring additional departments into the initiative.
  • Train all public-facing County staff in the full scope of County government, and the roles and responsibilities of each department, so that every public-facing employee knows where to direct residents seeking services regardless of which department provides these services. This training should include educating County staff to better use the County's own website to find information, including how to use the upcoming "locator" of services that CCED is currently developing and will soon launch. The training can be piloted with new County hires.
  • Enhance that curriculum with training on: "culturally competent" communication with residents and how to assess vulnerable populations for critical needs, including households with young people who may be suffering from trauma.
  • Develop consistent methods of updating all public-facing County staff in participating departments with information on new programs and services, such as a quarterly newsletter of new program and program updates. To supplement this, and because not all public-facing staff are required to use computers, offer "refresher trainings" for County staff at regular, reasonable intervals.
  • Identify critical community partners vital to the overall mission of this initiative, particularly the organizations that the County is already funding to deliver community services and provide those partners the environment and opportunity to collaborate on the way this initiative can be integrated into their way of working in a way that benefits partners.
  • Establish agreements between the County and willing community partners to onboard them to be part of the No Wrong Door network, so that County departments more consistently provide "warm handoffs" of residents to community partners that are best positioned to deliver the appropriate service, and vice versa. Those agreements can include financial support from the County to build up partners' capacity to meet program requirements, such as sharing data and maintaining updated records.
  • Create deeper avenues for collaboration and multi-disciplinary staffing among County departments and community partners that provide services to the same clients and populations to ensure that services to residents are delivered in a coordinated way and that everyone is learning from each other's expertise. For example, build on the approach developed by the Juvenile Services Department, which hosts monthly "Multidisciplinary Staffings" for children that have contact with law enforcement, who are 12 years of age and younger. All the agencies (Juvenile Services, the School System, the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Department of Children and Families, etc.) that serve the child are at the table to coordinate and provide a holistic approach and leverage our resources. Another example is the Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department's partnership with Juvenile Services and Police to design and deliver the Fit2Lead parks program intervention to the community's youth.
  • Host quarterly roundtables for participating community partners and County departments to share lessons and updates on the aggregate needs and issues facing residents, and to introduce improvements to the No Wrong Door approach.
  • Enhance the use of technology to increase connectivity. Conduct an inventory of existing systems used across the County and by critical community partners, and where there are opportunities to migrate participating departments and community partners to a new system. Identify an appropriate data architecture, including use of universal intake form, common identifiers across databases, and potentially procure a software platform to integrate a critical mass of partners. Ensure the new systems include all the appropriate privacy and security measures to safeguard resident data and are in compliance with federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Address all the public records Sunshine Law implications up front.
  • Identify cost-effective ways to implement a No Wrong Door approach. Consider leveraging existing data platforms created by the State of Florida and similar initiatives to incur cost savings. Identify opportunities for resource sharing between local governments bound by interlocal agreements.
  • Determine the most cost-effective ways of providing training, including creating self-serve training videos on demand. Quantify the cost savings to the County of reduced reliance on satellite offices and travel time for County staff due to the implementation of No Wrong Door. Work with community partners to minimize need for additional funding, after any initial commitment of financial support for capacity-building and data training. Encourage partners to build these capacities and skills into their own hiring and training policies.