Flourish Care Management Remains Committed to Clients’ Needs

The Flourish Care Management department now serves more than 9,300 case managed clients and continues to keep pace during these challenging times. Life and work flow and processes have changed for the Flourish team during this pandemic, but our staff has risen to the challenge.

In early March, care managers identified clients who were most at risk of isolation due to limited informal supports, and CICOA staff and volunteers began making telephone reassurance calls. This reassurance call service has been expanded to all CICOA clients as the pandemic continued, and we are utilizing a growing volunteer base to ensure our clients are safe, healthy and have the resources they need.

While care managers no longer come into the office or do home visits, much of their work has not changed. The assessment process and monitoring of each client’s well-being has not decreased; in many ways it has increased to new levels.

Care managers continue to provide ongoing outreach, empowering clients and families, advocating for their needs, exploring and researching options to assist them, and helping to facilitate resources that lead to the best independence, dignity and quality of life. They actively collaborate with the client and their circle of support to make adjustments to person-centered service plans in response to the client’s changing needs.

Care managers remain committed to providing exceptional experiences, which is more challenging now than ever before. By focusing on the client as an individual, working with them to establish goals and developing a person-centered service plan that helps them attain their goals, CICOA care managers emphasize the client experience in their work.

Our “home visits” have certainly taken on a new look! Care Managers demonstrate even more compassion and active listening now that they are reliant entirely on phone calls to obtain information. They are tasked with developing meaningful connections with those they serve without laying eyes on the client.

What has also been instrumental for collaboration within the Flourish department is the use of new technologies available through the internal transition to Office 365. The Microsoft Teams software has allowed supervisors and team leaders to better support team members in a remote work environment, leading to better problem resolution for our clients. Additionally, it has given us an avenue to continue to engage personally with each other. Team meetings, case conferences and needed training–all completed through virtual methods–have opened our eyes to refreshing ways of accomplishing necessary tasks.

In fact, Flourish has continued to grow. We have added 18 staff members and provided training online. This time has forced us to look at innovative ways to stay connected, collaborate with and learn from each other!