RUNNING HEAD: SCCCMH

Organization Analysis
Shelby Schroeder
2/20/2016
SW 4020

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Organization and Services

St. Clair County Community Mental Health offers mental health care to
adults and children, based out of Port Huron. They offer mental health
services to adults and children who have Medicare, Medicaid, or no health
insurance at all. Their website states, St. Clair County Community Mental
Health is the mental health and substance use "safety net" for residents with
low income who have Medicaid or who qualify for other public insurance
plans. (St. Clair Community Mental Health, 2016) They offer public services
to adults with mental illnesses, children with serious emotional disturbances,
adults and children with intellectual and or developmental disabilities, adults
and children with substance use disorders, and adults with co-occurring
mental health and substance use disorders (St. Clair Community Mental
Health, 2016).
The intern, whose daily journal is attached in appendix 1, specifically
works in the childrens department of the organization. The childrens
department is split into two different programs. The two programs are
Developmentally Disabled or DD and Seriously Emotionally Disturbed or SED.
The intern works with children in both of these programs. All of the children
she works with vary in mental health issues. In the DD program she tends to
work with autistic children. These children vary on the autism spectrum from
high functioning Aspergers to completely non-vocal autism. She works with
them in their homes teaching them acceptable social skills and life skills. She

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also works with children in the SED program. These children tend to have
more behavioral issues. They often have problems with school, friends, and
parents. The interns job is to take them out into the community and have
them interact with peers so they can develop positive skills when dealing
with anger and frustrations.
She also works in both of these groups doing more administrative
work. She does a lot of online charting, assessments, and planning of
services. These mean she goes into the homes of these children and see
what is working, what is not working, and what needs to be changed so they
can get the most out of these programs. She also goes through and offers
them different services we offer like the ABA program or CIS program.
Mission and Goals
At St. Clair County Community Mental Health they have both a mission
statement and a value statement. The mission statement is, Promoting
Discovery & Recovery Opportunities for Healthy Minds & Bodies (St. Clair
Community Mental Health, 2016). The value statement states that they
recognize that all people have the capacity to discover, recover, grow and
positively change their thinking, beliefs and behaviors. Facilitates equal
access to quality services. Assures availability and access to effective
evidence-based services where programs and opportunities are designed to
promote choice and responsibility tailored to the strengths and needs of the
individual. Effectively plans, evaluates, and monitors the system to assure

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accountability for the most effective and efficient management of resources.

All of these goals were created by the Board of Directors and is adjusted
every year as they seem fit. They can adjust wording, add, or replace certain
goals that they have stated to adjust themselves to helping the community.
It is believed that these goals stay intact and that there is not any real
goal displacement. There are individual cases that displace the goals, but
that is because the consumers do not want to work towards their own goals.
The intern works in the childrens department only, therefor she only sees
children who may have defiance disorders that make them not want to work
towards the goals and or fight against them.
They are typically given very good supervision that pushes us to
believe in these goals. They try and make the Individual Plan of Service for
each child centered on the agencies goals. This way they are focused on
both the child and the agency as a whole. There are often many different
education opportunities that are offered to the clinicians every month so
they can learn the newest ways to provide services and maybe how they can
better themselves.
Organizational Structure and Staffing
St. Clair County Community Mental Health is set up like many other
state funded organizations. There is a Director, Deb Johnson, who oversees
the entire organization, including the multiple different offices around the
county. Below her is the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors are the

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ones who vote on major issues in the organization, including budget and
policy changes. Below the Board of Directors are the assorted Supervisors
that oversee the three different departments. Tracy Duncan and Tracy
Mathews oversee the Adult and Family Services, Amy Smith oversees the
Community Planning and Training Department, and Heidi Fogarty oversees
the Childrens Services. Within the childrens services there are two program
supervisors, Andrea Velez and Kathleen Gallagher. Below them you have the
assorted BSW, MSW, and Interns that run the different services they offer
(See Appendix 3 for more information).
This distribution makes sure everyone has someone to answer to. That
way if anyone needs help on a case they all have someone they can go to for
help. Certain cases may need extra workers from multiple different areas and
this set up makes sure everyone is on the same page. It also makes it easier
if there is an issue with a supervisor. If a clinician feels like they need to go
above their supervisors head about an issue they have multiple people they
can go to in order to solve whatever the problem may be.
Typically, the specific supervisor you are assigned to will assign you the
cases they see fit. Most of the time the supervisors will often work together
to hand pick a team for each specific child. This team will normally consist of
a case worker, usually a BSW, an MSW to provide individual therapy, a parent
support worker, and a behavioral specialist or mental health assistant. The
supervisors will oversee the group and decide overall what the best course of

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action will be for a specific case. This works very well for most cases since
they end up with a variety of different services and the parents will have
many different people to contact in case there is a crisis with the child or
family.
The staff at Community Mental Health is not very diverse in itself. Most
of the clinicians are white, middle aged, females. They do most of the actual
work with the consumers. Most of the people who apply for these positions
are white women. There are a few clinicians who are African American, male,
and only one person that has been viewed as an African American male
doing clinical work. Most of the psychiatrists are also female, but it has been
shown that the consumers are more comfortable with them. Most of the
upper staff tend to also be white, middle aged women with the occasional
man put into the mix. The only real place you see men in specific roles is in
the maintenance department.
The childrens department sees many different kinds of consumers.
Most of the children they work with are lower income or in the foster care
system. There really is no specific race that all these consumers are. This
makes it easier to assign clinicians to cases since they do not really need to
worry about the race factor. It has been shown that most children prefer to
work with clinicians that are the same sex as them, which can cause a
problem when working with male children. They will try to place male
clinicians with male children as often as possible, but when that is not

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possible they will look and see what female clinician may work the best out
of the options given. It may not be the best method for assigning workers,
but with the options they are given it does seem to be getting the job done.
Internal and External Environment: Relationship with Community
While preparing this paper a SWOT analysis was completed to get a
better understanding of the organizations strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats. Every organization has each of these, but they
can vary. This assessment can be used to help figure out what changes need
to be made, what can stay the same, and what else can they add to the
services.
Strengths
St. Clair County Community Mental Health has many more strengths
than weaknesses. The first strength is that this organization is very goal
oriented when it comes to the consumers they see (Schroeder, 2016, p. xx).
Every consumer has an Individual Plan of Service which states what the
persons strengths are, what the concerns are, and what services can be
offered to them. Each plan is individualized to fit the person. Just because
one service works for one child does not mean that it will work for all of
them.
Another strength at this organization is the difference in the specialties
the clinicians offer. There are MSW, BSW, Parent Support Specialists, Mental

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Health Specialists, Case workers, and Behavioral Analysists. This is a

strength because they can offer all of these services to the families as they
see fit for the child. Once they decide on the services they want, they will be
added into the Plan of Service, which will allot them a certain amount of time
with these services either by the day, week, month, or review period
(Schroeder, 2016, p. xx).
Community Mental health offers many different trainings all year round
so that all the clinicians can learn more about their own roles and each
others roles. This past fall they offered a Child Protective services training
for all of the Childrens staff so they can know what to look for and how to
handle it. They also offer many different online trainings that they can use
towards their yearly training requirements (Schroeder, 2016, p. xx).
Lastly, there is a lot of good communication between staff and their
supervisors. If a clinician is having a problem and cannot figure out what the
best route is they can go to their supervisor and get an answer about a
certain problem almost immediately. Many times their supervisors will give
out their personal cell phone numbers to their staff so that if anything
emergent happens and the clinician has to get a hold of anyone
immediately, they are able to do so in a timely manner (Schroeder, 2016, p.
xx) .
Weaknesses

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Along with some very good strengths, there are some very large
weaknesses as well. First, as stated before, there is a lack of diversity among
the workers. Most of the workers in this organization are white middle aged
women. This works for some consumers, but sometimes it does not. Often
times we get teenage girls who are assigned to one of the male clinicians,
but when they want to talk about something they find very personal they will
request a change of clinicians to a female. This can also happen to the male
consumer. Sometimes the African American consumers request to have an
African American clinician, but this organization has a lack on African
American clinicians, especially in the childrens department (Schroeder,
2016, p. xx).
Something they also deal with is a lack of resources. There was
recently a large move of many workers to another building and they took a
lot of the resources with them. Mostly, they took the extra computers that
they had been using. This leaves interns with no place to do their work. Many
times interns will have to try and do whatever work they can on another
clinicians computer before that clinicians return. If they happen to be there
when there are no open computers then they must wait for one to open up.
Often times these interns will feel very awkward trying to find a computer
and often in the way of others (Schroeder, 2016, p. xx).
On top of the lack of resources, there is a large lack of communication
between workers and the other services. Many times lower level clinicians

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and interns are left in the dark about what is going on with their consumers.
Recently, an intern had issues with finding time to have her weekly sessions
with her consumer because his new foster parents had signed him up for
multiple after school activities on the days the child was supposed to be with
the intern. Every other clinician knew about this and never told the intern.
The same intern has also had issues getting in contact with the BSW case
holder for another child who has multiple services that had been put on hold
because he had lost his Medicaid. Trying to get a hold of this BSW became an
issue in getting this child his health insurance back. This process began in
November and they just now were able to get it reinstated (Schroeder, 2016,
p. xx).
Opportunities
There are many opportunities for the organization to make themselves
known and to expand out to reach more of the community. Just a couple
weeks ago many clinicians participated in the March of Dimes in Port Huron.
They were able to raise money for the cause and get the word out that they
are now available for infant mental health care as well. They have also
started planning a table at the Community Baby Shower that will be
happening in March. They will be passing out resources for the women and
children in their community (Schroeder, 2016, p. xx) .
One other opportunity they are given is that the childrens department
as a whole is being expanded as we speak. One program that is expanding is

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the ABA program. This program used to just be a group of people that would
go the homes of autistic children ages 2-6 and do activities with them with
the goal of giving them better coping skills for what may set them off
normally. This program has recently moved to their own building where they
can have these sessions in groups instead of one on one. This is working well
to help these children learn to work in groups and deal with the extra stress
their disability gives them. This expansion will also make it possible for the
age to expand to 2 years to 18 years of age with different activities for
different ages (Schroeder, 2016, p. xx) .
Threats
There are very few threats to this organization, but the one this that
does threaten it is the state budget for mental health care. A major item of
concern in the budget is boilerplate Section 298, which carves-in the
behavioral health benefits to the health plans by the end of FY17. This
means that the oversight and management of the behavioral health system
will transfer to the Medicaid Health Plans by the end of FY17. Michigans PIHP
system has significantly lower overhead costs than a for-profit entity. The
current administrative cost of the health plans is about 14%. For PIHPs it is
under 7%. Individuals receiving mental health supports have needs outside
of traditional healthcare, such as transportation, housing and employment
services, which make it difficult for them to fit into a physical healthcare
model (SCCCMH, 2016).

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How Services are Found and Other Organizations

The consumers that come to this organization come from many
different places. For the children they mostly are referred from a school,
outside group, or a doctor. Most autistic children will be referred as soon as
their doctor starts to see the signs of autism. This way if it is caught early
they can help the child develop with mile stone markers. These children will
often continue with the services their entire life and will be moved up to
adult services when they turn 18. Other children will be referred from their
school because they will exhibit violent behavior repeatedly at school. These
children will often have issues at home as well so the parents may have
concerns as well which may include other organizations or agencies.
A lot of time this organizations will work with DHS and CPS. Many times
the children they work with will be in foster homes as well so the clinicians at
Community Mental Health will often have a say in what is going on with the
child and if they think they are ready to return home to their biological
family.
Theoretical Construct of the Organization
St. Clair County Community Mental Health is identified under systems
theory. Systems theory means this community is open rather than closed and
requires some work with others outside of the community for certain
resources (Netting, Kettner, & McMurtry, 1993). At St. Clair County
Community Mental Health they must work with the outside government to

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receive funding for the organizations services. This theory explains that the
system must work together to reach a common goal, which for this
organization is recovery and change in the consumers lives. This theory also
states that it is a give and take. Therefore, this organization provides
services to the community and in return will get funding from the outside
community. Just as it says in the book, the organization is like a machine.
Parts must work together and adapt together to reach their goals.
Sometimes pieces for the machine come from different suppliers so they
must try to make them happy as well.

Recommendation
Based on the information gathered, there are multiple problems with
the organization, most of which can be fixed easily. First is the lack of
resources for the extra workers. Something that has been noted is the extra
computers in the maintenance department that are rarely used. There is
approximately 10 of them that only they can use and yet they do not. They
could take a few of those extra computers to make sure all of the clinical
workers have access to the computers. There may be some upset from the
maintenance department, but if they are not using them then they should go
to the departments that need them more.
Another problem is the lack of communication in the organization itself.
The only solution for that is to make sure everyone who is involved on the

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same case stays in communication. They try to do this through

Wraparound meeting with the parents every week, but sometimes certain
clinicians cannot make it. There should be a system developed where
everyone involved gets a time sheet of what was talked about.
Lastly, the budget from the state is becoming a problem. With
everything being transferred to Medicaid there may be big changes in the
way the mental health system works. Prices will go up and services will be
harder to get access too. This can also cause problems with the extra
services they offer. Overall, this organization is great and offers great
services to all of the consumers they see. They all work together to give
there consumers the best care possible. Even with the issues they face every
day they see a lot of success from the consumers, which helps make it all
worth it.

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References
Netting, F. E., Kettner, P. M., & McMurtry, S. L. (1993). Social work macro
practice. New York, MI: Longman.
SCCCMH. (2016). About Us. Retrieved from http://www.scccmh.org/aboutus/
SCCCMH. (2016, February). Boilerplate 298. Retrieved from
http://www.scccmh.org/events/boilerplate-298/
Schroeder, S. (2016). Daily Journal, Appendix 1.
Schroeder, S. (2016). SCCMH SWOT Analysis (Appendix 2). MI.