Thursday, September 29, 2022

Each year before the annual meeting, I reflect on Beech Brook’s rich history. It is amazing how much has changed but also how much remains the same.

Founded 170 years ago, our founders were living through a pandemic that never seemed to end, racial tensions and a war that started with a conflict in Crimea. It all sounds so familiar.

The 1850s was a pivotal decade. In the United States, tensions over the institution of slavery became prominent and dramatic events hastened the nation's movement towards civil war. In Europe, great powers fought the Crimean War. In Cleveland and the rest of the United States, we faced the third of seven major cholera epidemics.

In the 17 decades since, Beech Brook has continually changed to meet the needs of children and families who have often been disproportionately impacted by epidemics, pandemics, poverty, abuse, neglect, drugs, gangs, and social change.

As the landscape changes, we must change with it. And the need has never been greater and the challenges never more difficult.

New findings regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and well-being of our nation’s children are emerging and they are disturbing. One new finding from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) confirmed that school closures and interruptions due to COVID-19 school disruptions stunted the academic growth of students.

Our youngest have been hit the hardest. Reading and math, the most basic components of education, have seen sharp declines this year. In fact, we have seen the biggest decline in reading scores since 1990 and the biggest decline in math scores ever.

In addition, there is evidence that our country is experiencing a mental health crisis.

We predicted this would occur when the pandemic began.

Our staff report that there are many more children who need help and the acuity level is much higher now than it was before the pandemic. Now, we are starting to get data to back up this experience.

According to Mental Health America (MHA), The number of people looking online for help with their mental health increased nearly 500% between 2019 and 2022!

The percentage of people in the U.S. reporting frequent thoughts of suicide and self-harm was the highest recorded since the MHA Screening Program launched in 2014.

While more of our children are struggling in school and struggling with their mental health, the mental health workforce, including school-based programs, is also struggling.

And there are not enough mental health professionals to meet the demand for help.

There are a lot of reasons. Greater competition for mental health professionals, many professionals leaving the field altogether, and at the same time, fewer people are going into the mental health field in the first place. And who can blame them with the cost of college skyrocketing and the relatively low pay?

But the issue is deeper than money. During the pandemic, mental health workers were on the front line holding it all together. While everyone had to cope with the fear and uncertainty of COVID-19 from their homes, our staff have had to expose themselves to the virus every day. The staff have had to deal with the increased number and complexity of cases. But they also must deal with their own personal lives - their own health and their family’s health.

The drastic increase in need for our services combined with the shortage of workers makes Beech Brook more important than ever – so we needed to strategize as to how we can approach this ever-changing landscape.

Beech Brook’s leadership and Board of Directors gathered together throughout the year and completed a 3-5 year strategic plan to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Our plan consists of 5 major goals and I’m going to share some of the highlights.

GOAL 1 – Ensure quality and sustainability of programs for children and families

At the Bash, we were reminded how Beech Brook touches hearts and changes lives. And not only the lives of the individuals served, but also the lives of generations that follow. Everyone got to meet Iris, who as a young child was in Beech Brook’s School-Based Mental Health program almost 30 years ago! Her most fond memory of Beech Brook was the summer program, where she enjoyed experiences that she would not otherwise have had given her rough upbringing and the trauma of growing up in poverty. Often fighting and misbehaving, Iris worked with Beech Brook staff to learn new skills, new attitudes and new ways of thinking. The school-Based program helped Iris move on from the path that she had been set on and forge a better path for herself.

Sometimes it is easy to forget the goal of our programming. We get caught up in Ohio Scales scores or other mandates by which we measure our own success.

While these measures are important, they are not the most important to our clients, their families and our other stakeholders. We are looking at each of our programs to add to our definition of success.

• Is our work helping children do well in school?
• Are they getting along with others?
• Are they participating in typical life activities?
• Are they happy?

Mrs. J.R. OWENS, SECRETARY asked the right question in Beech Brook’s 1919 annual report: Is the remarkable personal work and thought for every child result(ing) in good health, happiness and a helpful spirit toward others?

GOAL 2 – Attract, retain and develop talent – This may be our current, biggest challenge. There are simply not enough mental health workers in the field to do all of the work. To meet this challenge, we will:

Build a pipeline for future staff by systematically growing our internship program, streamline the hiring process, hire, train and develop staff from diverse educational and experiential backgrounds who have, until now, not typically been employed in our field. And we will become one of the highest paying organizations in our sector.

GOAL 3 – We must diversify our revenue model. For the last 30 or more years, Beech Brook has become reliant on earned income. We have done a good job with that. However, that income is getting harder to earn. We must increase charitable fundraising. We have already made significant investments in this area by hiring a grant writer and a special events coordinator, allowing our senior development director to focus on charitable giving.

We must also maximize government payments for the work we have available to us. This means growing our foster care program and hiring as many mental health workers as possible. There is no shortage of children and families who need our help and we will do everything in our power to bring services to them.

And we must develop and increase opportunities for non-Medicaid revenue. We will focus on bringing our substantial prevention and early intervention services to more people and different geographical areas. We will also explore private pay and private insurance models for behavioral health services.

GOAL 4 – Monetize the land

Since exiting the residential treatment business in 2016, we have not been successful in selling our property for a price that would make a difference to the lives of children and families. However, we will continue to pursue all options to sell all or parts of the property and simultaneously pursue options for using the property for programming either by creating programming or partnering with others. In fact, this work is already underway. Our staff have benchmarked for than 40 stakeholders to determine community needs that align with our mission.

GOAL 5 – Continuously assess and improve infrastructure to support quality and growth. This includes increased visibility of the Beech Brook brand. Hopefully, if you have not already, you will begin to see a difference in how we are branding ourselves through different media. We will also continue to invest in our systems, technology, finance, quality/compliance, marketing and development.

As we move into a new year at Beech Brook, we are excited about the possibilities. We are excited by the many opportunities we have to grow and serve children and families in ways never imagined 170 years ago. We hope you come along for the ride and we will keep you posted on our progress.

-Tom Royer
Beech Brook President & CEO