Back to School

Collaboration invites home visitors to earn college credit

For many home visitors, earning an undergraduate degree seems like an impossible feat. College tuition is expensive, especially on a home visitor’s salary, which is often under $30,000 a year. And, it’s hard to find traditional undergraduate programs that sync with a non-traditional student’s work and family demands.

Jackie Counts, director, has prioritized finding innovative ways for family support professionals across the country to get the continuing education they wanted and needed to be their best on the job. “When home visitors have more skills, they become more competent at their job,” she says. “It’s easier to focus on the relationship with families if you feel more confident in your skills.”

Now, thanks to a collaboration between the KU School of Social Welfare, CPPR, Iowa Department of Public Health, Virginia Department of Health – Early Impact Virginia, and James Madison University’s Health Education Design Group, they can do just that. These partners worked together to forge new ground in continuing education for family support professionals, allowing them to take online courses through the Institute for the Advancement of Family Support Professionals (the Institute) and earn college credit from KU.

To create the three undergraduate courses, faculty from the School first reviewed the existing modules offered by the Institute to ensure they delivered the content, quality, and rigor of a college-level course. They then bundled several modules together to create Home Visiting I, II, and III.

In another innovative twist designed to support the unique needs of home visitors, this program rearranged the steps home visitors would take when starting their education. Instead of first applying to KU, paying fees, then taking the course, the order is reversed. Home visitors take the course first. If they achieve 80 percent proficiency, they are guaranteed to receive credit for their coursework. This unusual approach protects home visitors from the risk of making a financial investment in tuition and possibly not receiving the college credit.

“I am really proud of this result, because home visitors are essential workers who really help parents be the best they can be,” Jackie says. “To create something they can access, when it fits with their lifestyle and at their own pace, in a way that works for them – I am grateful to be a part of this project.”

This story is an excerpt from an article created by Micki Chestnut, marketing strategist, for the KU School of Social Welfare as part on an ongoing monthly series of feature articles that promotes the school’s work. Through this partnership, we are supporting the school’s work and mission, providing them with promotional materials they use to reach out to faculty, students, alumni, and donors.

Terrific Tool

This online whiteboard is helping us work with partners

When Lindsay Sayre, research project specialist, picked Miro as her CPPR Social Science Fair project in January, she had no way of knowing then how helpful this tool would become in connecting with our partners during quarantine, when we can’t meet in person.

If you haven’t discovered it yet, Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform designed for remote and distributed teams. More and more CPPR teams are using it to engage participants in virtual meetings.

Early on, the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) Process & Technology Improvement Grant (SNAP PTIG) team used Miro’s ready-made templates to illustrate client and staff experiences in the Kansas Department for Children and Families offices and facilitate workshops to envision ways the SNAP PTIG app could reduce pain points and optimize processes.

Links to Quality frequently uses it for data visualization and presenting frameworks for complex systems.

Our Tomorrows has used Miro in a variety of ways, says Ariana Nasrazadani, research project coordinator. She used it to craft the framework for OT 2.0, because it easily accommodated the changes that came with the iterative process. And recently, the team used Miro in their virtual workshops with Miami and Johnson counties, focused on use of COVID relief funds. In their breakout rooms, facilitators worked with the Miro whiteboard on behalf of the participants during brainstorming sessions.

“Miro is super easy to use, and it doesn’t take a lot of training,” Ariana says.

Interested in trying out Miro? We have a free educational account that you can join. Just contact Lindsay.  

Developing Grit

Strategies for success in work and life

At CPPR, we have big aspirations. But to achieve our big, bold vision of helping to bring about healthy, happy, thriving communities for us all, we need to have grit. Learn what grit is and how to nurture it in yourself and your team with these tips from “Developing Grit: Strategies for Success in Work and Life,” a recent webinar hosted by ComPsych, the state’s employee assistance plan provider.

What is grit?

Grit is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles. To have a grit mindset is to anticipate that achieving your goal will be difficult, that you will need to make sacrifices, and that you will face setbacks and discouragement. Regardless, you are willing to put in the hard work to realize your goal.

Components of grit

• Interest. Your goal must be something you are interested in and care deeply about. If not, it will be impossible to persevere.
• Purpose. Your goal must be meaningful to you and contribute to the well-being of others.
• Practice. You must develop and practice the skills necessary to help you achieve your goal. Break down the specific skills required to succeed at your goal, and schedule in time to develop these skills.
• Hope. To persevere until your goal is met you must believe you can succeed.

Set clear goals

The ability to endure hard work comes from having very clear and structured goals. Here are the three levels of grit:

• Top-level goals. This is the big goal you want to achieve. It will act as your inspiration and guide your mid-level and low-level goals.
• Mid-level goals. These are the milestones that mark the progress toward your top-level goal. They will be achieved as you meet your low-level goals.
• Low-level goals. These are your daily action plan, the specific steps you need to take now to achieve your mid-level goals.

8 Wonders of Kansas

Road trip to these interesting and educational spots

This fall, cure quarantine cabin fever with a road trip to one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas. The Wonders of Kansas are rich with natural, historical, cultural, and architectural significance, and will give you a new appreciation for the Sunflower State.

8 Wonders of Kansas 

Big Well, Greensburg. The construction of this well was an engineering marvel in its day and it is the world’s largest hand-dug well.

Cheyenne Bottoms/Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, Barton and Stafford counties. These wetlands have vital and international importance as a migratory stop for North American shorebirds.

Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson. The cosmosphere has one of the most significant collections of U.S. and Russian space artifacts in the world.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene. This newly renovated museum tells of the remarkable life achievements of this former five-star general and president of the United States.

Kansas Underground Salt Museum, Hutchinson. Travel underground to see the natural treasure – salt – that exists hundreds of feet below the Kansas plains.

Monument Rocks & Castle Rock, Gove County. These ancient chalk beds have scientifically significant fossils and have been eroded into unusual spires and shapes, making them spectacular landmarks on the plains of western Kansas.

St. Fidelis Catholic Church, Victoria. Also known as the Cathedral of the Plains, this church shows off the architectural grandeur and impressive craftsmanship of the Volga German pioneers.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve & the Flint Hills, Chase County. This beautiful area represents the last significant example of the tallgrass prairie in North America.

8 Runners Up

• Arikaree Breaks, Cheyenne County
• Ball of Twine, Cawker City
• Big Brutus, West Mineral
• Brookville Hotel, Abilene
• Chase County Courthouse, Cottonwood Falls
• Cimarron National Grassland, Morton County
• Constitution Hall State Historic Site, Lecompton
• Davis Memorial, Hiawatha
• Fort Larned National Historic Site, Larned
• Garden of Eden, Lucas
• Gyp Hills Scenic Drive, Barber County
• John Steuart Curry Murals, state capitol, Topeka
• Keeper of the Plains, Wichita
• Lake Scott State Park, Scott County
• Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site, Republic County

Jackie's Jots

But in building the case for this way of working, I’ve sometimes struggled to articulate how we might expect the ‘result’ to look different in practice when compared to what exists already. As a consequence, I worry sometimes that there’s a danger of embracing the theatre of systems thinking — using it to position services and to navigate what’s desirable, feasible and viable within the existing system — without actually reshaping the system itself.

In response to COVID and the ongoing systemic/structural racism, systems’ responses are often after the fact of an identified crisis or problem. We see many examples of this with the CARES Act funding, a lot of which doesn’t address issues upstream. Rather, the funding addresses the symptoms of an inadequate system.

I’m applying this thinking to my own work and the ambition of change efforts at CPPR. I’m impatient to do something now, yet know that acting too quickly may not get the change we want. How do we get from here to there? CPPR is in a transition and exploration phase, and we have several initiatives underway to help us understand what “here” and “there” mean. Our work with Openfields, the TBD equity accountability partner, Brighthive, Openvoices, ThinkTwice and other efforts will inform our vision for our organizational future.

In the meantime, we must continue doing our work, including recruiting and onboarding new staff. Over the past month, I’ve been working with the Social Justice Collective leaders and Directors’ Team on updating the welcome letter to new staff. We also plan to review and build on the onboarding process in the spirit of leave it better. In the letter, I call out the following and suggest that you revisit these resources, as well:

• The AAI Equity Statement describes our approach to addressing structural and systemic societal inequities and provides the expectations for how we will treat each other.
• The KU Statement of Commitment to Integrity and Ethical Conduct defines core institutional values. To enact these values, we assume basic understanding of equity principles, and expect staff to actively comply with and integrate equity principles in their day-to-day work and interaction with co-workers internally and partners externally.
• The CPPR Rules of Engagement provide guidelines for how we work together. They help us measure our success, guide our interactions, and move our work forward.
• The KU Policy Library provides the rules and regulations for our work. As KU employees, we refer to the Policies for Staff for information about benefits, recruitment, leave and holidays, performance, and workplace guidelines.
• Supervisory Best Practices were developed by CPPR leadership and staff to provide clear guidance around expectations for communication, accountability, and workplace behavior. The Practices document has information for supervisors and supervisees.

Today I’m focused to do the deep work, pause, reflect, etc.  Tomorrow may be different. Thank you for all the work you do. It matters. We may not always see it every day because we are in the thick of it. I’m grateful for the strength of relationships that we have with each other and with partners to carry us through on those days when it’s hard to get through.

Be well,

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