This does not inspire confidence
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We got word today of our bureau getting a $220,000 grant from the federal government. Exclamation points!!! Cheeriness!!! Yay, us!!!
Being postliberal, I was less excited. Reading the full announcement, I was less excited still. This was my reply to the email, quoting the last paragraph of the official announcement.
I'm glad we got the money and all, but what the hell does this mean?
The grant will be used to implement mental health outcome measures for anyone receiving or requesting services from the designated community health programs around the State. Two public domain tools will be utilized to collect and report on the data: the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) and the Adults Needs and Strengths Assessment (ANSA). These tools have been demonstrated to be highly effective in supporting a person centered treatment planning process, improving communication and collaboration with an individual’s supports and services in the community, empowering individuals and families in the service planning process, and promoting a more effective management of service resources and supports over time.
They're all mad; mad, I tell you. Mad as hatters. We're the only ones left.
8 comments:
Allow me to translate from the bureaucratese:
"Heads up! You are about to be expected to fill out EVEN MORE paperwork."
My guess is that the money will be used for training clinicians on the CANS/ANSA software, and for some consultants to collate, massage, and possibly torture the data. Then the resulting reports of "trends" and so on will be used as fodder to solicit more grants to address the "needs and strengths in the community", or some such.
Is that ANSA, or ANSI?
Oh, never mind.
My industry (architectural consulting) is one that got a lot of "Stimulus" projects, and yes they do require a lot of extra paperwork. They pretty much ended up being projects that people were going to do anyway but then got some money. So a lot of public housing, "community" buildings, elderly homes, and more of what you would expect.
Oh BTW, every time I work on a "stimulus" job, it counts as 1 "created or saved". So if I put 5 hours each on 3 jobs, it counts as 3 jobs "created or saved" even if I worked a teeny bit on them.
So don't believe a word of what the gubmint says.
What does it mean? It means publicly funded paychecks for people who can be expected to vote for this kind of thing.
Any queries regarding Ansa Mental Health Software ? you can visit the website or can contact us directly.
Parsing for actionable stuff: You will serve people calling in to X-facilities. You will use Y software. It is public domain. It likely has a horrendous learning curve. Then blah blah blah about the virtues of the stuff you will be required to use. Repeat blah blah blah back to us in your final report.
Oops. I munged up your pointer to the "last comment"
It's an "Outcomes Tool"! Why do you hate outcomes?
James and Jaed nailed it. Frankly, if you're going to go around asking questions like "what does this mean?"--well, it's just as well that you're making the transition to retirement, because we don't need bomb-throwing anarchists like you around here, buster.
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