Rebrand Unveiled to VIP Stakeholders

On Thursday, November 19, Child Focus brought together a small group of VIP stakeholders to present their new logo and rebranding efforts at their special education treatment facility, The Carter Center.

Pamela Lindeman, CEO welcomed local dignitaries and partner leaders, including founder and retired CEO Jim Carter.  Susan Graham, CAO began her presentation talking about their visit with the Ohio Treasurer and Clermont Chamber a week prior.  “We were honored to have him and I was struck by a story he shared with us.  Treasure Sprague explained that early in his career as a Mechanical Engineer, he was trained that a machine is designed to produce consistent results over time.  If you want a different outcome in production, you need to change the system. He learned quickly that to grow and produce greater results, something will have to change.”

That is exactly how Child Focus has become the multi-faceted, diverse agency that we are today. Starting in 1977 as a single service agency, conducting diagnostic assessments only, to an agency with a deep footprint in 3 counties and reaching more broadly into 17 counties in the southwest Ohio region, and an operating budget of over $20 million. 

Treasurer Sprague’s analogy resonated deeply.  Change is the only way to produce new results.  

The ability to embrace change and innovate is Child Focus’ leadership team’s greatest asset as we have proven time and time again over the course of 4 decades. In the last two years we have triumphed over major changes brought about by the retirement of Child Focus founder and CEO, Jim Carter and COO, Sandy Lock. Under the dynamic new leadership of Pamela Lindeman, we have successfully transitioned to a bright new future beginning with the re-organization of the Child Focus executive leadership team as Pamela took the reins. We promoted Beth McManus, a passionate and brilliant Child Focus veteran to lead the efforts in our Early Learning Division.

Both our Early Learning and Behavioral Health divisions have undergone transformative restructuring with the intention of streamlining positions and maximizing skill sets to achieve greater results. I am both humbled and energized to have the distinct pleasure to work side-by-side with Pamela and the Child Focus leadership team as we usher in a new era of success.

In the past year our strategic planning efforts have been laser focused on customer care, operational efficiency and on attracting, developing and retaining our most valued asset, our talented workforce that so expertly serves our community.  We know that the retention of a talented and productive workforce providing quality care will yield high customer satisfaction. Allow me to highlight just a few of our bold accomplishments this past year:  

-  Workforce retention is up 16% from 77% to 93% in just 2 years!

-  Time to hire, specifically for therapist one of our most difficult to positions to hire, has been reduced by 45% in a very short period of time due to thoughtful process analysis and making long-needed procedural shifts in our hiring process.

-  Since January of 2020, we have reduced open positions organization-wide by 46%.

-  Our outpatient mental health therapy wait list, which has historically hovered around 200+ for a decade, has been virtually eliminated due to internal process changes such as offering same-day access appointments at the time of service registration as well as leveraging service access by expanding on-line registration and telehealth care organization-wide. Since COVID changed the way we all work and live this past year, I am proud to share that approximately 40% of our outpatient mental health services occur via telehealth.

-   Our outcomes reflect services provided are of high quality and produce results with 86% of persons served in mental health outpatient services demonstrating reduced symptom problems and improve functioning in critical areas of daily life. 

Our Early Learning Division:

-  Success indicators remain exemplary in our Early Learning Division as we have achieved highly-rated Step Up to Quality Ratings for all Early Learning Centers; one is pending. 

-  We proudly boast outstanding Kindergarten readiness with over 87% of children entering K prepared and ready to succeed in school!

-  We have closed the achievement gap by 74% for children, based on our Bracken scores

With forty-three years of success and industry leadership, we are excited to share the vision for our future. As the premiere organization in Southwest Ohio for behavioral health and early learning, we will dominate the field as the provider of choice. As we maintain our strong Child Focus core values and join with communities to strengthening the quality of life for those we serve, we will revolutionize the customer care experience by becoming a one-stop for children, families and adults, expanding our scope of services to include adult mental health treatment, substance use disorder treatment, marriage and couples therapy, parenting, and work readiness. Child Focus’ future is bright, our impact is powerful resulting in a stronger community which means: Thriving Kids, Strong Families and Successful Adults.