At the heart of its efforts to bring scalable innovation to child welfare agencies and human services fields are Stewards of Change’s unique conferences and programs. On both the national and regional levels, SOC offers an unparalleled inter-disciplinary approach to learning, relationship building and leadership and management development. These programs help create the shared vision necessary to bring innovative solutions to scale within large systems of care.

 

 

Each year, Stewards of Change™ hosts a national conference at the Yale School of Management. These conferences provide a unique opportunity for a diverse group of participants from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to discuss the latest trends and innovations and to explore new ways to translate these strategies into effective, sustainable solutions for the nation’s most vulnerable children and families.

 

With the support and participation of the internationally renowned Yale School of Management faculty, the SOC conferences offer inspiring keynote addresses, engaging lectures, and interactive ideation sessions to focus on the most viable business and technological solutions and ways to apply them most effectively to the field. Using skilled facilitators and small group sessions, SOC conferences provide their participants with a rare opportunity to "go back to school" and apply their new learning and connections in their daily work on behalf of children and families. Learn more about our Conferences >

 

 

In partnership with the Yale School of Management and other potential partners, Stewards of Change™ is in the process of developing the Executive Leadership Institute in Child Welfare, a multi-disciplinary, cross-sector, executive education and leadership program for child welfare and other human services leaders. This rigorous, analytically-oriented program will provide exposure to and training in cutting-edge business strategies, new management models, and the latest use of technologies and decision analytics to improve performance, enhance outcomes, and facilitate large-scale change.

 

The program will draw upon a diverse faculty from the Yale School of Management, other professional schools at Yale University (Law, Psychiatry, Economics, and Mathematics) and other academic institutions, corporations, foundation, associations, government organizations and legal/judicial organizations. This institute will provide senior and emerging leaders with a common vision, perspective and orientation towards innovation and entrepreneurship along with the hard-edge business skills necessary to begin implementing promising practices and achieve interoperability between the multiple human services systems often serving the same families and children. Learn More about EMELI>

 

 

In 2009 SOC held its first two convenings with four county directors to share their efforts related to creating interoperable health and human service systems. Multiple counties have begun to pursue interoperability on their own but have few if any opportunities to share and learn from their peers. County level efforts are unique since they provide direct service to customers but also must interact with both the State and local nonprofits to get their work accomplished.

 

The impetus for these convening’s emerged from conversations with county leaders who were deeply involved with integration initiatives; people who are passionate about connecting with others who were also working to create and/or enhance county-based integrated health and human service systems. The overall purpose of the meeting was to create an environment to share successes, challenges and explore creating a community of practice to support long-term efforts. It became evident that this convening format could provide significant value by sharing successes and challenges and potentially creating a community of practice to support long-term efforts.

 

We plan to expand this initiative into a County Collaborative. We intend to open participation to others counties interested in sharing and learning and plan to catalogue and publish the learning in our knowledge repository which will be expanded in 2010.

 

 

In addition to its national conferences, Stewards of Change™ offers a series of regional conferences to share its unique inter-disciplinary learning model with child welfare and other human services leaders in regions across the country. Building on the unique strengths and resources in each region, Stewards of Change™ is dedicated to helping its regional partners develop, benchmark, and implement a new blueprint for change, drawing heavily on effective business and system reform strategies used successfully in other jurisdictions.

 

 

In addition to its unique array of national and regional conferences, Stewards of Change™ offers a series of customized webinars -- on-line seminars that offer live chats with business leaders, leading agency administrators, and other experts from a variety of fields. Using on-line training technologies, SOC Webinars are designed to help child welfare and other human service leaders work through challenges, develop and apply innovative solutions, and share new techniques and best practices. Webinars are offered regularly on topics of general interest and also in response to specific client requests. We anticipate offering a series of webinars during 2010 to share more learning about our Human Services 2.0 – InterOptimability process and findings.