What is Transformation?
According to dictionary.com, transformation is simply another word for "change." As Jim Wotring, head of children’s mental health in Michigan reminds us, “systems don’t change, people do.” At a fundamental level, human service practitioners need to change their interactions with consumers in order to produce greater benefits to those consumers. However, in order to solve social problems, thousands of practitioners need to change their interactions with consumers and provider organizations and human service systems need to change structures, roles, and functions to facilitate and support these new ways of work among practitioners and the inclusion of the consumer voice. Thus, current social problems cannot be solved with piecemeal action. Transformation occurs when system changes, organization changes, and practitioner changes are aligned in such a way that each supports the other, now and into the future. We have found that the methods to achieve organizational change and system transformation share many common features. Thus, the common attributes will be discussed below using the term “transformation” to refer to necessary changes in organizations and systems.
