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Community Health Center U of Chicago Provost's Office Semics, LLC
Part 1		 Semics, LLC
Part 2		 Sloan Center  

SEMICS, LLC PART I

INTRODUCTION

 

FIRST 5 LA COMMUNITY-DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES
PROGRAM ASSESSMENT
Written by Elizabeth Jefferis Terrien
eterrien@gmail.com
©2006 Elizabeth Jefferis Terrien

OUTLINE

1. DEFINITIONAL OBSCURITY

2, LEVELS ISSUE

3. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

This below thought piece is the result of consistent rumination that occurred between June 29th, 2006 and ended when Semics fulfilled its contract at the beginning of 2007. It was also assisted by the various materials supplied by Semics, LLC, which is no longer doing business.

The intent of First 5 LA was to increase child welfare: Health, Education, and Safety. However, First 5 LA was remiss in thinking through critical aspects of their plan. These weaknesses were evident not only in the original RFP, but continued to snowball as grantees based their plans on these RFPs and analysts designed their measurements using them.

1. DEFINITIONAL OBSCURITY

DEFINITION OF CAPACITY

First and foremost, First 5 LA suffered from a sloppy use of terminology.

There are three possible definitions of capacity:

1. Size

2. Ability

3. Role

Grantees were mostly using definition 1. Most of the time First 5 LA also used definition 1, but many usages in documents confused the term "capacity" with aspects of systems improvement and networking, specifically in terms of networking for resources to improve the grantees’ ability to meet their goals.

First 5 LA needed to disentangle the following terms: Capacity, Systems, and Networks.

 

SYSTEMS IMPROVEMENT

Organizations are Systems that import energy and resources, transform it to a throughput, and create and output during cycles of events. To improve a system, one can make it more efficient or more effective.

More Efficient (Cheaper and/or Faster)

  1. Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort (maintaining a high level of cooperation in the organization between its parts).
  2. Exhibiting a high ratio of output to input.

More Effective (Better)

  1. Having an intended or expected effect (the desired goal of the organization).
  2. Producing a strong impression or response


DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAPACITY AND SYSTEMS 

§         Capacity improvement increases the scope of the output (perhaps with greater input or more efficient input).

§         Systems improvement changes the method if input to output through the reconfiguration of the various elements to make the whole system more effective or more efficient: i.e. the NASA mantra – cheaper, better, and/or faster.

 

DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY

1. Geographic – Spatial area

Neighborhood – “a geographically defined sub-area of the city in which residents are presumed to share both spatial proximity and some degree of mutual circumstance, need, priorities, and access to the broader metropolitan area and the systems that have an impact on their lives.”

2. Thematic – common topic interest

Subject – people relating (contacts, ties, connections, communicating, meeting) on the basis of a common interest or subject sufficiently enough that they have relationships involving exchanges (various resources: money, information, personnel, etc.) and contain some sense of stratification and power dynamics. “These relations are not the properties of agents, but of systems of agents; these relations connect pairs of agents into larger relational systems,” (John Scott 3).

These two aspects are intertwined and can reinforce each other. For example, people who are spatially close are likely to be influenced by similar things and thus convene over similar interests. Spatial proximity can increase the likelihood and reinforce the strength of a network.

Chaskin Definition of Community Capacity

“Community capacity is the interaction of human, organizational, and social capital existing within a given community that can be leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given community. It may operate through informal social processes and/or organized efforts by individuals, organizations, and the networks of association among them and between them and the broader systems of which the community is a part.”

   

 

2. LEVELS ISSUE

First 5 LA not only suffered definitional problems, but also was remiss and specifying the level at which their various measures were supposed to work.

  1. Individual << who First 5 wanted to reach
  2. Organizational << this is what First 5 had focused on
  3. Social Network << next step First 5 should have taken

First 5 LA has focused at the organizational level, but in order to be successful needs to focus on the social network level, which is to what all of their written material alludes. Unfortunately they only did the first part of building a network – developing the nodes to be networked.

Program Officers were concerned with making sure that the grantees met the specifics of their contracts in terms of compliance and targets: achieving measurable outcomes with the people they served and serving the amount of people they said they would. Because of how First 5 LA chose to measure achievement and how they tied the metrics to organizational outcomes, First 5 LA missed supporting network building. Furthermore, First 5 LA allocated money thematically and did not allocate by community, thus weakening the incentive to build networks to raise the health of the entire urban ecological system.

Social networks are built upon an exchange. Exchanges are based upon resources, and those resources determine status in a hierarchy. The value of the resources in the exchange network is dependent upon the social system in which the network is embedded.  First 5 LA has focused thus far on the entities and the enhancement of their resources. Now those various resources can be exchanged, and hopefully the resources are diverse enough that the entities will naturally fall into varied niches, thus forming a healthy, ecological, urban, social system.

The continued success of what First 5 LA has managed to build will depend upon their ability to shift their focus from the organizational level to the social network level because of two related concerns. Prediction that I made at the time of the project:

§         Since First 5 LA has neglected to support true spatially embedded community networks between service providers or even across interest areas, the social network capacity will collapse as soon as First 5 LA removes itself as a central node coordinating information exchange between the grantees (the only resource that appears to be currently exchanged, despite the existence of material, space, and other resources).  

First 5 LA could have worked harder to:

§         Network services for children within the same spatial community (the neighborhood or SPA).

§         Or, First 5 could have worked to network services by interest area, for example all literacy and early education providers strongly linked to more efficiently provide services, prevent costly redundancies, and prevent reinventions of the wheel.

 

3. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

NETWORK OPTIONS

1. NETWORKING THEMATICALLY

2. NETWORKING GEOGRAPHICALLY

BARRIERS TO ENHANCING/GROWING NETWORKS

Just because someone wants to have a collaboration or build a network does not mean they know how to build a network [Child Care Information Services, California Council of Churches, etc.]. The First 5 LA grantees seemed to have no organizational knowledge of network building. When successful networks were built, they seemed to depend upon exceptionally talented leaders [Citrus Valley - Tom McGuiness, PHFE-WIC – Judy, etc.]. 

“In the past, Tom McGuiness came to be in charge of some 22 departments. Tom began outreach (1994) by personally, literally walking to communities, interviewing, getting to know the people… women, men, homeless; many with Spanish-speaking backgrounds. Tom has communication/relation with gansters from 22 gangs, and his contact has greatly improved the safety in the community.” (SN_20040412_Citrus Valley.doc)

The following provides another list of typical barriers that were found in the notes on grantee observation and interviews (Examples from CCC SN_20040921):

 

HOW FIRST 5 ADOPTS A NETWORK PLAN 

Stage 1: Organizational Nodes

Stage 2: Choose Types of Networks

Stage 3: How to Build the Network

First 5 LA had yet to realize that all it had done was to increase the individual capacity of each organization.
It had not foreseen nor planned for the next important stage that would ensure long term self-sustainability: networking.
By the time First 5 LA even had an inkling of the importance of building strong networks, the program funding had expired and disjointed isolated organizations were left without support across the county.

 

HOW FIRST 5 LA COULD HAVE ACHIEVED SUSTAINABILITY FOR ITS GRANTEES

 

 

 

 

 

 

©2007Elizabeth J Terrien