Earlier this year Nicki Collins as the executive director of the Maltby Centre in Kingston. She previously Open Doors for Lanark Children and Youth for almost two decades.
Written By Barney Savage of Barnes Management Group April 06, 2020
What is the most memorable thing you learned studying social work? Does a social work education prepare people for leadership positions?
I went to the Carleton School of Social Work. At the time I didn’t know my career would unfold as it did. I thought I would be doing therapy for my whole career so I would not have considered following the policy stream at university. Regardless, social work teaches you to think systemically, always looking at people within a context and making changes affecting the systems that surround us.
I think the best system thinkers are always looking at the big picture, and how everything intersects. Social work education is probably good preparation for a leadership role. But there were lots of things I didn’t learn about leadership in school, that I had to learn in other ways.
What has been the biggest change in human services since you began your career?
There is lots more professionalism, lots more credentialism. At Maltby, we made a huge investment in training because the field of knowledge is changing all the time. Previously, there was less appreciation of what a skill therapy is – You have to have the piece of paper. These changes have been, on the whole, good. What has not changed is the importance of the ability to connect in therapy.
Here’s another huge change: when Open Doors started we weren’t really working with families. That has been a huge shift. Today, in child and youth mental health, we are always working with the family as a unit. We used to focus our efforts on “fixing” the child – that’s what residential services was all about, for example. Now, we understand that a child’s mental health is influenced by the child’s “wiring”, their social context and what they experience in life. If we want to make change, we need to engage the adults around a child as partners in helping the child.
We are way more accountable than we used to be. We don’t just ask people if they are well served, but we are working on data and outcomes. We really have a lot more in our toolbox than we used to have. Everyone has walk-in services, so that people can get service when it works for them. There is a fundamental shift coming in where power resides. In the past, the power resided with us as service providers, and that is changing. Our clients are much more actively engaged in their own treatment and in our services as whole.
And governance has changed. Board members are much more engaged than they used to be. Board chairs have new roles in most provincial associations. And Boards have to be much more focused on recruiting to ensure they have the right skill sets around the table. In the past, some Boards, including ours, were totally based on geography, so we would find someone from a part of the county and that was the primary criteria. That has all changed.
Are young people who struggle with their mental health better supported than they were 10 or 20 years ago?
Yes, I think so. There is way less stigma, and we have more tools in our toolbox than we did years ago. We are moving away from the restraints. We are serving kids with trauma much better than we used to. We have learned a lot. We know today that there is both biology and wiring, but it’s also about what happens in your life, and your environment. You can intervene on all those levels.
The neuroscience stuff is really exciting, the attachment stuff has been really important for understanding kids. There has been a bursting of knowledge in this area.
What is the biggest single change you would want to see in child and youth mental health?
I worry we are not building resilient kids. Letting kids fail is part of it. The level of anxiety is going through the roof. We can’t turn back the clock, or course, to the days of just pull up your socks and really, I would not want us to. But we need to find ways to build resiliency by balancing both success and failure as experiences.
What parting advice do you offer your colleagues at the Maltby Centre?
At Maltby, we have been engaged in a project on organisational culture for the past two years. We have had a dramatic shift in our culture at Maltby and we felt that the energy we put into the change was well worth it. Typically in organisations, we do not pay enough attention to organizational culture. You have to pay attention to culture, especially if you are looking at any integration and amalgamation. And we need to keep in mind as leaders, that an alignment in organizational and personal values is what retains staff – it is all about the work.
Autism…my advice is to maintain our values as the agency faces the changing landscape that is the provincial autism program. As long as Maltby is able to keep a focus on delivering high quality services to children with an ASD diagnosis and listens to families, the agency will be on the right path.
It is an interesting time in child and youth mental health. At Maltby, we have created something important. Every quarter, we met with 30 community partner agencies and we made real changes in how mental health services are delivered across our region. We want to keep presenting ourselves to the Ontario Health Team: we have experience through our mental health work in planning across sectors, identifying priorities collectively; almost a small version of an OHT.
Plans for retirement?
I would love to continue working to help organisations assess and develop their organizational culture. It is an area that has huge potential and it is an area I feel passionate about.
Doesn’t sound like a restful retirement!
We are also getting a puppy! And I want to join a choir. Do some board work. I will never work fulltime again but I would like to keep my hand in.
Retirement is not easy for someone like me!
