Family Caregiver Alliance

The Heller Consulting team provided FCA with an outstanding webinar series. It was interesting, engaging, and offered attendees a nice balance of participation and reflection.

Monique Parrish
CRC Expansion Project Manager

Challenge: Paving The Way For Technology And Process Changes

In 2019, FCA proposed a plan to move from multiple client record systems to a single unified telehealth platform as part of a broader expansion plan funded by the state of California. With a system of 11 separate Caregiver Resource Center (CRC) entities, the organization recognized multiple potential challenges in moving to the new technology and streamlining processes and core services, including:

Diverse levels of technology sophistication

Within the 11 different CRCs, staff have different levels of experience and comfort with technology.

Experience with a similar project 

The CRC system had prior experience with a system that was halted in 2008 due to an economic recession. That experience had an impact on the perception of this new project.

Different ways of functioning 

Individual CRCs are spread all over California, serving differing constituencies. All provide a core set of services, and all have modified their core CRC services and programs to support the caregivers that they serve locally.

Addressing change management in a changing world

During the first year of the project, the world began to change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the change management principles and content the Heller team shared helped the CRCs to adapt to changes and navigate through the unexpected.

Solution: Change Management Coaching

FCA turned to the Heller Consulting team for help preparing the organizations to adopt the new technology as smoothly as possible. As certified change practitioners, the Heller team worked with FCA to build a customized change management workshop and webinar series based on best practices and many years of experience with change management projects for nonprofits.

The solution included:

• An in-person workshop for 50 CRC leadership staff with live stream to all CRC staff statewide. This half-day workshop laid the foundation for change management and included exercises on the topic of how to lead change.
• A three-webinar series for all employees of the CRCs, with topics including:
  • How to handle the unexpected (communication planning, issue and risk management, decision-making, and escalation structures)
  • Practicing resilience (essential building blocks that help individuals use their strengths to adapt to change and build group, or collective, ability to bounce back)