Maynard Gets Results: Maynard Helps Pressley Ridge Map Out Improvement Changes

Pressley Ridge, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a highly regarded non-profit health and human services organization focused on serving troubled children and their families. With its 170-year history, Pressley Ridge is recognized as a high-growth, highly entrepreneurial organization that maintains its leadership position as a forerunner in treating troubled children.

Unfortunately, the organization’s tremendous growth and entrepreneurial culture has also created operational inconsistencies. While its culture nurtured growth, Pressley Ridge was challenged in operating an organization in six states (and Europe), while managing 24 programs and 1,000 employees.

Such growth challenges were particularly apparent for the organization’s Pressley Ridge Youth Development Extension (PRYDE) service line — a treatment foster care program. As PRYDE expanded throughout the organization, there were growing inconsistencies from one location to the next regarding the processes being used to unite foster children with parents.

To address the situation, Presley Ridge engaged H. B. Maynard and Company, Inc. to help develop a franchise model for its PRYDE service line. “Our goal was to open PRYDE in any state using consistent processes and standards,” said Scott Finnell, President of Pressley Ridge. “We knew that if we could eliminate the process variances from program to program, we could operate the service line much more efficiently.”

Starting with an assessment tool called a Value Stream Map, Maynard teamed up with Pressley Ridge to spend three weeks assessing the PRYDE service line. Widely used to identify problems within both manufacturing and service companies, Value Stream Maps are a visual tool that identifies the material and information flow throughout a process.

The map transforms the operational view from specific individual tasks to the overall process, helping to identify value-added activities and sources of waste in the value stream. Which processes provide value for the organization’s customers? Which processes can be eliminated? Like many organizations with multiple facilities and programs, Pressley Ridge did not have a single individual who understood the entire process and could answer these questions.

“We knew there were inefficiencies in our process – we just couldn’t see the big picture,” Finnell said. “Maynard’s Value Stream Map showed us where we could make significant improvements across the entire enterprise.”

Taking it Step-By-Step

In the PRYDE service line, there are numerous primary processes that must happen to place a child into foster care. The first step is the referral of a child needing foster care, which arrives from multiple sources, depending on the state or county that is involved. The child must then be diagnosed through an intake process to be admitted into Pressley Ridge’s treatment foster care program, which has specific clinical and/or psychological requirements.

At the same time, Pressley Ridge also recruits parents into the process to train and certify them to become professional foster parents. With these steps completed, children are matched to an appropriate family. Finally, the child is formally discharged, either to adoption,to another foster parent, to their home or hopefully to a less restrictive environment.

Over a three-week period, Maynard consultants conducted individual interviews and structured group interviews with Pressley Ridge employees and parents to review these various processes. In all, Maynard gathered information from more than thirty people to begin mapping the value stream for PRYDE.

“By listening to everyone involved in the process, we were able to chart activities and realize what was – and wasn’t – working,” said Pat Premick, Account Manager for Maynard. “This input was valuable, as it helped us to understand the barriers faced by both employees and parents in the process.”

Charting the Course

The key to a Value Stream Map is not only mapping the processes, but also indicating the impediments to the work flow. Impediments, noted as starbursts on the value stream map, hamper the flow of delivering products to customers. In an administrative or human services environment, an impediment might involve rework on forms, completing unnecessary or duplicate forms, gathering the wrong information, and using inconsistent processes. Pressley Ridge found that such impediments lead to poorly chosen parents, or parents dropping out of the program entirely.

Since the PRYDE service line contained numerous processes, Maynard first identified where the greatest improvement opportunities were in the flow to the customer. Maynard consultants interviewed staff members from several departments, including referrals, intake, foster parent licensing and certification, matching and discharge. Using the Value Stream Map, Maynard and Pressley Ridge personnel evaluated the key areas that could be influenced and changed through an improvement process.

Through the evaluation, the group found that it would be difficult to change how referrals arrive from a county or state organization, because of various regulations. But other processes – especially those sections on the map with the most yellow starbursts – presented significant improvement opportunities. For example, the parent interviewing process varied widely from program to program, creating inefficiencies and causing confusion among some parents. As a result, Pressley Ridge and Maynard are working together to develop a standardized interviewing approach.

With the key process improvements identified, Maynard and Pressley Ridge embarked on a project to create a new lean, improved, standardized, franchise model for the Foster Parent Licensing and Certification Process for Pressley Ridge’s PRYDE treatment foster care service line. The results of the project will be featured in a second article to appear later this year.