Wisconsin Resilience Hub

Program Description

Stakeholders across Wisconsin are currently working collectively to help Wisconsin become the first trauma-informed state. There is a strong focus on promoting resilience, or the ability to bounce back from adversity, as a way to support social, emotional, and mental well-being for individuals, families and communities. The Office of Children’s Mental Health (OCMH) serves as the backbone of a “Collective Impact” approach to children’s mental health in Wisconsin that leverages the commitment and resources of agencies across the state to build and maintain a system of consistent, quality care for youth and families. At the center of collective impact are the voices of youth and parents with lived experience who ensure system improvements are responsive and effective. The innovative project we propose is a simple, collaborative “Resilience Hub” to serve as Wisconsin’s online resource library that highlights the shared work of the collective and hosts a diverse array of resources. The goals of the site include: connecting partners from the resilience movement together, attracting and engaging partners to learn about resilience, providing concrete tools that partners can use, and compiling data and evidence to show that efforts and programs around the state are effective.

Creativity

Providing high interest resources on how to build resilience is an emerging best practice that addresses the potential negative outcomes that occur for individuals who have experienced adversity. Creating an online Wisconsin Resilience hub with resiliency resources engages people from across the state in stories of local innovation and the wisdom of ordinary people who have powerful stories of overcoming adversity and rising with resilience. The real creativity embedded in this proposal is in harvesting local treasures from communities, and capitalizing on our natural curiosity about what our neighbors are doing. While there will be national research-based resources offered, the local and lived experience focus will minimize the tendency to believe this is the work of experts. Communities, organizations, and individuals doing resilience work will be interviewed and featured, acknowledging our shared humanity and highlighting that resilience work is practical and doable in our own cities and towns.

Leadership

Not only will this be a tool for multiple stakeholders to use and share, it will be created, promoted and vetted by collective impact partners. This creates a cross-section of leadership, which adds value in making this project innovative. While the OCMH will manage the interface, a cross-generational, diverse group of leaders will be used to collect useable and applicable information for a variety of audiences. Promotion of the site will be facilitated by the larger Collective Impact group’s various forms of communication strategies in their respective workplaces and communities. The content of this hub will be viewed through the lenses of multiple collective impact partners through cross-sector collaboration between government agencies, private for profit business, non-profits, educational institutions, and most significantly, people directly impacted by the social issues being addressed.

Sustainability

With numerous stakeholders supporting trauma-informed efforts, there will be multiple financial contributions from state agencies to make this a sustainable project. With First Lady Tonette Walker in the lead with the Fostering Futures Initiative – a vision that all Wisconsin children and families are thriving in nurturing communities – we feel that this work is aligned and leveraged by current policy priorities at both the state and local levels. This, coupled with the work of Collective Impact, has pointed Wisconsin in the direction of addressing adversity in a trauma-informed way. This Resilience Hub will be a consistently updated tool for stakeholders to use to reach the ultimate goal of improving the health and well-being of Wisconsin’s children and their families. One exciting aspect of this is that when evidence shows that programs are working, other partners from across the state can emulate and share that information with others.

Replicability

This project will be a state-wide effort around building resilience and, therefore, will assist in reducing the negative outcomes associated with childhood adversity. Stakeholders will share resilience initiatives and programs they are implementing, and we believe that there will be a natural curiosity and affinity for sharing resilience information, evidence, and stories from across the state with others who are working on improving health outcomes for Wisconsin children and their families. This Hub will hold multiple resources that can be used and disseminated to a variety of agencies. It will also offer tips and tools for individuals working with children and families on how to promote resilience. The focus on the practical over the theoretical, and on hope over preoccupation with problems, will encourage replicability across communities. This hub will also be a template for other states to effectively share resources and highlight local innovations.

Results/Outcomes

The main outcome of the Resilience Hub is to assist in providing Wisconsin adults information and resources that promote a greater understanding of resilience and strengthen their role in shaping a Wisconsin where all children and families thrive. Offering an online space that holds information about resilience efforts, data, and information both across the state and, to an extent, nationally will allow for the aforementioned goals to be attainable and offer support to multiple stakeholders across the State. The Hub will be “one-stop shopping” for a multitude of resources, featuring local victories and stories of overcoming that are waiting to be told. The Hub will be designed with core features that encourage growth over time as the project matures.