The following is an excerpt from the 2018 Magellan Community Impact Report.

Care is core to every service we deliver and everything we do. For Magellan, success is about so much more than profit or prestige. It’s about doing well by doing good. We’re always caring, listening, learning and using our collective insight to make a difference. When we care together, we turn hope into reality.

Caring and sharing our lived experiences

Wyoming’s High Fidelity Wraparound program is just one of many examples where Magellan team members, who have lived through similar experiences, are returning the care and concern they personally received.

High Fidelity Wraparound is a voluntary planning and care coordination process for children and youth (ages 4-20) with complex behavioral health conditions. High Fidelity Wraparound’s community based solutions and planning process bring people together from different areas of a family’s life to form a team. The team creates steps to help youth stay in their homes, schools and communities.

Through our partnership with the Wyoming Department of Health, Division of Healthcare Financing (Medicaid), Magellan serves as the Care Management Entity for the High Fidelity Wraparound program, setting the rules and providing training for everyone involved in the process.

The  Wiederspahn  family

When Magellan Care Worker Chassity Wiederspahn’s son began  to struggle behaviorally, mentally  and emotionally in first grade, she knew she needed assistance but was at a loss.  Through High Fidelity Wraparound, she was  able to build a team around her family to guide  them in their search for help. The High Fidelity  Wraparound program allowed them to build a strong  support system and learn the resources available in their  community. It gave them confidence that they could handle  the challenges that might lie ahead. As a graduate of High Fidelity Wraparound, Chassity shares her story with the families and providers  she speaks to on a daily basis.

Many of our Magellan team members have lived these  experiences. which enables them to bring a valuable  set of life skills to their daily jobs each and every day.  As employees, the job is more than just the tasks at hand, we  truly care and offer ourselves as role models of hope and success.

The Campbell family

Magellan’s Kathryn (Kat) Campbell, family support specialist, is the proud mother of four beautiful children, two of whom are adopted from Wyoming’s foster care system. Blending a family was an overwhelming process despite the research and preparation of a therapist team. The crash course in secondary trauma left Kat and her partner reeling.

The family was referred by the local crisis center to High Fidelity Wraparound. The process created a safe space for Kat’s entire family to focus on caring for themselves, and they started to feel the support of those around them who were waiting to help. High Fidelity Wraparound’s empowerment and team building strategy gave the family the skills to run their own team for the high needs their children had, long after the family graduated from the process. Kat now trains and mentors providers who work directly  with families like her own.

As a former Medicaid recipient who relied on treatment from community behavioral health centers, I know first-hand the transformative power a peer specialist can have a in a person’s life.

In my late teens and early twenties, I bounced from state hospitals to crisis stabilization units desperate to end my life. I had no hope that the goals I had envisioned prior to these struggles could be realized. When I started working with a peer specialist, I began to view myself and my future in a more positive light. My peer specialist expected me to recover and connected me to the resources and supports that empowered my recovery process. The painful experiences of my past paired with skills and knowledge of the healthcare system have provided me a platform for me to help others while creating lasting change. The opportunity to do such meaningful, passion-filled work for more than 40 hours of my week keeps me inspired and grateful to be a part of helping our members’ lead healthy and vibrant lives.

The work we do through Magellan Complete Care of Florida’s peer navigation program is literally changing the trajectory of peoples’ lives. Peer support offers hope to the hopeless. It helps our members see new possibility in a life that feels limited. I often tell the team that they have the hardest job in healthcare, as the members we support have multiple chronic health conditions, may live in poverty, and have challenges getting their basic needs met, such as food and housing. The team is 100 percent field-based and every day they show up and not only listen and support our members, but are willing to share pieces of their own story to inspire hope and change. The results have been nothing less than extraordinary. We’ve seen decreased inpatient days and a reduction in healthcare spending, but more importantly, members are re-engaging in their community and reaching goals related to their health and wellness. We bear witness to life change as members discover their power and break through barriers to accomplish what had once been buried dreams.

These potentially life changing interactions happen every single day with our staff and the members they touch. There are a lot of examples of member success stories, but here are two that underscore the power of peer support:

• Kevin’s low self-esteem led him to live a very unhappy and socially reclusive life. Driven by fear of the world and feelings of being uncared for, Kevin attempted suicide. Thanks to the support provided by Magellan Complete Care through a peer specialist that visits him weekly, Kevin now lives a positive and socially involved life. He enjoys spending time with his new friends and communicating with his peer specialist.
• Joe struggled with debilitating challenges such as depression, suicidal attempts, chronic homelessness, wheelchair-boundedness, severe eye health problems, frequent hospital admissions, inconsistent medication usage and medical follow-ups. Magellan Complete Care worked with Joe to move toward the road to recovery through a complex case management program with a care coordination team and a peer support specialist. The team linked Joe to medical and psychiatric providers, a mental health agency and helped him obtain an independent living facility, food stamps, a new wheelchair, phone, eye glasses, and transportation assistance to attend appointments and follow-ups. Magellan Complete Care also assisted Joe in obtaining a referral for a prosthetic leg. Magellan then linked Joe with a job agency to support his goal of acquiring a job.

The members’ feelings of hope, pride, and self-confidence are contagious and we share these feelings when we reflect on the difference the health plan and staff makes in members lives. Our members are changing their own lives, but ours are changing along with them.