Strategic Plan FY 2023
The James Barry-Robinson Institute:
The Barry Robinson Center, JBRI Foster Care & JBRI Outpatient
July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023
Robert E. McCartney, CEO/President
INTRODUCTION
For more than 30 years, The James Barry-Robinson Institute (JBRI) has been providing behavioral health services under the name of The Barry Robinson Center (BRC). While the residential program has been BRC’s cornerstone, other services have included Foster Care, Intensive In-Home and traditional Outpatient services. BRC has a reputation of being a comprehensive behavioral health system providing quality care, with the brand being strongest for providing residential care for children and youth.
Over the past 10 years, BRC experienced significant growth in its recognition locally, nationally and internationally as a leading provider of residential care for youth with a military connection. Between 2017 and 2021, BRC served youth from 47 states and 6 countries. BRC leaders and staff are known experts on the impact of military life on the mental health of children, youth, and their families.
The benefits of BRC’s brand strength are clear – improved financial health providing resources to invest in all levels of care. The impact of this investment has been witnessed in the center becoming almost restraint free, recidivism post-discharge at less than 10%, and employee turnover about 50% less than what other residential programs experience. Unfortunately, the BRC brand’s strong performance and growth has overshadowed our other programs. The marketplace had become confused about the breadth of the services BRC provided. The strong residential brand was negatively impacting growth of our other service lines, Foster Care and Outpatient. To address this unintended consequence, it was decided a rebranding was needed.
The Barry Robinson Center’s legal name is “The James Barry-Robinson Institute.” After due diligence and working with a marketing team, it was decided we would return to using “The James Barry-Robinson Institute” as our umbrella brand. Our sub-brands are – The Barry Robinson Center/BRC (for our current residential program), JBRI Foster Care Services, JBRI Outpatient Services, and Next Step To Success/NSTS. (As of July 1, 2022, NSTS became a separate 501c3 and doesn’t come under the auspices of CARF). A significant part of our Strategic Plan for the next two years will be the rebranding of Foster Care and Outpatient Services.
THE BARRY ROBINSON CENTER/BRC – RESIDENTIAL SERVICES
As of the writing of this plan, BRC is the only residential program 100% focused on working with military connected youth. A critical piece of our work has been and will continue to be our ongoing education on military culture and our engagement with the miliary community at all levels.
One of our proudest accomplishments has been the almost total elimination of the use of restraints, physical holds. This restraint reduction is a consequence of our embracing one of the key philosophies of Risking Connection – The Restorative Approach – “Connection Before Correction.” This philosophy also has had a positive impact on our workers compensation and parallels a reduction in employee turnover. Over the next year we will continue training all staff on understanding the variables that impact Executive Functioning. We will also be enhancing and growing nontraditional therapies that include recreational therapy, music therapy, art therapy and the role our direct care staff can assume with providing these services.
Over the past several years we have invested significant resources to grow family therapy, using the clinical model, “Parenting with Love and Limits”/PLL. Our growth in family therapy has paralleled the decrease in restraints and in recidivism for our youth. We will continue to invest in this program.
BRC’s reputation also extends to our payers, Humana (Tricare East), Health Net (Tricare West) SOS (Tricare Overseas) and Champus. Over the next year, our referral development team will be focusing on growing relationships with other key stakeholders and referral sources.
JBRI Treatment Foster Care
BRC/JBRI has been providing foster care services to our local community for more than 26 years. COVID had a negative impact on all programs providing foster care services. We experienced a significant demand for foster homes serving teens and a decrease in demand for placement of children under age 5. The recruitment of foster parents experienced the opposite with few parents wanting to foster teens. Further impacting our foster care program growth is competition in our market and the brand confusion noted in the introduction. Growing our Treatment Foster Care service line depends on recruitment and retention of qualified foster parents.
We are developing a new JBRI website that will include Foster Care, with an anticipated roll out early in 2023. Website visitors can access program information more easily, and the site will enhance engagement with prospective foster parents. We will also implement a more active foster parent recruitment initiative. We will train our foster parents in trauma informed care, in the role they play in the healing process for foster children, and when appropriate, how to engage with the biological families.
The Family First Act has resulted in a growing focus on “Kinship Care.” We are growing our awareness, knowledge, and the private providers’ role in State’s plan to address Kinship Care. JBRI Treatment Foster Care is exploring two potential service lines – Independent living and transitional services for youth aging out of foster care. We will also grow our relationship with Next Step To Success, a program designed to help middle school students thrive in school and prepare for the work force. We will also continue to partner with Together We Can, a program to help high school students prepare for the work force.
JBRI Outpatient Services
As with our Treatment Foster Care Program, COVID negatively impacted our Outpatient programs. FY 2022 was in many ways a reset for Outpatient services. In FY 2023 we will add therapists to expand our care for children and adolescents. We will continue training for our therapists in evidence-based treatment that includes PCIT (Parent Child Interaction Therapy), PLL (Parenting with Love and Limits) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). To meet the growing demand for substance abuse treatment, we will be reopening our Substance Abuse IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) by Q3.
We will also be developing services for young adults ages 18 to 24. Initial services will be focused on addressing substance abuse issues with the opening of a Substance Abuse IOP. We will also be assessing the needs of youth who are aging out of the foster care system and identifying what services JBRI can develop and deliver. We will also be working with young adults who are part of the adult judicial system.
Employee Engagement
One of the challenges we faced in 2022 was recruitment and retention of employees. The great “resignation” had an impact. The bigger impact was reopening 24 residential beds and the plans to grow JBRI Treatment Foster Care and JBRI Outpatient. Traditional ways to recruit and retain employees was not meeting our needs. In response, we developed a service line for Employee Engagement and brought on a Director of Employee Engagement. This move has proven effective with currently 90% of all positions being filled. The focus for FY 2023 will be decreasing employee turnover to under 30%.
In FY 2022 we started a leadership training program focusing on our customer experience. This first step included all leaders reading, “If Disney Ran Your Hospital,” and participating in monthly book discussions. This will continue during FY 2023. We will also be partnering with Toastmasters to provide our leaders the opportunity to enhance their oral communication skills.
Infrastructure
Over the past three years, we have made significant investment in the residential campus infrastructure. This included renovation of the dorms and school, upgrading the HVAC system, moving to a new accounting system and a new HR and Payroll system, enhancing our online school system, and IT upgrades. For FY 2023, planned projects include sidewalk replacement, installing a “fence” along the road in front of the center, and building a ball field to replace space that was recently sold. In addition, we will be completing the move to a new EMR and a CRM.
Currently JBRI Foster Care and JBRI Outpatient are in separate buildings. We anticipate that by the end of FY 2023, they will be in the same building, helping to provide more efficiencies and take advantage of working more closely together. As noted previously, we are also developing a new website for these programs. We will also be enhancing our revenue cycle system to help improve the customer experience and to help ensure the financial health of the programs.