Rhode Island’s Community Care Alliance (CCA)
Empowering Community Mental Health: Mirah Brings MBC to Community Care Alliance
“When we have a long-term relationship with clients, we can fall into a routine where we are less likely to explore new areas. Mirah helps us keep reaching out, continually exploring.”
Michelle Taylor, VP of Social Health Services at CCA
Helping Build Back a Community
Rhode Island’s Community Care Alliance (CCA) is a forward-thinking therapeutic organization, offering comprehensive, family-focused assistance. They lead the industry through their cooperative approach - where community action, behavioral health, and family services are combined into one cohesive body. CCA is home to over 50 unique programs, making them one of few behavioral health organizations that offer such a broad scope of mental health services.
“Our goal is to work with people to help them live their best lives,” says Bridget Bennett, LICSW, VP of Family Well Being and Permanency.
Based in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, CCA began as a Day Nursery 125 years ago. In more recent history, the backbone of this working-class community - the mill-working jobs - were sent overseas. The Woonsocket community was left destitute. The scarcity of employment opportunities placed enormous stressors on local families, which increased substance use, mental health issues, and trauma. As Michelle Taylor, MS, CAGS, LMHC, CCA’s VP of Social Health Services, points out, “We’re now looking at intergenerational poverty.”
“Each year, we rank number one or two in the state for occurrence of child abuse and/or neglect,” adds Bridget. “Naturally we’re trying to move the needle on that.”
Mirah in Therapeutic Sessions at CCA
Mirah’s feedback reports offer clinicians a place to begin conversations at the onset of their therapeutic session and delve more deeply into those responses during the session. Michelle elaborates, “We can look at what happened, or what has changed. Those subtle shifts can be noticed before they become monumental problems, and we can fix it in the here and now. We’re not waiting until someone has a crisis, because measurement-based care has helped us head off the crisis.”
Highlight Story:
Sparking Discussions with a Teenage Client
“When you use Mirah in a meaningful way, then over time your client is going to recognize the value in it and they are going to want to participate in it more.”
“A year ago, when beginning treatment, the young woman’s PHQ9 graph was spiking and she was not in good shape at all. It was really unclear what was going on: was it COVID-related isolation, family conflict, or underlying depression? In the last six weeks, though, we’ve seen a bit of leveling off and reversal in that trajectory. When I showed her these results, her Mirah chart, it was significant to her. She always completes her measures in Mirah, and we start our sessions reviewing them. This has sparked some really good conversations about the ups and downs from week to week and helped both of us gain insight and understanding of her current situation. In this way, Mirah shines a light, revealing other avenues for discussion,” recounts Michelle. “When you use Mirah in a meaningful way,” she adds, “then over time your client is going to recognize the value in it and they are going to want to participate in it more.”
Mirah’s Broader Impact
Bridget noticed the Mirah youth measures had a huge impact on decreasing the no-show rate in addition to increasing engagement. For youth who completed their Mirah measures, she saw symptom reduction occur more rapidly from those who had not.
Mirah feedback reports that show progress can be a powerful tool to build the client’s confidence and motivation, while affirming for the clinicians that treatment is working. Michelle explains, “They too can review the Mirah data, often finding that there has been a positive shift in things like the clients’ perfectionism scale. This provides encouragement from the progress they find there.”
Mirah’s positive impact at CCA goes beyond therapeutic sessions. Clients who were unresponsive to other modes of communication have sometimes still responded to their Mirah invitations, thus allowing clinicians to locate them and administer an increased level of support.
“I’ve been able to use Mirah data to help people get authorized for SSI approval,” Michelle said. “We can use Mirah to show and justify what someone looks like clinically, despite how they appear on the surface.”
Within CCA’s umbrella of available programs, Mirah’s dedication to service and practical flexibility has provided invaluable tools for success and growth.
“Mirah is a super easy platform to work with. It’s not hard to use, and all of the technical things get taken care of by the Mirah team. The help desk is awesome and, just like everything else with Mirah, it has been immediate. To have something that is nimble and responsive is a breath of fresh air.”
Bridget Bennett, VP of Family Well Being and Permanency at CCA
Learn more about how Mirah can help.
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