Program Spotlight: White Mountain Mental Health

This past year at White Mountain Mental Health (WMMH) has been one of change and growth. As part of our state contract, Northern Human Services expanded capacity to care for our clients and members of our community by developing six transitional beds in the NHS service area.

Three of these beds have been created in existing apartments within NHS-owned buildings (A one-bedroom apartment located at the Gilpin House was converted into a two-bedroom) and an apartment in Woodsville was recently updated and is ready to house one person).

Three additional beds are being established as homecare settings in which the client will be living with a family in the family’s home.

Clients that utilize these beds will be provided intensive case management and functional/outreach services to support the client in building independent living skills with the goal of the client being able to move into their own housing with less supports and services.

In October, we moved one of our clients into the Gilpin apartment and we have another individual ready to move into the Woodsville apartment.

In order to ensure these clients will be as successful as possible, each of them will be on the Assertive Community Treatment Program (ACT).  ACT is a way of delivering a full range of services to people who have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. ACT’s goal is to give clients adequate community care and to help them have a life that is not dominated by their mental illness. ACT services are delivered in a team-oriented approach where each ACT client is seen multiple times a week by multiple team members.

School Liaison

We hired a School Liaison, Tracie Spencer, LPC in September as part of our state contract/System of Care grant through the NH Department of Education. The liaison role is specific to School Administrative Unit (SAU) 35, which covers the communities of Lisbon, Landaff, Bethlehem, Franconia, and Easton. Tracie is currently focusing her time with the Lisbon and Landaff schools.

Gilpin House

Gilpin House continues to support six residents with four full-time residential advisors under the steady leadership of Cindy Bird. One of the things that makes Northern Human Services such an amazing place to work is that there is room for staff to grow and try new things. We recently experienced this when an [unusual]? staff position became available at the Gilpin House. We were able to fill the position with one of our Functional Support Services members who has been providing outreach to some of our Gilpin House residents. This individual heard of the opening, applied and was hired for the residential advisor role in November.

This particular hire provided a smooth transition for the Gilpin House staff and residents and the individual was really excited to move into a role with familiar staff and clients.

Staffing Updates

Over the last year we have had multiple open positions, some of which remained unfilled for a large part of the year, including clinical director, ACT program coordinator, case managers and an ACT nurse. Despite constant advertising on Indeed and even offering sign on bonuses, we had very little success with filling all of these vacancies. As with every site in NHS, we needed to learn to do more with less and try to find creative ways to address staffing shortages.

In assessing the needs of the community, current trends in demands for services, and the strengths of the team members we have, we were able to create a clinical ACT Program Coordinator role for Tesla Hubbard, one of our clinicians. Tesla has embraced this role and has been able to create a more cohesive delivery of services driven by client need as well as ACT fidelity domains.

Another area in which we were seeing high demand was for children’s services. In response, we added a third children’s case manager to the team and reinstated the children’s director position.  We were thrilled to have Rebecca Coronity, one of our long-standing children’s clinicians, take on the children’s director position and take the lead in continuing to grow children’s services at WMMH.

The clinical director role was a challenging to fill and remained open for over six months.  Again, our site was incredibly lucky that Jennifer Wackerle, one of our part-time clinicians, was up for the task and transitioned into the clinical director role in September.  Having Rebecca, Tesla and Jennifer in their respective roles has been instrumental in moving WMMH forward and being able to better support all of the programs, clients and staff at our site.