This document outlines Advantage Behavioral Health Systems' Recovery Initiative. It provides details about Advantage, including its mission, services, finances, and accreditation. It then discusses what is currently working well and their ideals for the future. Specific change projects are proposed to help achieve this ideal, like redesigning clinic lobbies to feel more welcoming, improving referrals, and increasing customer service. The document emphasizes the importance of collaboration, a recovery culture, and sharing stories of recovery. It concludes by discussing lessons learned and next steps to continue implementing the initiative.

1. Recovery Initiative
Presented by:
Will Warren, LPC
Laurie Wilburn Bailey, LPC
Julian Moses

2. Advantage Behavioral Health
Systems
Our mission to help people live the lives
they want to live by providing high quality
behavioral services when, where, and
how they are needed.

3. Advantage
 Catchment area: 463,000
 10 counties and 17 facilities
 12,000 clients/yr
 $22.5M gross revenue
 385 employees
 Labor expense: $15,612,000
(67% of total expense)
 CARF accredited

4. What’s Working?
 Full array of services
 Referral Screening Committee
 Committed staff-from front line to Management
team
 Mission to help people, with person-centered and
transformative approach
 No Wrong Door to access treatment
 Certified Peers at all levels of the agency
 We were MTM before MTM was cool-innovation
 Strong community partners and collaboration
 Passionate staff

5. What are we passionate about?
 Helping people
 Transformation
 Giving back
 Natural nurturers
 Music
 Blending recovery
with education and
spirituality
 Creating
opportunities
 Encouraging a life worth
living
 Being a makeup
artist
 Beauty of fishing for
bass
 Staying clean
 Making people laugh
 family

6. We believe that recovery:
 Is a journey of change
 Is an extremely personal experience
 Is not linear
 Is self-directed
 Includes multiple pathways
 Promotes genuineness
 Embraces acceptance
 Involves education
 Addresses trauma
 Is visible
 Focuses on strengths
 Addresses all areas of life and is holistic
 Looks for solutions
 Includes allies and advocates
 Creates a passion for a life worth living

7. Our Ideal Workplace
 Everyone is helpful and welcoming
 Expanding the use of peers in recovery-People in
recovery serving people in recovery
 Streamlined, efficient services
 Open access, with same day medications for those
who need them
 When someone comes for help, they will not leave
until they are helped or linked with a referral source.
 Clients will be heard.
 Inviting, trauma-informed, recovery-focused space
 A focus on a life worth living

8. How do we get there?
Advantage Change Projects:
 Extreme Makeover: Advantage Addition
 Who Ya’ Gonna’ Call?
 How Can I Help?
 Creating A Recovery Culture
 EPIC
 Concurrent and Collaborative Documentation
 Faces of Recovery

9. Extreme Makeover: Advantage
Edition
The goal of this project is for each Advantage
clinic site to “make-over” their lobby to create a
more welcoming and therapeutic space for
clients while they are awaiting their
appointments. Staff will be encouraged to utilize
furniture and decorations already existing in the
lobby and/or clinic to complete this project in
order to minimize costs.

10. Who Ya Gonna Call?
 The goal of this project is for each Advantage
clinic site to develop a “warm hand-off” system for
client referrals. This will include development of an
updated resource list of community providers as
well as names of contacts with each of these
providers so that staff are able to call directly as
well as provide clients the name of who they
should speak to for assistance.
 The second step of this project is for inner-agency
departments to develop strategies for ensuring
that clients receive a “warm hand-off,” for
example, CSU staff walking clients over to Miles
Street lobby or clinician’s office for their ITP
intake.

11. How Can I Help?
The goal of this project is to increase the ability of
all Advantage staff to provide exceptional internal
and external customer service. This would include
strategizing around how to make processes more
efficient and “user friendly” for clients and staff as
well as educating staff around how to provide a
spirit of customer service in all of their interactions
with clients.

12. Creating Recovery Culture
 Partnership between staff and those in the
recovery community to provide collaborative
training
 Bridge gap between Mental Health and
Addictive Disease
 Walking with the person in recovery-not in
front and not behind

13. Early Psychosis Intervention
Collaborative
EPIC is a team dedicated to presenting hope and offering support
and assistance to individuals and families struggling with the onset
of psychosis-based illness. EPIC exists to collaborate, encourage,
educate, and provide resources to these individuals in every area
of their recovery.
The vision of EPIC is that we actually believe these things:
Individuals with psychosis do recover and live successful, self-
directed lives.
 Recovery is facilitated by relationships. People are meant to
know and be known, and a sense of community is essential
to the healing process.
 Recovery from psychosis is a personal journey. There are
many paths to recovery, and this process is owned by the
individual.

14. Concurrent and Collaborative
Documentation
 a model of documenting the session content and
process with input from the consumer/family “at the
same time” he/she/they are still present in the session
with the service provider. When the “client’s hand
touches the door to leave,” the clinical work and
documentation are complete. The use of CCD
 By collaborating with clients in developing clinical
documentation, both the clinician and client have the
opportunity to review and clarify important aspects of
the clinical process being documented.

15. Collaborative documentation has allowed me to come home, relax
and not be pressured about having time to get the things that I need
do around the house and my notes done. It has given me my life
back as well as giving me more time with each client.
Rico Mack, ACT team
I have found collaborative documentation to be much easier and more helpful than I anticipated. My clients
really like it and feel empowered by the process. One session particularly stands out to me when I was
momentarily at a loss for words on how to describe the progress my client had made; the client jumped right
in and summed it up perfectly! Of course some of my clients thought it was weird at first, but now all of them
know to expect it and are comfortable working with me to complete the documentation. A lot of client’s have
commented that it is nice to know what information is going in their charts!
Marie Jesweak, LAPC
It helps me focus on what we learned and how I might be able to
use it during the week after I leave session.
Laurie, client.

16. Faces of Recovery
Advantage is collaborating with UGA’s Drama
school to create videos that will show on a
continuous loop in the lobbies. Some of these
videos will talk about mental illness and
addiction, interspersed with videos of persons in
recovery telling their stories and assuring others
that treatment works…recovery is possible.

17. Lessons Learned
 Trying to do big, global projects was challenging,
however breaking them up into smaller site-
specific projects aimed toward the same goal is
doable
 Input from those involved is important, and the
voices of those in recovery is essential.
 Change doesn’t have to cost a lot of money
 You must have buy-in from everyone-clients, staff,
supervisors, and management
 You have to stay focused on the initiative

18. Next Steps
 Site by site visits to educate staff on initiative
and mission and brainstorm specific change
tasks for each site.
 Retraining front desk staff on customer
service, including Recovery mission,
motivational interviewing, and trauma-
informed care
 Incorporating use of Appreciative Inquiry at all
levels of the agency
 Implementation of CCD at all sites
 Implementing change projects as described