The Michigan Department of Community Health formed Improving Practices Leadership Teams (IPLTs) at each of the state’s Community Mental Health Services Programs (CMHSPs) to promote a “learning organization within the public mental health system so that emerging, promising and evidence-based practices can quickly become part of the choices available to consumers during the person-centered planning process.”
IPLTs are charged to:
- Adopt a vision for a transformed system of care for adults and children;
- Establish leadership capabilities and organizational capacity to communicate the vision and lead the transformation;
- Create an environment or climate of working that is receptive and amenable to the transformation;
- Develop and communicate a strategy that is tailored to the context and the roles, capabilities, and interests of the stakeholder groups involved in the public mental health system;
- Identify and mobilize program leaders or change agents within the organization to implement the activities required to achieve the desired outcomes;
- Develop an ongoing process to maximize opportunities and overcome obstacles; and
- Monitor outcomes and adjust processes based on learning from experience.
IPLTs are expected to:
- Align relevant persons, organizations, and systems to participate in transformation;
- Assess parties’ experience with change;
- Establish effective communication systems;
- Ensure effective leadership capabilities;
- Enable structures and process capabilities;
- Improve cultural capacity; and
- Demonstrate their progress in system transformation by implementing evidence-based, promising, new and emerging practices.