Another year has almost come and gone, and I don’t know about you but we at Ranch Ehrlo have learned a lot!
We have started implementing the CARE model across the agency, and those six principles (relationship based, developmentally focused, family involvement, competence centred, trauma informed, and ecologically oriented) have guided us in everything we do, from accounting to youth care and everything in between.
In an agency of our size, congruency doesn’t happen by accident. Through the implementation and training processes, we have learned just how effective it can be to have our entire agency working under the same guiding philosophies. Stories of this effectiveness were shared all year long on our website, whether it be a heartwarming story of how the relationship between a staff and youth helped them succeed, the exciting development of sensory rooms at our Learning Centre to give our clients even more tools, or the recounting of a family workshop where parents and caregivers of youth in care were brought in to learn more about their treatment and how they could help.
Through our community programs, we learned how effective partnerships can bolster our impact and allow us to reach even more people. Ehrlo Sport Venture teamed up with The Regina Intersectoral Partnership (TRiP) to offer a mentorship program to youth experiencing difficulties and joined forces with the Jay’s Care Foundation to offer a free-of-charge baseball league to youth, and Ehrlo Counselling Services formed a partnership with the Autism Resource Centre to fill gaps in ARC clientele’s access to mental health services.
In August, we held our third annual powwow, and it was the most successful to date, proving that each year we learn from and build upon the previous year’s event.
We also re-affirmed how important it is to ensure that all of our programs fit the needs of our clients with an operational review of our community vocational program (learning exactly what works and what needs changed) and have planned reviews of many of our other services and programs to keep the improvements going.
I’m probably missing something, but that seems like a lot of learning! What did you learn in 2018 that you will carry forward into 2019, making it the best year yet?
