Medication non-adherence accounts for three times more deaths in the United States than car accidents every year. This session will focus on how to manage medication at different levels of care. We will address the signs to look for to help recognize when medication management has become a difficult task for an individual. From there we will highlight assistive technology solutions geared towards helping people get on track with their medications while maintaining independence and their safety. Medication mismanagement is a common problem, but it doesn’t have to be. After this session we hope attendees will walk away feeling confident in solutions that can help the people they support manage their medications. This session is ideal for case managers, care coordinators, nurses, and other health care professionals. It is also of interest to people helping loved ones, friends, or themselves manage medications.

Compassion is a choice. It begins with the intentional consideration of the raw humanity of the other, which leads to an empathic appreciation of their condition and results in generous, hospitable and caring action. In addition, it has been said that self-regulation of emotions and cognitions during challenging encounters is a prerequisite to the effective utilization of any helping skill. This presentation will discuss the critical role of compassion in the helping relationship, examine the notion of “radical compassion,” explore emotional labor and professional self-regulation, consider the impact of one’s own life history on the helping capacity and look at a case consultation model that attends to many of these considerations.

The Managed Care Ombudsman office along with the Ombudsman for Long Term Care will provide a joint roundtable presentation and discussion. The presentations will provide the audience with an overview of each office. There will be time allowed for discussion and questions.

How do you decide where to place a child who has needs to be placed into foster care? Making the decision to place a child in foster care is one of the most challenging tasks a social worker has to perform and requires the consideration of a number of factors. In this interactive workshop, we will be exploring how our personal and professional experiences shape our values and impact making placement decisions as individuals and as child welfare organizations. We will examine strategies for engaging and considering relative and kinship foster care placement options to maintain familial connections and achieve successful permanency outcomes for children in care. Lastly, we will discuss how child welfare best practice and policy guides the placement decision making process. This workshop is limited to 50 participants, but will be offered three times during the conference.

From its inception with the passing of the 1935 Social Security act much of what we believe about retirement was strongly influenced by a well thought out marketing program created initially by the Federal Government and quickly followed by the insurance industry. Suicide rates, especially among men, have been on the rise for the recently retired yet nearly all of the support and discussion revolves around finances and insurance. As a society that works long hours and takes little vacation time we are ill prepared for the abrupt social and emotional changes that come to identity, ego and purpose. Who will you become when you no longer are who you have always been? This session is intended to pull back the curtain on the mythology that surrounds what may be one of life's more significant transitions. I then focus on key elements that will have a direct and immediate positive impact on our quality of life including physical, emotional and social well-being. Finally the focus shifts to discussing practical and actionable tools that one can begin incorporating into their lives to begin implementing changes which will ease the otherwise abrupt transition to retirement.

This workshop is geared toward social service professionals who encounter crime victims in their work but are unfamiliar with the criminal justice process, the implications for their clients, and the available crime victim resources. The presenter will provide an overview of criminal justice terminology and process, key statutory crime victim rights, community and government-based advocacy services available to victims, and the Minnesota Crime Victim Reparations Board which can be instrumental in the physical and emotional recovery of the victim.

Admit it: you have an opinion about person-centered planning. Some think that it is the end-all-be-all problem solver to help someone create their picture-perfect life, while for others, it is a necessary requirement on a form that needs to be checked off, or part of a process. After facilitating more than 200 plans in the past three years, I have a different opinion. It is a tool, a step, a part of a bigger picture of redefining what we in the field consider quality. This session is designed to highlight the major themes, both positive and in progress, that have emerged after being a part of so many people’s lives and plans. Assuming you already have the basics, let’s dive deeper into when formal planning is a good idea, and when it isn’t, what expectations you and the team should have about what a plan can do, and what it cannot do. Learn the top things that indicate that person-centered planning isn’t the right answer right now. Leave this session with a better understanding of how person-centered planning can be an amazing benefit for the person while also understanding when it is not the appropriate solution to the person’s current needs.

The transgender population continues to experience disproportionately high rates of suicide and mental health challenges, addiction, criminal justice system involvement, and barriers to equal healthcare. This session will address the various disparities facing this increasingly large group of individuals. Interweaving a larger discussion of both the language and practice surrounding diversity and inclusion with his personal experiences living as a transgender man with an invisible disability, Nate Cannon will offer tips and guidance for working with this traditionally underserved group (and deliver a dose of inspiration and humor).

There are several types of Medicaid-funded case management services in Minnesota, each with its own provider requirements and funding arrangements. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), in partnership with counties, Tribes, and external stakeholders, is engaging in a case management redesign initiative in response to opportunities and requirements for improvements to all Medicaid-funded case management. DHS is committed to ensuring that the case management redesign initiative includes the diverse perspective of counties, Tribes, providers, managed care organizations, the people we serve and others who are impacted by or involved in case management services. Program simplification and putting the person receiving case management at the center of the service are two key objectives of the redesign project. The initiative also aligns with the DHS equity policy and uses the governor’s plan for community and civic engagement as a platform to ensure meaningful engagement in the work. Recently, DHS released a proposed case management service design which solidifies a universal definition of case management and creates a foundational set of standards around the delivery of the service so that people know what they can expect and rely on, regardless of the kind of case management service they receive. Stakeholders have had an important role in developing and reviewing this proposed service design. Some next steps include developing legislative language and beginning to implement changes in 2021. Join us to learn about the reasons why the redesign initiative is happening, the objectives of the initiative, updates about progress, and how you can help shape the redesign with your input. This session will include a focus on gathering your input and will include time for discussion and questions. Session participants are encouraged to read the draft service design prior to the session. Visit https://mn.gov/dhs/case-management-redesign to access the draft.

This session is an introduction to the concept of multidisciplinary team development (MDT) as it relates to serving children, adolescents, families and vulnerable adults. We will explore the benefits of working with a multidisciplinary model for professionals as well as for children and families. This session will include information on identifying roles and responsibilities of team members and how those roles might change as the identified goal of the MDT changes. This session will also include an introduction to team protocol development and discussion of commonly identified barriers to using an MDT.

Intimate partner violence (or battering), like the sexism which supports and fosters it, is a practice of long standing in Western culture. From the Code of Hammurabi in 1800 BC (which decreed that a wife was subservient to her husband, who could inflict punishment on her with full impunity) to current laws exempting marital rape, legal systems conferred to men the absolute right of ownership of women, with violence and control as merely the logical extension of men’s ownership. Contemporary perspectives on intimate partner violence posit that abusive behavior is caused by individual pathology, a personal choice to use or be subjected to violence, with little regard for the socio-historical context and continuing social norms that give rise to the culture of sexism that shapes individual behavior. The consequence is a widespread failure of accountability for not only individual abusers but the systems that continually allow them to get away with it. Moving toward a successful solution to the epidemic of male violence against women requires that we better understand the “big picture” of how law and society have created and maintained male superiority and entitlement—forces integrally intersecting with white privilege, colonialism, and every other form of systemic oppression. This session will illuminate how, throughout history, the laws and regulations on men’s control of women condoned violence and restrained women’s options at finding safety; how legal reforms over the past 50 years have begun to turn the tide of this history; and how we can better position ourselves for a future in which intimate partner violence is merely a relic of an outdated system that no longer exists.

Our purpose is to bring awareness to why positive behavior supports are the best practice. We will give some history and context as to why punishment does not work. Participants will learn some positive behavior support examples and strategies that can be utilized across diagnoses, the life-span, populations, and with their staff. All of the support strategies include the perspective of trauma informed care. Strategies include defining, tracking, and recording behavior for evidence-based decision making.