Blog

This month, Benchmarks is spotlighting Access Family Services and welcomes them to the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) team. Access Family Services (AFS) is a behavioral health agency that has been serving children and families throughout North Carolina since 1999. Their mission is to deliver culturally sensitive behavioral health services to individuals and families in the community using evidence-based practices to improve overall functioning and well-being. Access Family Services...

July is a time to celebrate all summer has to offer by building bridges and innovating with community to get to the heart of trauma-informed awareness and resilience building. This month, we’ve added new July dates to the summer 2023 *CRC* curriculum—but that’s only half of the good news. Last year, the CRC began as a pilot program. Now that it's evolved, what better time to bring accelerator participants together in a PACEs Connection CRC community than the summer? We are proud to announce...

Last month was National Foster Care Awareness month and in our May blog we emphasized the importance of caring for this specific population. This month, we are highlighting one of the most important aspects of promoting resilience for children placed in foster care: placement stability. As you may know, 99% of children in foster care experience some type of traumatic event. Despite the child welfare system’s best efforts, trauma can be exacerbated by the child’s involvement with the system,...

At Benchmarks' Center for Quality Integration, we handle implementation projects of varying lengths and scopes. Some projects may be as brief as a few months, while others can last for years. To track progress, we monitor some projects internally while enlisting stakeholders to monitor others. Regardless of the size of the project, selecting the appropriate planning tool is crucial. It should provide enough detail without being cumbersome, keep you on track, yet still be flexible enough to...

Children’s Homes of Cleveland County (CHCC) has advocated for youth to receive superb care through their participation in Benchmarks’ Partnering for Excellence (PFE). However, now that the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) is also growing, and more clinicians are needed, they are expanding their commitment to trauma-informed care. Benchmarks’ Standardized Assessment Protocol aims to link children over the age of 4 in foster care and In-Home Family Services to Trauma-intensive...

Benchmarks is excited to announce that another Cabarrus County Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division team will be joining the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) project! This will make Cabarrus the first county to have both their Permanency Planning and In-Home Family Services (IHFS) teams onboarded into the project during the same project year. The Benchmarks SAP project is a process in which children ages four and over who enter Permanency Planning or IHFS receive a...

We live in a world where we're always connected through technology, with social media platforms and instant communication at our fingertips. But despite this apparent connectivity, there's a startling revelation from the Surgeon General: loneliness has become an epidemic in our society. It's time to explore the hidden consequences of our modern, tech-driven but socially disconnected lives. We used to think that loneliness only affected older people or those living in remote areas. But the...

Effective supervision and leadership are crucial for the success and engagement of organizations and their employees. However, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented significant challenges for many organizations, including staff retention and providing adequate training for new hires, especially those in management positions. Recognizing these concerns, Benchmarks has developed a groundbreaking training curriculum called “Supportive Supervision”. This comprehensive program,...

PACEs Connection is excited to kick off our 2023 Creating Resilient Communities (CRC) Annual Accelerator Program.

Human service agencies’ organizational stress naturally affects the employees who work for the agencies, oftentimes causing more stress to the employees already working in high stress environments. Though many human service agency employees choose the work they do because it gives them purpose and meaning, often that is not enough to prevent added workplace stress or to ameliorate the effects of that stress. Organizational stress is going to happen, but agencies can continue to hire and...

Vaya Health's "Pathways to Permanency" Project Featured in Ashe County Newspaper
This week, Ashe County, NC recognized the efforts of Vaya Health in their local newspaper. Vaya Health, which operates across 31 counties including Ashe, has been involved in the "Pathways to Permanency" project for nearly 2 years. The goal of the project is to guarantee that optimal behavioral health services are available to youth in foster care. "Pathways to Permanency" is just one of the many consulting...

National Foster Care Month is an important initiative led by the Children's Bureau, a national organization that partners with federal, state, tribal, and local agencies to improve the overall health and well-being of children and families across the country. During this month, the bureau takes the time to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of foster parents, family members, volunteers, mentors, policymakers, and child welfare professionals who work tirelessly to help children and...