This blog post comes from the Oklahoma Human Services Director Justin Brown.
Following the vision of Oklahoma’s First Lady, Sarah Stitt, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) is proud to be the first state agency to become a Hope Centered and Trauma-Informed organization. We know that individuals, families and communities across our state face adversity and trauma. But we also know that Oklahomans can overcome adversity and OKDHS, along with First Lady Stitt, have recognized that hope has the potential to help buffer the effects of adverse childhood experiences for children and families in our state. Strengthening Oklahoma’s families has lasting, generational impact.
In the Fall of 2019, OKDHS began the strategic planning process of becoming the first Hope Centered and Trauma-Informed state organization. The science of hope is well-established as an important coping resource and protective factor for children, adults, and families. We have selected hope because it benefits both our employees, who are essential to achieving our mission and goals, and for our great citizens. Hope is one of the strongest predictors of well-being and an emerging but robust body of evidence demonstrates that hope is an important component of organizational well-being showing significant improvements to job satisfaction, reducing burnout and improving turnover in the organization. We are drawing from the Science of Hope as a vision, a tool, and a call to action to ensure that we focused on the well-being for all Oklahoman’s served by our organization.
Our Executive Leadership team gathered in February, 2020 to create our vision for the Science of Hope as a guiding framework for practice. This blueprint is a living document which seeks to clarify and prioritize what OKDHS commits to action in using hope to ensure we can align strategies, establish and communicate priorities, and demonstrate how our plan reflects the values of our organization.
“We want clients to believe their future can be better. We want to build a hope in those that we serve and within ourselves…and support our customers to create pathways they need to be able to build and achieve their goals. Becoming a hope-based organization makes us mindful of the interventions that we implement throughout our divisions.” Secretary of Human Services and Early Childhood Initiatives, Justin Brown
Framing the Work
OKDHS is partnering with the University of Oklahoma and the Hope Research Center to implement a multi-year strategy to transform into a Hope Centered and Trauma Informed Organization. As a Hope Centered and Trauma-Informed Organization, OKDHS is creating hope centered policies, programs and practices that positively affect systems and communities throughout Oklahoma. The project, led by Dr. Chan Hellman and Dr. Angela Pharris, incorporates assessment, consultation, training, and research in each division within OKDHS.
Hope Centered and Trauma-Informed Staff Development
A multi-level training on the power and science of hope curriculum has been developed by Dr. Hellman and Dr. Pharris and adapted to fit the unique needs of OKDHS. Each training activity is uniquely designed to find, nurture, enhance, and model hope. Strategies for using the concepts of hope; goals, pathways and willpower will be included in the training to ensure participants can use hope in their day-to-day interaction with others.
Programs of Hope: Implementing a Hope Centered and Trauma-Informed Framework
Changing the organizational culture is more than simply adjusting a mindset and language. Hope and the concepts of goals, pathways and willpower need to be rooted into the policies, programs and practices of the organization to have a lasting impact. Drawing from the best practices of implementation science, eight divisions of OKDHS have selected a program area to strategically infuse hope. (See attachment for Program Descriptions.)
Evaluating Hope at Oklahoma Human Services
Given the relationship between hope and positive employee outcomes this project will use the science of hope as a standard process of assessment and evaluation to monitor the project outcomes. The first project involved the inclusion of hope, well-being, burnout, and exhaustion measures in the annual employee engagement survey in February 2020. The survey, administered annually, provides a baseline of assessment before the start of several hope centered projects, and provides an opportunity to monitor impact and change of the strategic blueprint activities.
A total of 3,337 employees completed this initial baseline survey. The outcomes are promising, with 41.4% of the employees reporting high hope, and an additional 51.3% indicating moderate hope. Overall, the employees’ collective hope was high at 90.2% of respondents indicating high collective hope. Collective Hope reflects the capacity of an organization to identify a common vison, work together to build effective pathways and generate the collective will to pursue these goals. Collective hope is grounded in social connectedness, trust in leadership, and effective work processes. In this data, the team from the Hope Research Center found that hope was a better predictor of employee well-being than resilience. Collective hope predicts positive job satisfaction and have a significant relationship to employee burnout. Collective hope is associated with employees recommending OKDHS as a place for employment. The baseline survey found the value of hope within the organization and early evidence to support the benefits of enhancing and modeling hope throughout the organization.
We invite you to review “A Blueprint for Hope” and learn more on how to become a Hope Centered Organization. For more information on how to become a Hope Centered Organization please contact Brett.Hayes@okdhs.org or Jami.Ledoux@okdhs.org.
Comments (1)