TCOM CONVERSATIONS

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 […]

Sandtrays, Fables, and Expressive Arts: Story-telling Adventures with the CANS

By: Ritchie Rubio, PhD We were fortunate enough to have Dr. Rubio present at the 15th Annual TCOM Conference earlier this month. In his post below he shares more on using the CANS and story-telling to promote client wellness. Listening to, reading, or sharing a good story is something most if not all of us […]

One Person, One Story, One CANS/ANSA

By: Dr. John Lyons Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago A few years ago, I was in Hawai’i over Memorial Day. At the recommendation of a local colleague we attended the candle floating ceremony on Oahu. In the ceremony, people create candles commemorating lost loved ones and float them out to sea together. The […]

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 […]

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 […]

Aligning TCOM and Systems Theory

by: Ken McGill, LMFT In many ways the CANS, the FAST (the family version of the Communimetrics approach to measurement) and the ANSA align with the foundational definition of a system as outlined by Ludwig von Bertalanffy almost 40 years ago. A system must consist of four distinct components: Objects: the parts, elements or variables […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Defining a NEED and a STRENGTH

Anyone who is certified in the CANS, ANSA, FAST, or any of the Communimetric tools has taken the time to become certified. Those of you who certify online at TCOMTraining.com have probably received an email from one of us stating something along the lines of… “Unfortunately you have not yet received sufficient reliability. Your most […]

CANS Core

***11/18/2016 UPDATE*** Currently at Closing Plenary in Princeton, NJ for the 2016 TCOM Conference. Below you will see our updated CANS Core Items available. If you have any additional questions on how to implement the CORE items to your own agency/jurisdiction/state, contact April Fernando at afernando@chapinhall.org cans-6-17-core-50-2016 Every agency, jurisdiction, and, most importantly, child, is […]

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.