1

Evidence-Based Intervention and Grant Proposal

Abigail Neeley, Abigail Patschorke, Emma Ramsey, Emma Pedersen, Ira Hogg

College of Social Work, University of South Carolina

SOWK 412-002: Social Work Practice with Organizations and Communities

Professor Jennifer McCardle

7 April 2024
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Hypothesis of Etiology (See Appendix A)

Many factors contribute to the problem MIRCI (Mental Illness Recovery Center Inc.) has

in engaging youth experiencing homelessness in the services they offer, there are three that stand

out as the most contributing factors. The first identified factor is that MIRCI has not updated the

locations they visit to do youth outreach and is visiting outdated locations with minimal youths

experiencing homelessness. This leads to their outreach coordinator's struggle to engage with

youth at the current outreach locations, creating a barrier to communicating and engaging

homeless youth in their services. In addition, MIRCI does not have enough communication

between the departments within the organization. This leads to a lack of cohesion within MIRCI

to effectively manage the outreach program and share essential information. Finally, MIRCI does

not collaborate enough with other community organizations in Richland County that work with

their target population. Populations who are at greater risk of experiencing homelessness in their

youth are not being made aware of the services that are available to them when they begin to

experience homelessness or unstable housing.

Youths, ages 17-22 years old, living in Richland County, are experiencing homelessness

as unaccompanied youth at an increasing rate. There were 1,017 youths recorded as experiencing

homelessness in 2022 (SCICH, 2022). MIRCI's current outreach approach is based on an

outdated definition of homelessness, which does not align with the evolving circumstances of

youth experiencing homelessness. A comprehensive and modernized outreach approach aligning

with the diverse and individualized experiences of current homeless and unaccompanied youth is

crucial to increasing service engagement among youth in Richland County.

Solution Identification
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The identified factors imply several interventions to minimize MIRCI’s difficulties in

engaging youth in their supportive housing services. If MIRCI adds additional locations to their

outreach, then they will maximize engagement and service delivery with youth experiencing

homelessness. If MIRCI develops an inter-organizational task force of staff from various

departments, then best practices, including relevant outreach locations, will be identified through

increased communication and collaboration to increase youth services engagement. If they

expand their intra-organizational collaboration among other organizations engaging with at-risk

youth, then there will be an increase in knowledge of available services among these youth.

Change Approach

Key Participants

MIRCI is the initiator system, identifying an engagement decrease in their services

among youth, ages 17-22 years, experiencing homelessness in Richland County. MIRCI can be

involved in the change effort by re-evaluating its outreach approach to be more inclusive of the

unique circumstances of youth homelessness through inter and intra-organizational

communication and collaboration.

The change agent system is The Chief Clinical Officer, Julie Miller, and the Director of

Outreach and Benefits, Dianne Miller-Fields. They are responsible for coordination and

leadership in the early stages of the change effort. They will collaborate and present their

intervention proposal to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), Ti Barnes, for approval to move on

to implementation.
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The primary beneficiaries are the MIRCI staff we identified in the above systems and the

external partners participating in the collaboration. The secondary beneficiaries include youth

residing in Richland County at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness.

The support system includes several categories of groups. Organizations such as Palmetto

Place, Transitions, Rapid/Emergency Shelters, Oliver Gospel, Carolina Family Engagement

Center, Richland County Public Library, and USC Supportive Housing will support the change

effort through information, guidance, and wisdom regarding our intervention. The United Way

of Midlands, Rainy Day Fund, and the Mckinney-Vento Act are particularly interested in

resolving issues related to youth homelessness. Many other groups work with homeless youth in

Richland County, including Richland County Schools, local universities, shelters (Palmetto

Place, Transitions, Oliver Gospel), the Richland County Public Library, the Richland County

Public Defender’s Office, and Habitat for Humanity of the Midlands.

The controlling group is MIRCI’s executive leadership board, the Chief Executive

Office, Julie Ann Avin, the Chief Financial Officer, Susan O’Neal, the Chief Operating Officer,

Ti Barnes, and the Chief Clinical Officer, Julie Miller. MIRCI is the host and implementing

system responsible for the change effort activities. The Outreach Coordinators, Alicia and Anita

Jones, the Director of Outreach and Benefits, Dianne Miller-Fields, the Chief Clinical Officer,

Julie Miller, the Youth Home House Manager, the Outreach Lead, and the youth home staff will

be involved in direct delivery and implementation.

For the primary beneficiaries to achieve the desired benefits, MIRCI’s staff must actively

communicate and collaborate to re-address their outreach mission and objectives to increase the

effectiveness of outreach to homeless youth to engage them in supportive housing services. An

inter-organizational task force must engage in ongoing collaboration with other community
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agencies targeted toward addressing youth homelessness in Richland County. MIRCI’s staff and

their community partners need to agree to the change. MIRCI’s outreach staff also needs to start

engaging in internal communication and collaboration, as well as with other organizations

working with youth at-risk of homelessness to increase knowledge of effective outreach practices

in Richland County for the intervention to be successful.

The action system includes the Director of Outreach and Benefits, Dianne Miller-Fields,

and the Chief Clinical Officer, Julie Miller since they are responsible for hiring an outreach lead.

The Outreach lead will be the head of the central inter-organizational task group and collaborate

with the other staff and organizations to see the change effort through to completion.

Change Approaches

MIRCI has identified the increase in youth homelessness as a problem in the Midlands,

which would require community-wide, ambitious change efforts to address the problem. There

are multiple steps to achieve change, which can be viewed as a project to avoid overwhelming

the community with the overall plan. Our proposed change effort is one of those steps, leading us

to take a project approach to change. The traditional definition of homelessness as being

unsheltered does not apply to the experiences and needs of the homeless youth in Richland

County. The client system’s environment will continue to evolve, affecting the population's

needs. This approach allows project adaptations to continue meeting the needs of a changing

environment.

To achieve a high quality of functioning and productivity in services, there must be

communication and collaboration between MIRCI’s departments and staff, as many of their roles

overlap. However, we have identified a lack of communication between the youth home and
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outreach staff. The current collaborative status between the staff may undermine the proposed

change effort. Adopting a personnel approach with our project approach will ensure a change at

the personnel level to improve the quality of functioning and productivity in outreach efforts to

better engage with homeless youth.

Strategy and Tactics

We are implementing a collaborative strategy since the action system, the Director of

Outreach and Benefits, the Chief Clinical Officer, and our target system, the outreach staff,

agreed there is a lack of inter-organizational communication affecting their outreach efforts'

effectiveness. There has also been an agreement to allocate resources to support the proposed

change effort. We are utilizing implementation and capacity-building tactics, which include

participation. The activities for the task group will involve members of the client system and

residents in the MIRCI youth home. MIRCI staff will gather information about how they can

better support and reach the client system from the clients themselves.

Intervention Plan (See Appendix B Logic Model)

The goal of this change effort is to maximize MIRCI’s inter and intra-organizational

communication and collaboration to increase the effectiveness of outreach to homeless youth in

Richland County.

Objectives

During the first zero to six months, nine staff will develop an inter-organizational task

group as measured by observation of staff participation in task group meetings and events. By

the first month of implementation, one outreach lead will be hired, as documented by

employment documentation. By the end of the second month, one hired outreach lead will attend
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training as documented by mandated training documentation. Between months two and three, the

outreach lead will develop a six-month meeting schedule for the internal task group with broad

objectives, as documented by the task group meeting reports.

During months six through twelve, six external partners will develop the intra-

organizational task group as documented by meeting notes. By month seven, the outreach lead

will develop a six-month meeting schedule, the mission, and broad objectives for the intra-

organizational task group as documented by the task group meeting notes. During months eight

through twelve, MIRCI staff and the six external partners will collaborate toward strategy

development to engage homeless youth in services as documented by task meeting notes.

Resources and Tasks

Funding, staff, and community partners will be required to implement the proposed

intervention plan. The funding will support the salary of newly hired outreach lead positions and

incentives to give the community partners to participate in the task group. To develop the inter-

organizational task group, nine MIRCI staff members, including the Outreach Lead, Youth

Outreach Coordinator, Outreach Coordinator, Youth Group Home Manager, three youth home

staff, the Chief Clinical Officer, and the Director of Outreach and Benefits, will participate.

Approximately six community partners will participate in developing the intra-organizational

task group. The community partners may include DSS, Law Enforcement, Mckinney Vento,

Palmetto Place, Transitions, and the Richland County Public Library.

Outcomes

The intervention allows for short-term impacts, supporting more communication and

collaboration among the MIRCI staff and external partners, leading to increased knowledge of
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services available to at-risk youth in the long term. Increased knowledge of effective outreach

practices is another short-term impact, which will lead to the dissemination of effective outreach

practices among community partners to increase youth engagement in supportive housing

services in the long term. If implementation is successful, there will be continuity of expanded

collaboration among organizations targeted at addressing youth homelessness, overall reducing

the rates of youth homelessness in Richland County.

Intervention Plan Rationale

According to the article “Interorganizational Collaboration and Firm Innovativeness:

Unpacking the Role of the Organizational Environment,” researchers found multiple benefits of

implementing interorganizational collaboration. Benefits include achieving significant objectives

and goals, excelling in firm innovativeness, and environmental changes (Alexiev et al., 2016).

Managing inter-organizational relations is significant because they increase areas of

provision of better products and services given to customers. In “Managing Inter-Organizational

Relations: Debates and Cases,” authors Sydow, Schüßler, and Müller-Seitz outline why engaging

in these relations matters. At the beginning of the collaboration, clear goals are not yet

established by either party. “Rather, goals are produced in the process of collaboration. Inter-

organizational relationships offer unique opportunities for “making aims” based on the

experience that partners gain through engagement” (Sydow et al., 2016).

In the article “Value Creation in Inter-Organizational Collaboration: An Empirical

Study,” authors Le Pennec and Raufflet used a value spectrum to test the significance of inter-

organizational collaboration. One of the values is “synergistic value.” “The value arises from the

underlying premise of all collaboration that combining partners’ resources will enable them to
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accomplish more together than they would have been able to do separately” (Le Pennec &

Raufflet, 2016). The inclusion of new groups and individuals reengaged the social mission of the

collaborating organizations, as well as the learning that occurs in the inter-organizational process

(Le Pennec & Raufflet, 2016).

In the article “Inter and Intra-Organizational Communication: The Facilitation

Approaches to Strengthen and Sustain Rural Development Management in Portugal,” Timothy

Koehnen writes on the importance of inter and intra-organizational communication. The two-

way communication requires active partnerships, improving cooperation, and appropriate

communication methods such as co-planning, joint programs, and project partners (Koehnen,

2015). “Coordination and active inter-organizational communication does not happen naturally

without some type of facilitation, planning or effort by all of the organizations in the sphere of

interest” (Koehnen, 2015).

A study done in the healthcare setting compared interprofessional and inter-

organizational collaboration. The article “Comparing Interprofessional and Inter-organizational

Collaboration in Healthcare: A Systematic Review of the Qualitative Research” discusses how

these two collaborative techniques benefit the healthcare setting. “Authors point out that

communication makes possible role negotiation and development in cooperation with others, as

well as role clarification and the span of discipline boundaries, and fosters relationships between

the individuals in the team” (Karam et al., 2017). In inter-organizational collaboration,

communication combines trust, power, and professional roles while balancing power, clarifying

professional roles, and helping those involved to share values (Karam et al., 2017).

According to the article “Exploring Online Coalition Building: A Longitudinal Analysis

of Interorganizational Networks of Nonprofit Homeless Shelters on Social Media,” authors An

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and Yu define the use of social media as a connector tool used by shelter providers for inter-

organizational networking purposes (An & Yu, 2024). “The finding implies that specific

organizations hold greater influence due to having more connections, positioning them at the

core of the social media network. By serving as bridges, these organizations facilitate

communication and collaboration between different segments of the social media network,

enabling interaction to flow smoothly from one end to the other” (An & Yu, 2024).

In the article “Socio-Technical Collaboration to End Homelessness: A Case Study of

Perspectives on the Value of Interorganizational Cooperation for Data Sharing,” researchers

found that services for those experiencing homelessness could be effectively delivered when

collaborating organizations had similar goals. “These effective collaborations often took place

where organizations with parallel goals worked together to manage an excessive demand on their

services or resources. In these cases, there was little competition for clients, and collaborators

were able to work together effectively to distribute strain across the collaboration” (Zimmerman

et al., 2021).

Outcome Evaluation Plan

For the inter-organizational outcome objective, the outcome will be measured by using an

attendance log and observation from other members during the task group meetings to determine

if there has been an increase in engagement with the development of the task group. This will

ensure the level of participation from MIRCI staff is accurately assessed, and the recording of

task group meeting data. Using an attendance log and observation from other members during

meetings provides data to track any improvements in engagement resulting from the

intervention. The trends in the data over time will allow for MIRCI to assess if the intervention
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plan has fostered collaboration within the organization and is achieving the objectives within the

plan.

The intra-organizational outcome objective will be measured by how many partner

organizations have confirmed participation to determine if the number of external partners has

increased since the implementation of the intervention. This approach allows for measurement of

the internal and external network expansion of coordinated efforts, and overall collaboration with

partner organizations. Tracking the involvement with partner organizations assesses how well

collaboration between MIRCI and other organizations is progressing. The outcome of this data

will provide insight into the intervention plan's effectiveness in strengthening relationships with

partners in the surrounding community.

Project Budget (See Appendix C)

We estimate the total budget for the MIRCI Outreach Taskforce is $59,686 per fiscal

year. The key outputs/activities requiring funding are a salary for the Taskforce Outreach Lead,

incentives for community partners, and applicable training workshops (see Appendix B). A

salary will consist of $55,000 per year for the Outreach Lead. Incentives for community partners

will be delivered as recognition events, gift cards, and other forms of appreciation. Incentives

will total out to $4,162.88 annually. An allocation of $524.00 will fund a training symposium for

the Outreach Lead, cover catering, preparation material, and certifications. To view an itemized

listing of a Line-item Budget, please see Appendix C.

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References

Alexiev, A. S., Volberda, H. W., & Van den Bosch, F. A. J. (2015). Interorganizational

collaboration and firm innovativeness: Unpacking the role of the organizational

environment. Journal of Business Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.09.002

An, S., & Yu, M. C. (2024). Exploring online coalition building: A longitudinal analysis of

interorganizational networks of nonprofit homeless shelters on social media. Journal of

Civil Society, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2024.2327387

Karam, M., Brault, I., Van Durme, T., & Macq, J. (2017, November 11). Comparing

interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration in Healthcare: A systematic review

of the qualitative research. International Journal of Nursing Studies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020748917302559#sec0070

Koehnen, T. (2015). Inter and Intra-Organizational Communication: The Facilitation Approaches

to Strengthen and Sustain Rural Development Management in Portugal. International

Journal of Agricultural Science, Research and Technology in Extension and Education

Systems, 5(1), 7–18. https://repositorio.utad.pt/server/api/core/bitstreams/29bd2445-3581-

4c0b-9ba9-ad154acb1cd6/content

Le Pennec, M., & Raufflet, E. (2016). Value creation in inter-organizational collaboration: An

empirical study. Journal of Business Ethics, 148(4), 817–834.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-3012-7

Sydow, J., Schüßler, E., & Müller-Seitz, G. (2016). Managing Inter-organizational Relations.

Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?

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hl=en&lr=&id=EiVHEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=inter%2Borganizational

%2Bcollaboration

%2B&ots=ol4uaMIShS&sig=Oovq7XqAQWi7Sx2GlV4uqbbn5Xk#v=onepage&q&f=fals

Zimmerman, T., Slota, S., Fleischman, K. R., Greenberg, S., Snow, J., & Rodriguez, S. (2021).

Socio-Technical Collaboration to End Homelessness: A Case Study of Perspectives on

the Value of Interorganizational Cooperation for Data Sharing. TMS Proceedings 2021.

https://doi.org/10.1037/tms0000117
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Appendices
Appendix A: Hypothesis of Etiology
Selected Factors Affecting Homeless
Youth’s Lack of Engagement in Services
1. MIRCI is not going to the correct
locations for effective outreach due to
not updating the locations they go to.
2. MIRCI does not have enough
communication between the
departments within the organization.
3. MIRCI does not have enough
collaboration between community
organizations working with the target
population.
These Factors Appear to the Following
Results
This leads to MIRCI’s outreach coordinator
not finding many youths at the places she goes
to, therefore not being able to communicate
with them and engage them in services.
Which leads to a lack of cohesion within the
organization to manage the outreach program
effectively.
This leads to certain populations who are at
risk of experiencing homelessness later, not
being aware of the services when they begin
to experience homelessness.
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Appendix B: Logic Model

Outputs
Outcomes -- Impact
Inputs

Activities Participation Short Medium Long

Funding Purchase Community Increase Youth will Reduce youth

incentives. partners knowledge of engage more in homelessness in
accept services at risk MIRCI Richland County.
Staff
incentive youth can supportive
items. engage in. housing
Community services. Increase
Partners engagement in
Increase Dissemination of
Outreach lead knowledge of services for youth
effective
facilitates task effective experiencing
outreach
Hire MIRCI groups. outreach homelessness.
practices among
outreach lead. practices. community
partners.
Outreach lead Continuity of
attends More expanded
collaboration
training. collaboration
Training among
among
community
organizations
partners.
Staff attend targeted at
task group addressing youth
Develop meeting. homelessness in
interorganizati Richland County.
onal task
group.

Community
partners
Develop attend task
intraorganizati group
onal task meetings.
group
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Appendix C: Line-Item Budget

MIRCI Outreach Taskforce Line-Item Budget

Item Price Description

Salary
Outreach Lead $55,000.00

$55,000.00 Total

Training
Outreach Lead Training
Symposium

Cost of catering (Carrabba's) $374.00 Feeds 20 persons

Cost of material $150.00 Centerpieces, decorations

$524.00 Total
Incentives for
Community Partners
Gift Card Lotteries

BestBuy (10 x $50 gift cards) $500.00

Target (10 x $50 gift cards) $500.00

Academy Sports (10 x $25 gift cards) $250.00

BooksaMillion (10 x $25 gift cards) $250.00

Belks (10 x $25 gift cards) $250.00

Carrabba's (10 x $25 gift cards) $250.00

Dave & Busters (10 x $25 gift cards) $250.00

$2,500.00 Total

Recognition Events

Awards (5 small x $69.99) $349.95

Awards (5 medium x $79.99) $399.95

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Awards (2 large x $89.99) $179.98

Cost of Catering (Carrabba's) $583.00 Feeds 50 persons

Cost of material $150.00 Centerpieces, decorations

$1,662.88 Total

Incentives for Community Partners $4,162.88 Total

Total

Grand Total for All $59,686

Allocations .88