Helping health and social service organizations adapt to new realities
Non-profit community organizations are at the heart of health and social service delivery.
In recent years, budget-conscious governments have introduced new dynamics by providing vouchers or individual budgets that clients can use to purchase services from the provider of their choice.
The Canadian province of Ontario introduced this type of fundamental change to its autism program in 2019, leaving providers scrambling to change their operating models and to now “compete” for clients.
Mendicant worked with dozens of these autism service providers to help them determine the needs and size of their market, capture the costs of their current programs and services, co-design new ones to meet family needs, and set prices that would ensure that community-controlled options remained a viable part of the overall system.
Learn how Mendicant helped Woodview Mental Health and Autism Services adapt to a new “market.”
As one of Ontario’s approximately 50 community-based nonprofit autism service providers, Woodview was grappling with fundamental changes introduced to the Ontario Autism Program in 2019.
Mendicant worked with its leadership team and senior managers on a complex project that:
- Engaged families in the organization’s service area to better understand their needs;
- Reviewed the organization’s structures, programs and costs;
- Held briefings with staff, leaders and their board to explain changes in the overall autism system;
- Designed and held change management training for a variety of staff teams;
- Held co-design sessions with program staff to decide how to respond to family needs with improved or new programs; and,
- Provided step-by-step advice on how to capture costs and set prices for their offerings in the new “market.”
By the end of the project, teams working at all levels of the organization had gained new knowledge and skills to move forward in the new autism service environment.
