How to Survive a Large Family Including a Mental Illness and Remain Together: An Exploration of Our Lived Experience

Our middle son came up from the basement where it was safe for him to play alone – he-proofed – and when he entered the kitchen I turned to see a five-year-old boy warrior with widened eyes, a ripped shirt (“I used my teeth!” was the proud response when asked how) and battle ready.

Empathy, Insight, Transformation: A Trainer’s Journey with CANS-NY and TCOM

There are so many things that I love about being a CANS NY Trainer & Coach. When I start prepping for day one of the two-day Introductory Training I know that my heart will be full.

Conversations with the TCOM trainers: The Importance of Identifying a Caregiver on the tools

The items and domains in the TCOM tools help us capture an individual’s areas of strengths and needs so that we can figure out where intervention or support may be needed.

Teaming and Connectedness

The IPH Center is developing a program of research on teaming to seek to understand team cohesion and effectiveness better. If you work in a team environment, could you take a few minutes to complete our survey?

WORDS – “Risibility”

“Since the IPH Center team is mostly remote, I look for different ways to stay connected and help build a culture. One small attempt is by sharing a word — often obscure — but with some relevance to our work.”

What’s going on in California?

Having meaningful conversations to gain understanding about someone without shaming or blaming. Yes, this is Communimetric.

TCOM Training Session | Workshop Event

The Praed Foundation will be hosting 2 virtual workshops. The first workshop, the 2-Day TCOM Orientation, will focus on the Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management (TCOM) philosophy, and the TCOM Tools (CANS, ANSA, FAST). The 2nd workshop hosted in July 2022 is a Certified Trainer Training, which will focus on creating training materials that represent the core concepts of communimetrics and the TCOM framework.

Ask A TCOM Trainer | New YouTube Series

We have started a new series, “Ask A TCOM Trainer” on our TCOM YouTube Channel. TCOM trainers from the Center for Innovation in Population Health and guests from across the TCOM world will weigh in on the topics that matter most to our community. Our goal with this series is to help people understand the TCOM tools and framework, and how TCOM can make a positive impact on others.

Data is Not a 4-Letter Word: A Clinician’s View of What It Really Is

Ken McGill shares his thoughts on utilizing data to drive care. Using the phrase, “Data is not a 4-letter word”, he hopes that this will spark meaningful conversation explaining TCOM to not only those in the behavioral and mental health field, but in all systems of care in which we connect with people.

International TCOM Day

Happy TCOM Day to all and Happy Ground Hog Day as well. Ground Hog Day is a great time to celebrate the TCOM (Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management) work that we do. We think of Ground Hog Day as the official holiday of TCOM. Celebrate our International TCOM Day by subscribing to the TCOM YouTube Channel, get started on your recertification in the TCOM Tools, submit a proposal for our annual conference, or just reminding yourself of what the TCOM work is all about.

The Need for TCOM-365, Not Just 3 Days

TCOM-365 will actively support the work of those who have attended conferences in the past, who will attend this year, and those who may have never have the opportunity to attend the actual event. We will be bringing TCOM worldwide through our transformative collaborations.

TCOM Conference’s COVID-19 Health Policy 

To assure the optimal safety of all attendees, this year’s TCOM Conference in Lexington will require either evidence of full vaccination OR a negative PCR test for COVID-19 within 72 hours (3 days) prior to in-person conference check-in at the hotel. We will follow CDC guidelines regarding masks and social distancing during the conference.

Early Bird Gets The Discount

Register by 11:59PM EST Saturday, July 31st, to receive 25% off the 2021 TCOM Conference.

10 Seconds to Make a Difference – National Be Someone Day

The mission of the TCOM community has always been to elevate the shared vision of the people and the communities that serve them. We believe that every day we can play a part in helping improve the lives of the children, families and adults we serve.  That being said, today is “National Be Someone Day”.

Pre-Conference Vignette-A-Thon

We are announcing a vignette-a-thon, an event to allow us to expand our pool of potential vignettes in areas where they are most needed. Submit a vignette that meets the mentioned criteria (per our review), and you’ll receive a discount on next year’s conference registration. Come to the conference this year and you’ll receive prizes for submissions during our social hour.

LIVE NOW: Registration for 2021 TCOM Conference

Registration for the 17th Annual TCOM Conference is now available. This year, experts and professionals throughout the field will gather to focus upon a theme of “Getting A Leg-Up on TCOM,” in Lexington, Kentucky-October 6-8, 2021. Through the TCOM Conference, we build momentum to serve youth & families in equitable and transformative ways. We hope that you will join us.

TCOM Certified Trainer Training

We are hosting a virtual workshop June 16 – 17, 2021 for those that are interested in being a certified Trainer in either the ANSA or CANS. Deadline to register is June 9, 2021.

Italy’s 5th TCOM Conference

Italy’s 5th TCOM Conference will present the implementation of CANS tools in Italy and in the United States for the promotion of collaborative practices oriented to outcome evaluation. In the US, about 80% of children and adolescents in care of mental health services receive an assessment through CANS. In Italy, there are about 1000 trained operators, 80 agencies involved, 7 interinstitutional research projects, and others still in the planning phase. During the training days, reflections will be presented starting from clinical research conducted with the use of the instruments of the CANS family, and the operators will be confronted with the usefulness, strengths and limits and possible future developments of this innovative approach.

Have a Moment?

As TCOM has grown, so have the members of the community we serve. We understand that continued communication with the TCOM Collaborative and understanding who you are is an important part in our goal to continue to connect and collaborate with you. That’s why we have created an audience survey, and would appreciate your participation.

How is Implementation of the CANS Outside of the U.S? – featuring Mother’s Choice in Hong Kong

Recognizing the valuable TCOM work that is being engaged in around the world, we are excited to announce a quarterly blog series that will focus on implementation in different countries. These posts will provide information on implementation considerations, challenges and learning opportunities, and will give a peek into how places outside of the United States are using the TCOM tools.
We begin this series with an implementation of the CANS in its early stages in Hong Kong by Mother’s Choice, a local charity serving children without families and pregnant teenagers. The following is an interview with Dr. Saw Han Quah and Lea Wong, in which they discuss their efforts to implement the CANS.

Invitation: Presenting at the Annual TCOM Conference

The Annual TCOM Conference gives us the opportunity to bring together leaders and innovators in the fields of behavioral health, child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and more. We would like to hear from all the voices of the TCOM Collaborative to submit a proposal for the 17th Annual TCOM Conference in Lexington, KY from October 6-8, 2021.

Getting A Leg Up On TCOM

What are the steps needed to begin the process of getting a leg up? So getting a leg up on TCOM focuses on the goal of CANS to ‘name-it’ or – what is going on in the lives of those we serve. How can someone obtain-it if they do not first name-it or what is being identified as needs and/or strengths. The plans of care than are constructed to outline the transformation goals or the ‘gain-it.’ These become the skills, functional strengths being developed as part of care planning process. It will be the child/youth & family team that will ‘sustain-it’ developing/utilizing family & community supports. It is only with a shared vision that a child/youth, adult & their family will remain focused on reaching their own aspirational goals throughout life.

What if learning how Shakespeare wrote Hamlet could help you in writing papers, grants, or even to develop a treatment plan?

In 2019, the TCOM group established the Center for Innovation in Population Health (IPH) at the University of Kentucky. We are proud to announce that through the IPH Center, we will be hosting a free seminar series, and encourage our TCOM Collaborative to attend. Stephen Wrentmore, a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of […]

Keeping it Fresh: Updating Your Reference Guide

In recent months, we have updated our Standard Comprehensive versions of the CANS, ANSA and FAST (with the Early Childhood and CAT versions not far behind). Keep reading to learn about general and tool-specific updates and how you can access these new versions.

Ken McGill, EdS, LMFT

Ken McGill, Opeeka’s Solution-Focused Care Senior Scientist

Introducing Our 2021 TCOM Conference Chairperson – Ken McGill

Meet Ken McGill, the Conference Chairman for the 17th Annual TCOM Conference! We are grateful to have Ken be a part of the TCOM Collaborative, and we are excited to work with him on creating a fantastic event for the TCOM 2021 Conference. Let’s meet Ken!

IPH Center’s First Seminar – You’re Invited!

The TCOM group established the Center for Innovation in Population Health at the University of Kentucky back in the Fall of 2019. We are proud to announce that through the IPH Center, we will be hosting a free seminar series, and encourage our TCOM Collaborative to attend.
In our very first seminar series, Stephen Wrentmore, a lecturer with the Department of Theatre and Dance, UK College of Fine Arts, will be discussing dramaturgy, the science of storytelling. Stephen will offer ideas on how dramaturgy can help researchers tell the stories of their publications, grants, or creating a treatment plan. This will give our audience an alternative way that health scientists can tell their stories and their work.

17th Annual TCOM Conference – Call for Proposals!

We invite all members of the international TCOM collaborative to submit proposals to present your work at this year’s TCOM Conference! For this year’s conference, we will be in Lexington, KY, where the TCOM Team is now based. We look forward to your proposals, and look forward to your attendance,

8 Tips to Keep the Holidays Happy

We encourage our TCOM Collaborate to celebrate this year’s festivities in ways that we hope will help keep us all safe and healthy. We understand that this may present some difficult emotional and logistical challenges. Celebrating holidays alone or only with our immediate household members can be a new hurdle that many of us haven’t experienced before. But the holidays aren’t canceled. We can still share our love, show gratitude and plan creative activities to make this holiday a season to remember.

We Appreciate You

Two weeks ago was our 16th Annual TCOM Conference; we would like to thank everyone that participated.

Recap from TCOM 2020 Virtual Cloud Gathering Conference

The 16th Annual TCOM Conference, A TCOM Cloud Gathering. Meeting Each Other Where We Are: Collaboration in a COVID-19 World has officially ended. We hope you were able to learn and grow from this year’s sessions; the TCOM Team feels grateful that we had the opportunity to connect and collaborate with each of you.

TCOM 16th Annual Conference: Are You Registered?

TCOM 2020 Conference is DAYS away. The All Access Pass Sale (20% off from our regular registration) is available until Sunday, November 8th, 2020. Starting Monday, November 9th, only the 3-Day Regular Registration option will be available to register for.

Voice to Vote

By: the TCOM Team Let’s all vote and help those who need our help to vote as well. Everyone should have a voice in creating our national shared vision. Over the past decade, a many of us have participated in a number of strategic planning processes that played off 2020 representing perfect vision (e.g. Vision […]

A TCOM Virtual Town Hall with John Lyons

By Kenneth McGill, Senior Training and Consultation Specialist from Rutgers University On June 30th New Jersey Children’s System of Care held a 2-hour Town Hall style webinar with Dr. John Lyons, developer of TCOM, who provided answers to questions from system partners on the CANS Tools (i.e., SNA, CAT, & FANS). In addition, Dr. Lyons shared the work being […]

Post-COVID 19 Planning Strategy-As we SIFT through the impact of this worldwide traumatic event-We must support school-age children/youth towards HOPE.

By: Kenneth McGill, EdS LMFT Kenneth initially wrote this blog in early June. We find his words ring just as true today, as America continues to respond to the pandemic and the racial inequities laid bare and necessitating both a shared vision and transformation. Like many it only took me a few weeks to recognize the immense […]

A Statement from the University of Kentucky College of Public Health

The TCOM team is honored to be working alongside the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health. Below is a message from Dean Donna K. Arnett regarding our country’s most recent incidents of racial injustice. We wholeheartedly affirm this message and share a commitment to seeking equity and justice for the Black community and all […]

Supervision Strategies for the “New Normal:” Remote Work with an Improvement Mindset

Free Recorded Webinar (Listening Time: 42 Minutes) Last week, TCOM colleagues Mark Lardner and Tiffany Lindsey led a webinar for CANS and ANSA clinical supervisors, coaches and trainers. In the webinar, we present several team-based strategies from our Team First: Field Guide, which is a free download at The Praed Foundation’s homepage. Texas was gracious […]

Beyond Compliance

By: Mark Lardner, LCSW, Center for Innovation in Population Health When a system is looking for an assessment process to help improve their work with individuals, they often explore the TCOM approach. A simplified description of an initial implementation of TCOM tools would include the following activities. First, local versions of the tools are designed with […]

TCOM and the Post-Truth Culture: The Fourth Monkey

By: Dr. John Lyons Much has been said about our current cultural moment… where it appears truth does not matter to a large segment of our population.  All that matters is ‘winning’ and if winning requires you to provide inaccurate or misleading information, then it is just another strategy to ‘win’. This cultural belief system, […]

Transformational Relationships in a Pandemic

By: Cinthya Chin Herrera, PsyD Across the country, most states have joined the the remainder of the world in moving nearly every aspect of our society into digital spheres.  In the Bay Area, many service providers have begun exploring the intricacies of working from home. At times this has meant connecting with kids, teens, families, […]

Collaborative Assessment in the “New Normal”: Completing the CANS and ANSA via phone

Dr. John Lyons and Dr. April Fernando presented a webinar on the use of the CANS and ANSA in non-face-to-face modalities (e.g., telephone). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have had to adapt their means of communication for the safety of themselves and others. Effective collaboration becomes extremely important when using the phone or […]

Caring for Each Other…The CANS Can Help

By Ken McGill, Eds, LMFT, Rutgers University The impact of the coronavirus, now labeled a pandemic, has been worldwide. If we take a moment, we will see that there has been a change in daily life; this is true for individuals, couples, families, agencies, institutions or any other entity throughout our planet. I am sure […]

Working from Home – Experiences from the TCOM team

As the COVID-19 crisis changes day by day in the United States and around the world, more people are beginning to work from home. Many resources are providing helpful tips for people new to working from home, so we decided to ask some of our staff who generally work from home to highlight their successes […]

Michael Cull, PhD

University of Kentucky

Resilience Reconsidered

by Michael Cull, PhD, Associate Director for Safe Systems, University of Kentucky’s Center for Innovation in Population Health No doubt our resilience as a nation is being tested by current events.  We’re facing significant uncertainty at home and at work. How will we accomplish home visits? How do we ensure child safety? How can we […]

Mass Customized Patterns and Priorities for Success

By Kate Cordell, PhD, MPH, Managing Director at Mental Health Data Alliance, LLC What if we could utilize the CANS and ANSA to identify which items, if resolved, were associated with success in our program? What if we could look at that by race/ethnicity, gender and age? If we could, we could get a lot […]

Connecting Through Communication-The Human Experience

By Ken McGill, EdS, LMFT, Rutgers University What is more basic to our understanding than how we develop and use language? Language is used to communicate who we are as individuals. It can be used to describe how we are ‘feeling inside’ to others. It is through this sharing or using words to connect feelings […]

Transformation: Shared Knowledge & Skills Building

By: Ken McGill Senior Training and Consultation Specialist Connecting It All Together… The work within the field of ‘human services’ can often become quite complicated, especially from the perspective of those we serve…the children/youth & families. I have often wondered, “Why do we make things so complicated?” I thought with all of the advances of […]

Registration is Open! #TCOM2019

We are so excited to announce registration for our 15th Annual TCOM Conference in Palm Springs is now open! Culture and Community: Sharing Stories from the Collaborative Every year the TCOM Conference provides an opportunity to collaborate with and learn from leaders and innovators in behavioral health, child welfare, education, juvenile justice, and more. While […]

Tiffany Lindsey

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Dan Warner

Dan Warner, Community Data Roundtable

Avoid this Fundamental Mistake in TCOM Tool Scoring: confusing anchor definitions, for concrete details

By Dan Warner, Executive Director-Community Data Roundtable I have seen many hard-working, diligent people fail TCOM certification because they over-focus on anchor definitions, and do not properly understand the item they are rating.  They think that by focusing on the anchor definitions they are being “detail oriented,” but instead they are “missing the forest for […]

How to do a Quality Assessment, TCOM Style

Presented and written by Lynda Killoran (Centerstone), Lynn Steiner (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago), and Deborah Thomas (Centerstone) In our work as trainer, supervisor or clinician, we often hear a variation on THIS theme from assessors who were recently trained on a version of the CANS: “It’s SOOOO long and there are too […]

Family Matters

Family Matters: Why finding and engaging extended family and fictive kin is critical to positive outcomes for children in foster care

Readiness Inventory for Successful Employment

RISEmploy Each TCOM tool is a combination of items inside of a domain meant to reflect the emerging needs and strengths of its population of use. It is adaptable. One of these adaptations is the “Readiness Inventory for Successful Employment (RISEmploy), also known as the Strengths at Work (SAW), can be implemented as its own […]

Mapping it out with CANS-Y-LAND

Of the TCOM suite of tools, the most widely used tool is the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths Assessment (CANS). The CANS is a communimetric measurement tool that utilizes direct feedback from the youth, family & other team members to identify the actionable needs & strengths of the youth & family in developing and informing the treatment […]

TCOM 2018 Speaker Spotlight- Vida K. Khavar

Meet one of your #TCOM2018 Presenters! Featured in this post: Vida Khavar Vida Khavar is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has 25 years’ experience in child welfare. Vida began her career as a clinician in various agencies throughout Los Angeles. She developed expertise in all areas of child welfare while striving to bring Permanency to […]

My Introduction to TCOM

Rebekka Schaffer, Project Assistant at Chapin Hall I joined the TCOM Team here at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago at the start of July 2018. When I was first introduced to the team, I was worried I wouldn’t even remember what TCOM stood for, let alone understand what they really do. My fears […]

TCOM 2018 Speaker Spotlight- Jen Cardenas

Meet one of your #TCOM2018 Presenters! Featured in this post: Jen Cardenas Jen Cardenas is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of the Cardenas Consulting Group. She uses her expertise in clinical and operational management to be a critical thought partner, designer, and coach to leaders of behavioral health and child welfare organizations. She brings […]

The Development of CHISALS

Thanks to recent technological growth, children are receiving cochlear implants earlier than ever before. This advance in technology offers a great benefit to support earlier development of language skills.   While these advancements are exciting, they, of course, create some new challenges for the young patients, their auditory-verbal therapists, and their families. Because of their young […]

Supporting Caregiver Connections

By: Angela Pollard Project Assistant, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago Trauma and its effects on healthy development has become a bigger part of conversations in helping systems such as child welfare and behavioral health. Too many children experience a variety of potentially traumatic/adverse experiences (ACES), as a result of institutions and systems that […]

TCOM Tools (CANS/ANSA) Certified Trainer

The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) is a tool that is collaboratively completed to measure a child and family’s strengths and needs. Along with the other TCOM Tools (ANSA, FAST, SSIT, and more), they are evidence-based assessments to support decision-making, including level of care and intervention planning, facilitate quality improvement initiatives, and allows […]

Driving Adult Recovery Forward with the ANSA in the Public Mental Health System, Part 2

by: Ella Jackson, MA, LMFT Clinical Specialist, Sonoma County Behavioral Health Continued from Part 1 posted April 5, 2018 — I worked with Anna for 4 years. She was the first client I moved out of a state hospital. She transferred to a local locked treatment program, and as I carefully tracked her progress and setbacks, […]

Driving Adult Recovery Forward with the ANSA in the Public Mental Health System, Part 1

by: Ella Jackson, MA, LMFT Clinical Specialist, Sonoma County Behavioral Health I have heard people say that a person receiving care in the adult system for years, a person with Schizophrenia and a history of substance abuse, will not get better. It’s a story I have heard told over and over about many of the adults […]

The Value of Vignettes

Mention a case vignette to anyone who has gone through the certification process for the CANS, ANSA, CAT/CSPI or FAST and you will likely hear groans, and see eye rolls. Very few people are big fans of testing and vignettes are never as clear or easy as a trainee wishes. So, if test vignettes bring […]

Safe Systems Improvement Tool

Safe Systems Improvement Tool Tennessee’s Communimetric Assessment for Understanding Critical Incidents The 1st annual Safety Culture Summit gave attendees and their larger audience a glimpse of the work being done around safety culture. Along with the tools shared during the poster session at the summit, Michael Cull, Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University […]

How TCOM takes Person-Centered Care to Scale

Person-centered care is a strategy of providing health care that views the people using health and social services as equal partners in the entire process of planning, developing and monitoring care to ensure that the care meets their needs.   The idea that health care should be focused on the person is not new.  A considerable […]

Just a Parent

By Jennifer Griffis, author of “Parenting with Hope” blog series August 2017  Join us as Jen shares her experience at the 13th annual TCOM Conference in San Antonio, TX this past fall. — As I walked up to the conference registration table, a feeling of inadequacy began tugging at the corners of my mind. “I […]

The Holiday Season Requires Self-Care

As we talked about in our last few posts, the holidays are a complicated time.  Strengths, like natural supports and spiritual/religious worldview and community, are evident.  Cultural stressors can be exacerbated. In addition, individuals who have experienced loss or those who do not have adequate natural supports can experience the holidays as a lonely time.  […]

The Holiday Season Can Increase Feelings of Isolation and Cultural Stress

“‘Tis the season,” as they say.  For some, it is the season of celebration and strengths, but for others, the holidays can represent heightened experiences of cultural stress. In 2015, a controversy about Starbucks’ holiday cups reflected the cultural tension evident in a season that can be perceived as Christian-centric.  Starbucks routinely changes its coffee […]

The Holiday Season Reminds Us Of Our Strengths

The day before Thanksgiving, I was in an elevator with a man, who said, “I love Thanksgiving.  It’s the only holiday of the year that no one feels discriminated against or lonely.”  As we continued to talk, he told me that he was Jewish, and that he frequently felt lonely and stressed during the Christmas […]

Conference Collaboration

by: Evelyn Kintner and Max Kintner, Northern Rivers The October 2017 TCOM Conference provided an incredible opportunity for Max and I to present with Stephen Shimshock and Yvonne Humenay Roberts from Casey Family Programs. Although first intimidated by our illustrious co-presenters, it took all of 20 minutes over lunch before Max and I quickly formed […]

Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America

This month, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago reached an important milestone in their work on runaway and homeless youth. Voices of Youth Count released Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America, the first in a series of Research-to-Impact briefs on understanding and addressing youth homelessness.  The first brief — National Estimates — highlights results […]

24 and Counting

My son shared his story in the last post. I would like to share parts of this same story from a parent’s perspective. Raising a child with mental illness is not an experience I anticipated I would be adding to my resume. And just like Emily Perl Kingsley’s essay, Welcome to Holland, I found myself […]

Resilience, Recovery, and Hope

My name is Ryan and I would like to share my story of resilience, recovery and hope. As an individual who suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD and Tourette’s, my life has been quite the roller-coaster ride of emotions. I have been told I was a giggly, happy-go-lucky toddler. I was able to read at the […]

Wrapping up #TCOM2017

November 2017 Update: Presentations from the conference are now available here!   Thank you to those who attended the 13th annual TCOM Conference. It was another great year and YOU are the biggest part of what made this conference a success! Make sure to fill out your post conference surveys. Your feedback will be used […]

Principle 6. Time frames for measurement are defined

This is the last key principle in this series. Return to our home page to view all key principles!

Principle 5. The What, not the Why

Communimetrics Key Principle #5

Principle 4. Consider Culture and Development

Communimetrics Key Principle #4

Principle 3. Describe the Person, NOT the person in care

Communimetrics Key Principle #3

Principle 2. Rating for Action

Communimetrics Key Principle #2

Principle 1. Item Selection

Communimetrics Key Principle #1

Remembering Trauma Part 2

Earlier this summer, Drs. Cassandra Kisiel and Tracy Fehrenbach, at the Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Interventions (CCTASI) at Northwestern University, a partner in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), launched a public awareness campaign and short film entitled “Remembering Trauma: Connecting the Dots Between Complex Trauma and Misdiagnosis in Youth.” This 16-minute film highlights […]

The Developing Communimetric Community

by Dan Warner Executive Director and Founder, Community Data Roundtable Originally posted June 19, 2017 on the CDR Blog. Click here to view more of their posts and follow their work. I first met John Lyons in 2011 when he was doing a training in Pennsylvania.  Instantly impressed by his vision for how to measure outcomes in […]

Planting a Seed of Wisdom

Thank you to Tracey Merachli for sharing her vision of the CANS in this poem. Planting a Seed of Wisdom, December 2015 by: Tracey Merachli, tmerachli@children-first.ca Resource Consultant-Children First Well let me tell you about my vision for the CANS. It starts with listening to families and understanding their unique life and plans. The life […]

Italy Hosts their First TCOM Conference

May 25th and 26th saw the first Italian conference dedicated to the CANS and TCOM. Entitled “Particepicapzione e valuatazione di esito in eta evolutiva: Approcci collaborative in situazioni complesse, sanitarie e psicosociali.” The meeting was held in Milan and sponsored by the Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico, the conference involved presentations by national leaders in outcomes management […]

Resiliency

Resiliency, as defined by the TCOM tools, is an individual’s capacity to identify and use their internal strengths to manage their lives in times of need and support their own development. Resiliency acknowledges an individual’s ability to “bounce back” from psychosocial consequences resulting from traumatic experiences. These experiences can range from traumatic life events such […]

Remembering Trauma

The Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) held the 2017 National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) All Network conference on April 25-27 in Arlington, Virginia. This year’s theme was “Serving Children and Families Who Have Experience Trauma: Building  a Trauma-Informed Nation.” With a continued commitment to raising the standard of care and improving access to […]

EPISODES: Structure, Function, Management

By: Nathaniel Israel, PhD EPISODES: STRUCTURE, FUNCTION, MANAGEMENT *Episode—a container or set of parameters which define when a series of actions are expected to take place and when interventions have ceased A building block of understanding a person’s care is being able to assign an Episode of Care to a person. Nearly all reports are based […]

Standard Reports: Design for Decision Support

*September 2017 Post Update: Additional information added to the TCOM Report Suite. Click here to view the amended version. The work we do across all levels and systems of care is a knowledge-based community connected to a variety of service settings including clinics, hospitals, state and local agencies. Ultimately, the goal is to improve the […]

Rethinking Engagement in a High Staff Turnover Environment

By: Dr. John S Lyons Engagement is the second key decision point in the TCOM conceptual framework.  Historically in most helping professions we have thought of engagement as primarily personal and often between two people.   A therapist engages a client in mental health treatment.    A substance treatment provider engages a person in their recovery process.   […]

Collaborating To Address Child Trauma

by:  Gene Griffin, J.D., Ph.D. Senior Fellow for Policy and Practice ChildTrauma Academy John Lyons, in his post of December 27, 2016, Complicated versus Complex: Implications for Collaboration, distinguished between a complicated system and a complex system. In a complicated system, all components and the result of their interactions are predictable. In a complex system, the final […]

What’s So Hard about Hope?

Thank you to Dr. Toni Heineman for sharing your work!

The Growing TCOM Team

Happy Presidents’ Day! In the United States, the third Monday of February is known as Presidents’ Day, which historically honors the first President of the United States, George Washington. Today, Presidents’ Day is commonly viewed as a day to celebrate all presidents – past, present and future.  Today at the Praed Foundation and Chapin Hall […]

Communimetrics Roundtable

By Dan Warner, Ph.D. Are you a Communimetrics data nerd? Do you worry about your CANS’ data integrity and database structure? Perhaps you find yourself drifting off into thoughts about data capture, storage, security, and analysis! (oy, the list goes on…). Or maybe you’re more on the statistical and display side: trying to identify norms […]

Healthy Relationships

Happy Valentine’s Day! What does Valentine’s Day mean to you? Is it a celebration of love, a hallmark holiday, or both? As a child, this holiday can take the form of a classroom activity where you put Valentine’s Day grams with chocolates and hand them out to each child in the class. As we get […]

The Women’s March-January 21, 2017

by Suzanne Button Two women meet at their child’s school. Mothers and daughters become and stay friends, even though one family moves far away– from Alaska to Virginia. This longstanding social connection leads, through a series of other social connections, to 21 women, ranging in age from 9 to 93, spending the weekend marching in […]

Defining a Caregiver

A caregiver is a family member or paid helper who provides physical, emotional, and/or developmental support for an individual who is unable to fully care for themselves.  When an individual is in care or receiving services, it is often important to look at multiple aspects of their life – strengths, risk behaviors, functioning, and school/work. […]

The STRENGTH that lies in our Cultural Identity

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that effectively put civil rights on the top of the agenda and preceded the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964. It is on this day that we take a moment as an entire nation to reflect […]

TCOM Algorithms for Decision Points in Care

“Always return to a focus on the shared vision—the best interests of the people we help.”  John S Lyons By: Dr. Suzanne Button, sbutton@chapinhall.org A few weeks ago, in TCOM Conversations, Nate Israel wrote about improving the health of people-serving systems with “alignment in decision-making at every level of the system,” and emphasized the importance […]

Lean Management and TCOM

We shared a video recently on our Facebook and Twitter from the New York Times called “We Trust You” from the series, The Art of Better. This video, created by Charles Duhigg, examines issues of innovation, motivation, and productivity through the lens of the automobile industry in the U.S. The parallels between how one factory […]

Complicated versus Complex: Implications for Collaboration

by: Dr. John S. Lyons The ‘C’ in TCOM standards for ‘Collaboration’ so it is useful to understand why we believe that collaboration is a fundamental aspect of using data to inform helping programs and systems. In order to describe the thinking behind this choice it is useful to consider the similarities and differences between […]

IMDS Quarterly Newsletter Winter 2016

TCOMHappy Holidays from New Jersey! written by: Kenneth McGill The ‘Holiday Season’ is well in progress and the wrap-up of 2016 is near!  Looking back…what are some of the highlights you want to remember…are there things you would like to soon forget…what do you have planned for the New Year? Well enough introspection. My hope and wishes […]

A Cost-effective, Evidence-based Intervention for Depressed Adolescents

December 14, 2016 Written by Paul Berger, Managing Director at SAAVSUS Inc Funded by a series of grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Adolescent Coping with Depression Course (CWD-A) is an evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for adolescent depression. The course materials, Leaders Manual and Student Workbook, are available as a free download […]

The RISE: A Tool for Fostering Entrepreneurship in Human Service Settings

By: Dr. Thomas S. Lyons, PhD Michigan State University R.I.S.E. -Readiness Inventory for Successful Entrepreneurship   In the business world, it has been known for some time that companies that want to be successful in the highly competitive global economy must be constantly reinventing themselves through innovation. This requires that they develop a culture of […]

“Do the right thing”-TenEleven group

In August, Dr. John Lyons presented a keynote at the 5th annual user conference TenEleven CONNECT. Dr. Lyons talked about “doing the right thing” for those in need with a focus on measurement and outcomes. To see the original post, visit their page at 10e11.com Dr. John Lyons and Spike Lee say: “Do the Right Thing” By: […]

CASELOAD VERSUS WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT

By: Dr. John S. Lyons               Have you ever had this situation? You have talented staff and ask them to take on the most challenging cases, but then they burn out and leave for a different job, and as a manager you are now left with the staff you’ve been working around when it comes […]

The Role of the CANS in Reducing Residential Treatment Placement and Length of Stay in New Jersey

One of the more compelling stories from the 12th annual TCOM Conference was the KEYNOTE provided by Liz Manley, the Assistant Commissioner of New Jersey’s System of Care.  Having been involved with this project since its inception more than a decade ago, Liz provided both a personal description and a description based on the data collected,  of the […]

Key Decision Points for Collaborative CQI-Part 1

This is the first post of a multi-part series on Collaborative CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) Part 1: Creating Trust and Positive Impact by Nathaniel Israel Health and human service systems are composed of people. People make important decisions which shift the likelihood that children and families will meet their health and wellness goals. Having a […]

Integration Training-Mark in Phoenix

Mark was in Phoenix, Arizona, conducting a two day CANS Integration training for supervisors and staff from Casey Family Program’s Tucson and Phoenix field offices.  He was joined by Neil Mallon from the University of Maryland. The training focused on integrating the CANS into Multidisciplinary Team Meetings, Developing Strength Based Action Plans based on the […]

3rd Annual International Resilience Summit-John in Chicago

Chicago was recently home to the Third Annual International Resilience Summit, hosted by the National Resilience Institute at the Chicago Cultural Center. This was a two day conference from November 2-3, 2016 where people came to learn from resilience pioneers who are actively working to help students, families, institutions, and communities become stronger, healthier, and happier. #HumanResilienceMovement Dr. John Lyons […]

Equality vs. Equity

By: Dr. John S. Lyons   There are two basic doctrines that have been used to define fairness—equality and equity.   Equality approaches attempt to achieve fairness by treating everyone exactly the same.   In equality doctrine fairness is defined as giving everyone identical opportunities.   Equality doctrine underlies the core constructs of a democratic society.   The Declaration […]

Guiding Values and Core Principles

Below you will see TCOM’s Guiding Values and Core Principles. This information below was updated March 2, 2022. GUIDING VALUES Human serving systems and enterprises have a primary mandate of facilitating and supporting personal change (transformation). Human serving systems and enterprises are inherently complex as a result of the number of humans involved. This diversity […]

Rethinking the Concept of Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice

The current popular trend in juvenile justice is to assess risk.   Developing predictive analytics about which young people are likely to repeat criminal or delinquent behavior is important when thinking in this context. MAIN IDEA: If we can prevent who is at risk of being or staying delinquent, than we can more effectively work to […]

Using the Data

Complete a test, Do your research, Collect the data… There is no doubt that we live in a world with a wealth of information about the people, place, and entire environment around us. Aside from the thrilling celebrity gossip and election 2016 madness, what are we doing with all of this information? With great RESEARCH […]

Welcome to TCOM Conversations

Welcome to the TCOM Conversations blog.  The purpose of this blog is to create an open forum for us all to share our experiences with the TCOM approach and…converse! With this, we can share in our goals and provide guidance to others J So, lets start with a simple WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND HOW WHO: […]

Communimetrics

Communimetrics – A Communication Theory of Measurement in Human Service Settings. This is the theory behind TCOM (Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management), developed by Dr. John Lyons.