Practicing Innovation:

Putting ideas into action

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innovation \ in--¢va-shn\ n (15c), 1: the introduction of something new; 2: a new idea, method, or device. (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, tenth ed.)

As part of the 1997 Reunion activities, the SSA Alumni Association welcomed alumni, students, and friends to a conference on Innovations in Social Work Practice. The half-day event, held June 6 at the School of Social Service Administration, brought together leaders in social work education and practice to discuss the essence of innovation and to recognize programs considered by many to be innovative and impactive. Applications were received from approximately two dozen programs from around the country. Programs deemed most innovative, and representing the diverse interests of case workers, group workers, and administrators, were invited to be presented before and audience of students, alumni, faculty, and friends. In addition, programs not scheduled to give presentations were invited to present a poster session.
Topics of discussion included Innovation: Should we Raise the Bar? Sustaining Innovation: The Final Frontier, and Whither Innovation? While discussion topics helped participants to frame and sharpen their thoughts about innovation, the focus of events was on current examples of innovation in social work practice. The program was designed to "help close the communication loop" among alumni, faculty, and students, according to Joe Loundy, A.M. '69, a key coordinator of the conference. Following are descriptions of the four programs showcased.

Seeds of Peace
Washington, D.C.
Barbara Gottschalk, A.M. '66, Director

Seeds of Peace is an independent American program bringing together delegations of teenagers from troubled areas of the world to study conflict resolution in the supportive environment of an overnight camp setting. The primary focus during its first five years has been on the conflict between Israel, Palestine, and other Arab states. Founded in 1993 by author and journalist John Wallach, Seeds of Peace has intensified its impact each year, increasing the annual number of participants, and expanding the regional representation from two to eight nations. Over 700 young people from all over the Middle East have graduated from Seeds of Peace and are now bringing the message of peace to their communities.

SSA: What makes this program innovative?

SOP: It is the only program which brings together youngsters from all countries in the Arab world that have peace agreements with Israel, and Israelis, in an overnight camp setting with structured group workshops on communication and coexistence skills. It is the only program which builds a network of youth throughout the Middle East who write a newspaper together and are connected by lasting friendships through letters, e-mail, faxes, art projects, weekend retreats, telephone calls, and visits. It is the only program of its kind which has the full confidence and publicly demonstrated respect of the political leaders of the United States and the Middle East.

SSA: Describe the program mission.

SOP: The mission is to train the next generation of leaders in the conflict areas of the world for living together in peace, using conflict resolution training, along with an actual experience of living in peace in a neutral territory. In this way, these young leaders are given the opportunity to sample the rewards of peace, to go beyond the universal prayers for peace, with a clear vision of what it is, armed with the skills that are needed to achieve real peace in their lifetime.

SSA: What was the unmet challenge that this program was designed to address?

SOP: Seeds of Peace stresses violence prevention in the community context. By training youngsters in effective conflict resolution techniques in an atmosphere which fosters mutual respect and understanding, leading to lasting friendships between former enemies, Seeds of Peace helps them become the seeds from which enduring peace will grow.

SSA: How do you measure the effectiveness of this program?

SOP: We continue to work with the participants after they return to the Middle East and record the innovative projects and continuing contacts with which they are involved in their own environment. It will be many years before we really know how effective we have been. But if even one of them reaches a high level of leadership in his or her country and has lived with the experience of Seeds of Peace in his or her heart since early adolescence, we will see the fruits of our labor. That leader will know that people in other countries are much like his/her own people, wanting to live peaceably in their own homes.

SSA: Could this program be replicated?

SOP: Yes, it uses several effective approaches, combined to achieve a greater impact. They are: conflict resolution training, overnight camp (away from home), group-building activities, the creative arts, continuing emotional support networks after camp and public recognition in the political arena. It is a complicated approach which has to be carefully balanced, but it could be replicated and we hope it will. Its proven impact has earned international recognition as an effective model for resolving conflicts worldwide.

Programa Nueva Vista, Grand Prairie Services (formerly Family Service Centers)
Chicago, Illinois
Lorena Valles, A.M. '94, Coordinator

Programa Nueva Vista, a program of Grand Prairie Services (formerly Family Service Centers), provides mental health services and addresses issues such as marital concerns, domestic violence, depression mental health issues, and parent-child problems. Launched in 1994, the program serves the mental health needs of the growing Latino population in Chicago Heights and the south suburban Chicago area.

SSA: What makes this program innovative?

PNV: The program has aligned itself with the local Catholic Church and elementary school. Services are provided in these settings and the priest and principal are often included in the treatment. Advertisement for the program is through the church bulletin. A unique strength of "Nueva Vista" is in its alignment with institutions that are viewed as natural gathering places by the community.

SSA: Describe the program mission.

PNV: The mission is to meet the behavioral health care needs of Spanish-speaking individuals and families by providing therapeutic services in their native language and in settings which are trusted and within the community.

SSA: What was the unmet need that this program was designed to address?

PNV: Mental health services and case management services to Spanish-speaking individuals and families. Traditionally, Latinos have used alternative resources such as immediate and extended family, religious institutions, and doctors for help with emotional problems. Beliefs about mental illness and its treatment have discouraged the use of professional mental health services.

SSA: How do you measure the effectiveness of this program?

PNV: By the number of referrals and actual use of services. Recently, Nueva Vista was selected from a highly competitive field as one of ten finalists for the 1997 Mutual of America Community Partnership Award.

SSA: Could this program be easily replicated?

PNV: Yes, as Nueva Vista continues to grow, we hope that identification of needed services and alliances with other programs that serve the Latino population in this community will be generated and fostered in order to provide a range of well-rounded services to the Latino population in a culturally sensitive and relevant manner.

Family Success Program, Baltimore Urban League Baltimore, Maryland
Ann-Marie Bond, A.M. '71, Director

The Family Success Program is a welfare to work initiative combining social work and vocational expertise. The Community Outreach Service of the University of Maryland School of Social Work has combined forces with the Baltimore Urban League to create this unique program, which is staffed by a faculty field instructor and eight social work graduate students in field placements. Working in conjunction with Work Force 2000, the program serves customers referred by the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. Social work interns team with the Baltimore Urban League vocational advisors to provide vocational and social work services to Work Focus 2000 participants which are focused on individual and family well-being related to self-sufficiency. In the Family Success Center, the program's operational hub, customers have access to office equipment as well as information and assistance. Social work interns run the center and provide education, support, referral, and counseling. Intervention is based on empowerment theory, emphasizing opportunity and growth.

SSA: What makes this program innovative?

FSP: This is a public-private partnership which goes a step further with the university affiliation. The approach offers training and practice in development opportunities and allows social workers to have a constructive role in addressing the human impact of welfare reform. As a cornerstone of the program, a practice setting has been designed to lower barriers to change. Thus, the Family Success Center's appealing and welcoming appearance, combined with the information, service and support provided there, provides the background for a strengths-based approach to growth. Also, the technological resources of the School of Social Work and the Baltimore Urban League have been made available to provide training options for program participants in computer use.

SSA: Describe the program mission:

FSP: The mission is to enable families to achieve economic and social potential. Effective models of social work practice must be developed in order to accomplish this goal.

SSA: What was the unmet need that this program was designed to address?

FSP: The program addresses the need for psychosocial support during the transition from welfare to work, as well as the need to develop effective models of service that address economic and social well-being.

SSA: How do you measure the effectiveness of this program?

FSP: Through outcome measures in areas in of employment and resolution of personal and social concerns. A follow-up and client satisfaction survey is being developed for future use.

SSA: Could this program be easily replicated?

FSP: Yes, it was designed to be easily replicated. That is an important goal for both the school and the Baltimore Urban League. In conjunction with Work Focus 2000, the program has already been replicated at another site. A second SSA graduate, Wayne Beckles, A.M. '86, has been hired as the field instructor for the new location in the Park Heights community. In addition, the program has been implemented by a public-private initiative which is independent of the Family Success Program.

Subsidized Guardianship, IL DCFS
Chicago, Illinois
Tammy Blackard, A.M. '94, Coordinator

Subsidized Guardianship, a program of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), involves the transfer of legal responsibility for a child from DCFS custody to that of a private caregiver who becomes the legal guardian of the child. Implemented in January 1997, Subsidized Guardianship was created to meet the permanency needs of those children living with caregivers who provide a safe and stable environment, but for whom goals of adoption and return home have been ruled out. A subsidy is provided to the legal guardian to assist in the child's care.

SSA: What makes this program innovative?

DCFS: While some states have had versions of subsidized guardianship, Illinois is one of the first states to have a comprehensive program that will receive federal funds to run it. Illinois will be allowed to try Subsidized Guardianship under a five-year demonstration project design. Many other states are watching closely.

SSA: Describe the program mission:

DCFS: The mission is to decrease the number of children in the child welfare system and to promote permanency for these children.

SSA: What was the unmet need that this program was designed to address?

DCFS: The program addresses the needs of relatives who are caring for children who are wards of the state. Many of the relatives caring for these children cannot or do not wish to adopt, thus leaving these children without permanency. Often relatives don't want to adopt a child who is already related to them, or they don't want to obtain a divorce, which is necessary for adoption. Private guardianship without a subsidy for these relatives often is not an option because the drop from the DCFS boarding rate to an AFDC rate leaves insufficient funds for child support. Subsidized guardianship allows relatives and some nonrelatives to take legal guardianship of the children in their care while receiving a subsidy equal to the foster care boarding rate. This allows thousands of children to get out of the child welfare system into permanent placements.

SSA: How do you measure the effectiveness of this program?

DCFS: Under the terms of the waiver demonstration, the State must obtain a five-year evaluation by an independent contractor to assess the effectiveness of the demonstration. The Department's participation in the evaluation will be overseen by the DCFS Research Director (and SSA professor), Mark Testa.

SSA: Could this program be easily replicated?

DCFS: Yes, if it is successful. Many other states are watching closely and are asking for information. If we are successful, the federal government may extend the program to all states; federal funds for guardianship may be extended nationwide.

Editor's note: Space constraints prohibit featuring every program that applied to participate in the Innovations in Social Work Practice conference, however, we wish to acknowledge the following programs:

Boys Hope/Girls Hope
Contact: Bruce Bradley, A.M. '75

Brief Strobic Light Therapy
Affiliation: Family Counseling and Stress Management, Ltd.
Contact: Gerre Friedberg, A.M. '67

Child Care Management Services
Affiliation: Texas Workforce Commission
Contact: Charles A. Martin. A.M. '69, Ph.D. '77

Directive Group Play Therapy/Anger Work with Children/The Feelings Wheel Game/Sex Abuse of Children: An Inside Look at Treatment
Affiliation: Morning Glory Treatment Center for Children
Contact: Norma Leben, A.M. '74

Domestic Violence Advocacy in Hospital Emergency Room
Affiliation: Chicago Department of Health
Contact: Dorothy Holley, A.M. '73

Ethnogeriatric Assesment
Affiliation: University of California, Irvine
Contact: Patricia M. Lenahan, A.M. '75

Friends in Pauma Valley
Contact: Katherine C. Busse, A.M. '64

Harrison Education and Literacy Project
Affiliation: Hossier Hills PART (Prisoners and Community Together)
Contact: Linda K. Runden, A.M. '71

Home Rebuilders Project
Affiliation: New York Department of Social Services
Contact: Fred Wulczyn, A.M. '86

Mother-Daughter
Affiliation: Private Practice
Contact: Eileen Bond, A.M. '74

National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention
Contacts: Linda Bowen, A.M. '82 and Sonia Chessen, A.M. '90

Service Broker Program
Affiliation: Hudson Coalition of Non-Profit Organizations
Contact: Mary "Kelly" Gleason, A.M. '89

Shelter Network of San Mateo County
Contact: Michael Radding, A.M. '93

Special Education Services and Center for Family Services
Affiliation: The Menta Group
Contacts: Ed Niemann, A.M. '77 and Tracy Griffin, A.M. '96

Undoing Depression
Affiliation: Northwest Center
Contact: Richard O'Connor, A.M.'76, Ph.D. '83

Whole Family Foster Care
Affiliation: Minnesota Human Services Associates
Contact: Krista Nelson, A.M. '87

Youth As Resources
Affiliation: Chicago Area Project
Contact: David E. Whittaker, A.M. '77

Youth Employment Training Initiative
Affiliation: Youth Guidance
Contact: Steve Wallman, A.M. '94

In addition, we wish to thank Susan Herr of the Chicago Community Trust for her remarks on Sustaining Innovation.

Encouraging innovation, innovative organizations, and innovative programs is a cause pursued with a sense of urgency. The cause, moreover, is bipartisan. Liberals favor innovation because it leads to increases in the quality and availability of services. Conservatives like innovation because it encourages the search for ways to do more with less.
Most of us probably know an innovative organization when we are fortunate enough to see one. Innovative agencies exhibit an ongoing commitment to state-of-the-art performance in all phases of operation. From the executive level to the street level, people in innovative agencies are constantly searching for good ideas to improve performance, trying them out and learning from their experience. They lead the organizational equivalent of "the examined life." They do not fear change, uncertainty, financial challenges, conflict, or ambiguity. Adversity is opportunity. The real danger is inertia, fear of change.
How, then, can we have more innovation, more innovative organizations? What do policy makers, boards of directors, grant makers, executives and managers, and citizens need to do to stimulate innovations? More to the point, what is innovation? How is it achieved and sustained? How will we recognize it?

It is necessary to face some uncomfortable truths about innovation:

Innovation is threatening. An innovation necessarily involves a change in the status quo. Unless an innovation makes everyone better off, and no one worse off, a rarity, then there is a good chance that someone stands to lose if an innovation is adopted. Someone's role will change. Some will gain authority, while others may lose it. What is important to innovation, say two British researchers, is "the ability to suppress differences of status and of technical prestige on occasions of working interaction, and the absence of barriers to communication founded on functional preserves, privilege, or personal reserve."

Innovation is risky. Disrupting the status quo, upsetting an equilibrium, and moving into uncharted waters, involves taking chances. For every new idea that works, there are numerous ideas that don't work. It is easy and enjoyable to claim credit for an idea that works. How many executive directors, foundation grant makers, and elected officials are equally willing to defend, against opposition and criticism and negative evaluation findings and hostile media coverage and lawsuits, the several failures that are necessary to achieve a single success?

Innovation is controversial. Because innovation involves change and risk, a disturbance to the status quo, innovation is likely to be accompanied by conflict and controversy.

Concentration of authority is good for innovation; democracy is bad for it. There are several interesting points to be made in this connection.

First, the study of innovations in both public and private sectors has uncovered what has become something of a famous paradox. Decentralization of authority encourages the production of innovative ideas. But centralization of authority is necessary to authorize the adoption of innovations and to provide resources for it.
Second, research has tended to show that the more democratic and inclusive is decision making the less likely that innovation will occur. The larger the number of participants, the more diverse their interests; hence, the more likely that there will be objections, people who are uncomfortable with new ideas or doubtful of their merit. In pursuit of buy-in, we often discover that the one thing that people can buy into is leaving things pretty much alone, proceeding slowly, or seeking innovation on the part of someone else.
Third, government is often the friend rather than the enemy of innovation. Steven Smith studied the extent of innovation in drug abuse treatment agencies in North Carolina. He found that agencies that were affiliated through grants or contracts with state and federal agencies were more likely to be innovative than free-standing agencies. The reason is that government program officers often demanded innovation over the opposition of local boards or stakeholders. Without the pressure from an external authority, local agencies found that continuity was the easier course.

Innovation is often created by disruptive, competitive people who have little taste for teamwork, compromise, consultation, and organizational routines. Particularly in larger organizations, innovators are often difficult to work with, persistent rather than pleasant. That is precisely what they intend to be. Warren Bennis has said "Innovators, like all creative people, see things differently; they think in fresh and original ways. They have useful contacts in other areas, other institutions; they are seldom seen as good organization men or women and are often viewed as mischievous troublemakers."

Innovation, then, is uncomfortable, stressful, often noisy and disruptive, and costly. Because this is so, sponsors and promoters of innovation often seek to disguise the dark, unsettling side of innovation. This uncritical view leads often to watered-down definitions of innovation. Innovation may become another name for any change for the better, adaptation to new circumstances, inventions, or discoveries, doing old things in new ways. The best research and commentary on innovation suggests a different approach, however, one that views innovation as relatively rare and far-reaching, a challenge to, or at least a significant departure from, the status quo, not perhaps, a Nobel Prize contribution but a contribution that signifies an unusual and laudable contribution that survives tests and trials.
Innovation is properly defined as an original, disruptive, and fundamental transformation of an organization's core tasks. Innovation changes deep structures and changes them permanently.
James Q. Wilson has made a similar argument. Innovation is "not any new program or technology, but only those that involve the performance of new tasks or a significant alteration in the way in which existing tasks are performed. Real innovations are those that alter core tasks; most changes add to or alter peripheral tasks."
Innovation, moreover, is an ongoing process, not a onetime event. Innovation is a characteristic of organizations, not a description of specific acts. Even the most resolutely entrenched organizations will occasionally do something novel. Novel events do not constitute innovation; token novelty is often a sign that innovation at the core is being fought off. The relatively short half-life of bureaucratic changes touted as innovations may well result from the changes were grafted-on novelties that did not take. They were not innovations in the first place.
The phenomenon of short-lived innovations has been observed by another student of innovation, Paul Light, in a soon-to-be-published book titled Surviving Innovation. He has noticed that a lot of Kennedy School/Ford Foundation innovation award winners in his state have gone out of business; a great many award-winning innovations died.
He set out to identify and study innovative organizations, by which he meant organizations that had a history of being innovative and appeared to go about it naturally. His definition of innovative, moreover, is similar to mine: organizations that willingly pursued fundamental, transforming change on an ongoing basis. Rosabeth Moss Kanter has referred to this as "having capacity to change."
Light has identified what he calls "preferred states of being." The Surviving Innovation agencies have external political support for innovation, scan the environment for new funding, have informal lines of communication, communicate decisions clearly, give their people permission to make mistakes, enjoy their work, use mission and capacity as the key criteria for winnowing ideas, and are disciplined/rigorous about their personnel and budget systems."
That latter point is worth underscoring; the Surviving Innovation agencies were functionally well-managed organizations. Light argues that "the first step in becoming an innovating organization is to become a well-performing organization."
Light also emphasizes the importance of mission to the innovating organization. By mission, he means "a spirit, a focus, a sense, more something to be felt than read."
Below the surface, though, are what Light identifies as four "core values" trust, honesty, rigor, and faith.
Trust means that managers have no need or desire to demand constant control. The innovative organization pushes authority downward provided that authority is wisely used.
The honesty of an organization is built on individual acts of honesty. Questions are asked, and honest answers are not only given but insisted upon. There is no inclination to dissemble or cover one's backside. Managers and workers are willing to hear what they do not want to hear.
By rigor, Light means systemic thinking, hard questions and analysis, getting the facts straight, knowing the details, knowing why things work, and careful measurement. Organizations show they can be trusted by showing that they are willing to be measured, evaluated, and scrutinized. They are always asking why things work.
The final core value is faith. After all is said and done that can be said or done, innovation involves a "leap of faith," a willingness to "take the organization beyond the realm of known experience."
Some of these factors may seem paradoxical. How can you take leaps of faith if you insist on measurement? How can you move into the unknown if you emphasize good personnel and budget management? How can you be flexible, opportunistic, and free-wheeling if you are fussy about management systems? How can you act on your instincts, your vision, your imagination, if at the same time you scrutinize the details and insist on getting the facts straight? How can you encourage risk taking at the same time that you encourage honest, rigorous evaluation?
The answers to these questions are both elusive and essential to facilitating true innovation. Students of innovation have identified many of the ingredients and signs of successful innovation. But the fundamental element, and the clearest sign of innovation, is excitement, by those effecting change and among those affected by it.
The challenge of innovation, then, is to create a sense of excitement, the capacity to change and enjoy it, and then to celebrate it and to notice what a truly precious thing it is. - Laurence E. Lynn, Jr.

We like to say at SSA that we prepare leaders of the profession. The examples of innovation showcased during the Innovation in Social Work Practice conference and profiled here enable us to see that leadership in action. The intelligence and creativity inherent in these projects is impressive, but not unexpected. SSA has a rich tradition of fostering innovative ideas and practices among its faculty, students, and alumni.
But what are we to make of all this talk about innovation? What do we really know about the innovation process? How does it affect a profession like social work? What can we learn from our discussion and examination of innovative projects?

Innovation Process

Research on innovation supports the adage that while there may be "nothing new under the sun," there may be some new combinations under the sun. Research in the 1960s by social psychologist Donald Campbell suggests that creative solutions to problems tend to result from analyzing different combinations of known existing factors leading to a solution and then having the capacity to recognize successful solutions as they emerge, that is, taking different pieces of the puzzle and moving them around on the board until they "fit." Further, statistician Fred Mosteller observed the innovation process in the biological sciences and determined that successful innovations seem to happen in bundles, that is, a number of labs or groups in very distinct geographical areas will work on a problem and quite independently arrive at the same solution. Studies of innovation in social work (Harrison, 1991) have come up with the same picture: When social workers lack a good rule about what to do, they make something up, that is, they create new responses or programs by seeking potentially helpful ideas from any source -- logic, theory, research, advice of a colleague, their own intuition -- and combining them in new ways. So the innovation process seems to be not so much creating something brand new as creating something out of old pieces.

Innovation in the Profession of Social Work

Increasingly, it is recognized that professions are defined by their claims to certain bodies of knowledge and often these claims to knowledge come about through a process of practice innovation. In his book A System of Professions, sociologist Andrew Abbott documents how psychiatry lost ground to social work in the 1940s and 1950s as social workers began to develop practice innovations in the "talk therapy" arena that psychiatrists had claimed for themselves. Today some would argue that hospital social workers have lost ground to nurses by failing to claim expertise and knowledge in the area of discharge planning. In the programs featured at the Innovations in Social Work Practice conference, we can recognize some knowledge claiming. For example:

Subsidized Guardianship takes the ideas of guardianship and subsidized adoption, old ideas from private agencies, and puts them into a public context.

Programa Nueva Vista takes the idea of social work in schools, church, and agencies to work in a culturally sensitive way.

Seeds of Peace combines overnight camp and conflict resolution training incorporating ideas of individual work, group work, and community organization to create a new community.

Family Success combines casework and job placement, based on ideas from the empowerment model.

In these projects, we can recognize that knowledge claimed may come from a variety of sources (theory, research, intuition) and a variety of fields and disciplines (sociology, psychology, economics). The value placed on interdisciplinary work at the University of Chicago clearly serves graduates well, alumni are willing to use ideas from just about anywhere, as long as they are good ideas!
In the recent history of social work education, it was acceptable and accurate to speak of social work practice as consisting of "uncertain technologies." What we have witnessed in the last twenty years is a careful and consistent codification of technology either by social workers or by other professions so that there are increasing areas of practice where we have documented evidence of effective innovative practice technology. We know what strategies improve parenting skills, improve adolescent behaviors, and reduce negative behaviors like social truancy and drug use or enhance independent living skills of chronically mentally ill and the impaired elderly. Where the real innovation is needed and where I predict it will happen in the next twenty years is in the political, organizational and financing strategies (areas addressed to some extent by Professor Lynn) that will enable these technologies to be put into place in sustained and effective ways.
What, then, do we learn from examining potential and actual examples of innovation? First, while individual innovators may have realized that they had discovered a better mouse trap to capture the mouse they were after, what should be recognized is that (1) the process in which they were engaged is fundamentally the process of defining the field of social work and social welfare; (2) what they are doing is an important part of the process of innovation, the documentation and dissemination of innovations; and (3) the process of innovation can and should be used in a deliberate and self-conscious way that advances our field and our capacity to provide the most effective services.
Certainly we want to consider the administrative and organizational factors that contribute to, or inhibit, innovation and innovative ideas. But let us also celebrate the process of innovation where it germinates, and supports the development of new and different combinations of ideas. We must continue the good work and take that ultimate leap of faith toward true innovation. - Jeanne C. Marsh