Introduction
Case management is a common component of healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) services. As a condition of their grant funding, HMRE grant recipients that serve adults include strategies to address participants’ needs by providing direct services or linking to a broad array of community-centered supportive services. Many HMRE grant recipients that serve youth also offer case management services to their participants.
Many social service programs are beginning to explore a motivation-driven approach to case management—in other words, one that prioritizes identifying the goals that participants want to achieve and the steps they can take to do so. Motivation-driven case management may be a good fit for HMRE services because it has the potential to (1) help case managers build strong relationships with participants; (2) encourage participant retention and engagement; and (3) build skills in staff and participants.
Motivation-driven approaches to case management focus on a participant’s strengths, capacity, and autonomy to change their own life. In motivation-driven case management, a case manager coaches a participant to set and attain goals that may help build skills and achieve social and economic success. The participant is ultimately in charge of the direction of case management services. Motivation-driven case management draws on the science of self-regulation, behavioral change, and motivation.
In the Strengthening the Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs (SIMR) project, two HMRE grant recipients, Family Services Agency of Santa Barbara (FSA-SB) and More Than Conquerors, Inc. (MTCI) implemented motivation-driven case management. This brief shares tips for HMRE service providers to support strong implementation of motivation-driven case management.
Purpose
This brief provides practical tips for implementing motivation-driven case management as part of HMRE services based on the experiences of FSA-SB and MTCI in SIMR. FSA-SB implemented Goal4 It!™, which involves a replicable, four-step process that is based on research that links self-regulation and problem-solving. MTCI used an approach similar to Goal4 It! to integrate goal attainment into its case management services for youth.
Key Findings and Highlights
The transition to motivation-driven case management can be a major change, and organizations should seek the support of experts when considering it. Based on the experiences of FSA-SB and MTCI, the SIMR team identified five tips to support strong implementation of motivation-driven case management.
- Determine why motivation-driven case management might be beneficial for your participants and identify the challenges it might address. Having clarity about the “why” will help anchor the change in a programmatic goal and gain buy-in among case managers and participants.
- Start small—pilot and learn. Both HMRE grant recipients piloted their motivation-driven case management approaches on a small scale and gathered feedback from staff and participants to understand implementation before scaling it up across all services.
- Align forms and processes. Streamlining assessments and paperwork, ensuring relevant tools are easily accessible, updating data systems to reflect the change, and finding ways to reinforce the shift in case management can help to increase opportunities for relationship and skill building for both staff and participants.
- Build case management skills as a team. This process includes an initial training, but also requires ongoing coaching and continuous quality improvement efforts to ensure that staff have the skills and supports they need to succeed as coaches.
- Collect feedback from staff and participants. Seek input to understand how motivation-driven case management is being implemented, what seems to be working well, and what could be done differently to improve the experience. Then, refine your implementation of your case management approach based on that feedback.
Methods
Grant recipients in SIMR tested strategies using a rapid cycle learning approach. Rapid cycle learning is a method for quickly and iteratively testing strategies to strengthen programming. It often involves successive cycles to pilot strategies, collect feedback from staff and participants on how these strategies are working, and gather data to demonstrate whether the strategies are supporting improvement. Based on what grant recipients learn, staff can refine and test strategies again in a subsequent learning cycle.
Citation
Bauer, A., S. Baumgartner, P. Holcomb, and D. Friend. “Adopting a Motivation-Driven Approach to Case Management in HMRE Services.” OPRE Report #2023-074, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023.