In 2019, team members at the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation were brainstorming how to help legal aid immigration advocates who were struggling with stress and burnout. As the largest funder of civil legal services in Ohio, the Foundation recognized an opportunity to support grantees during a tremendously stressful time; the question was, how to best go about it?
Over the following months, Foundation team members began researching and developing a new professional development opportunity that would serve not only immigration advocates but a larger group of attorneys and staff at Ohio’s legal aids and specialty civil legal service providers. The We Care program, launched in the spring of 2023, helps people come together to navigate stress, process common experiences, discuss mental health concerns, and access further care, if needed.
In designing We Care, the Foundation relied on extensive feedback from legal aid staff and expert organizations. A team of immigration advocates at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) agreed to pilot an early version of We Care, led in partnership with the Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program (OLAP).
At the end of the pilot, the Foundation gathered feedback from OLAP and ABLE about what worked and what didn’t. Patty Hernández, director of advocacy at Legal Aid of Western Ohio, who at the time headed the immigration practice at ABLE, provided feedback that proved particularly useful.
“I felt strongly that the people who the program was intended to help should have input in creating or structuring the program,” Hernández said. “I also recommended that the program be culturally competent, and that any facilitator appreciate the need for cultural humility.”
Next, the Foundation partnered with Matrix, an organization that specializes in employee assistance plans and other large-scale mental health supports for workplaces, to facilitate the final program design and to run We Care. With Matrix’s guidance, the Foundation surveyed legal aid staff to determine what elements would comprise a successful program. Eighty-three staff members replied to the survey, a fantastic response rate that underscored the Foundation’s belief that a program like We Care was valuable.
When the Foundation and Matrix released the invitation to register for the program in early 2023, the 100 available spots quickly filled, with many waitlisted.
Today, We Care serves 100 total staff across the state in confidential cohorts of 10 participants grouped by job function, with cohorts for intake workers and paralegals, staff attorneys, supervising and managing attorneys, social workers and ombudsman, and administrative staff. Each cohort meets for 90 minutes with a licensed professional from Matrix once per month for six months and covers one topic each month. The topics, determined by survey feedback, include leadership; burnout; work/life balance; resilience; trauma; and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
While the Foundation will receive a final analysis once the staff completes their last session in September, initial feedback after the first month of sessions found that 94% of respondents identified a positive experience. The Foundation plans to offer another round of We Care soon and will continue to tweak and refine the program to ensure it best meets participants’ needs.
“You need to keep yourself healthy and strong to provide the best possible services to your client,” said Camille Gill, programs and grants counsel at the Foundation. “We Care is one tool that can help do that, and we are thrilled that it has been such a success.”
The Foundation will present on the We Care program at the 2023 Forum on Building Access to Justice For All in Columbus, Ohio. Registration information is available on the ABA’s website. For more information about We Care, contact Camille Gill.