Building on four decades of experience creating programs, delivering services and advocating for abused and neglected children, youth and families, I became the founding CEO of Full Circle Health Network in 2023.
Driven by a commitment to expanding equitable access to high quality, trauma-informed services statewide, we created California’s largest integrated network of community-based organizations delivering coordinated services to these vulnerable populations.
How did you come into this line of work?
The work came to me. I began my career working with children in foster care who had complex needs. Recognizing the lack of services in my rural community, I founded a nonprofit organization focused on developing and implementing innovative programs that responded to the needs of vulnerable children, youth and families. We expanded into three counties and began serving adults and families, adding substance use, housing and crisis services to our continuum. From there, I co-founded an administrative services organization to manage specialty mental health services, increasing the service capacity, skills, and budgets of local CBOs four-fold and bringing in millions of additional federal Medicaid funding to our public mental health system. My lifelong work to be a leader and change maker for the protection and wellness of children, youth and families is motivated by my own childhood experience in foster care due to abuse and neglect.
You started and led community organizations that serve children and families for your entire career. Why did you decide to take on the challenge of starting Full Circle?
The safety-net and Medi-Cal landscape for children and families are changing. California’s foster care system has 15,000 fewer children in placements than 10 years ago. Nearly all of California’s 15 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries are now enrolled in a Medi-Cal managed care plan, which are charged with organizing service delivery not just for medical issues but also behavioral health and social needs.
The 160 community-based organizations that make up the California Alliance of Child and Family Services (The Alliance) are among the most experienced providers at meeting the diverse needs of California’s most vulnerable children, youth and families. Historically, these CBOs worked mostly with county agencies. Contracting with managed care plans requires new capabilities that are expensive and daunting to build alone. Inspired by successful integrated CBO networks in other states, the Alliance Board of Directors, of which I was a member, decided to build a network in California. I felt that my experience launching and running both direct service and administrative services entities could help ensure CBOs are not left out of this new era of managed care.
Full Circle experienced tremendous growth in its first two years, contracting with almost 1o managed care plans and signing up more than 80 providers in two-thirds of the state’s counties. What do you attribute that success to?
First and foremost, we had a clear vision of the problem we were trying to solve and what needed to be built. We recognized the significant shift happening with Medi-Cal under CalAIM and wanted to ensure more children and families can access their Medi-Cal services by building CBO capacity to contract with managed care plans. Our solution was to build a fully integrated network with a “plug and play” technology platform and provider success coaching. By shouldering the administrative aspects of CalAIM service delivery, Full Circle solves a problem for the managed care plans and the providers. We offer a cost-effective solution to help them accomplish their goals.
Most small providers don’t have the start-up revenue or ability to reach the volumes necessary to afford launching CalAIM services on their own. By collectively working through Full Circle, we spread the start-up costs, thereby lowering their financial risk to trying something new. In turn, providers get in-depth expertise and a full range of services that they would not get if they did it alone. The Alliance Board of Directors and leadership team understood this challenge. Their leadership, seed funding and reputational backing was foundational to our early success.
We are committed to high quality service delivery so managed care plans feel assured that they are getting high value in working with us. We provide high intensity training and ongoing technical support to our network CBOs.
What are you most excited about with regards to Full Circle’s future?
Full Circle’s partnership hub model and suite of enablement services tapped into a significant unmet need. With our understanding of the landscape, technical expertise and determination to improve the provider and client experience, I am excited about expanding Full Circle’s model into more managed care plan networks and counties. We also see huge potential in our model to help scale and standardize important public health, behavioral health and social services initiatives aimed at improving the lives of our most vulnerable populations.
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