Community organizations serving Grundy residents often sit side-by-side at meetings and events, collaborating on projects and programs. Staff from one organization know staff from other organizations; therefore, it’s not uncommon for staff to bounce ideas off each other or chat about clients needs. Even though there is a closeness among the organizations serving Grundy County, a disconnect in client care still occurs.

Many of our Grundy organizations do not have a physical office in Grundy County or their staff are serving two or three other counties and are stretched thin. When it comes to referring clients from one organization to another, it typically looks like this:

• staff and client are meeting
• client identifies a need that cannot be met by the current organization
• staff provides client with a list of other organizations to reach out to or staff attempts to contact another organization on the client’s behalf via phone or email

This way of referring clients from one organization to another is often ineffective. Many clients don’t leave messages if staff is unable to answer the phone or they don’t know what program to ask about, or the call the wrong organization altogether. The referring organization rarely gets updates on their referral; it is often out of sight, out of mind. Staff from many of the social service agencies here in Grundy share the dream of having a social service hub where staff can physically walk a client down to another agency for assistance. While this would be so helpful, building a facility large enough to house every social service agency is just not in the cards. Luckily, there is a system that has the potential to work just as effectively!

The Integrated Referral and Intake System (IRIS) was designed by The University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research. The IRIS system was created to help communities streamline their referral process. The IRIS system is used in numerous other states and across most of Illinois. Many of our neighboring counties have their own IRIS systems including Will and Kankakee, so several of us in Grundy County are familiar with IRIS and have had our eyes on it for years. Even though IRIS sounded great, we never had an organization or individual with the capacity to take the lead on this massive project. Through a statewide council, I had the opportunity to meet the Director of PAASSS (Plano Area Alliance Supporting Student Success), Laurel Mateyka, who shared a passion for bringing IRIS to Kendall County. After a year of talking, meeting, and planning, a small team from Kendall and Grundy counties were able roll out the Kendall-Grundy IRIS Network through the Kendall-Grundy Regional Office of Education on August 25th.

Our local IRIS network was made possible by an implementation grant from the Birth-to-5 Network as well as local funding from the Community Foundation of Grundy County. Currently, 45 partner organizations from Kendall and Grundy counties have registered to be part of the IRIS network. Now when referrals are made from agency to agency, it looks like this:

• staff and client are meeting
• client identifies a need that cannot be met by the organization
• staff gets the client’s consent to put their information into the IRIS system and make a referral to an appropriate organization
• staff from the agency receiving the referral will get an email alerting them to a new referral in the IRIS system
• staff then go in to review the referral and either accept or reject
• once that organization has contacted the client they are able to complete the referral
• staff from the referring agency receives notification via email that their referral is either accepted or rejected and another email when the referral is complete.

The automatic email notices allow for both organizations involved in the referral to stay up to date on the status. The IRIS system is HIPAA compliant, which makes it an ideal way to refer clients. In addition, the local Kendall-Grundy IRIS leadership team has access to all referrals, which allows the three of us to address any issues, such as an organization not responding to referrals in a timely manner or referrals being made to incorrect organizations, resulting in rejected referrals. The IRIS system also allows the local leadership team to pull data reports that will be helpful to organizations applying for grants as well as showing gaps in service areas.

Because we are so new, we haven’t gotten much data to speak of, but we are seeing a steady increase in the number of referrals being made through the system. In addition, we have new partner organizations joining the network each week! After a year of planning, we are happy to have the IRIS network up and running in Kendall and Grundy counties. As time goes on, we hope to increase the number of partner organizations using the system as well as the number of overall referrals made through IRIS. We know the potential IRIS has and are excited to see it work in Kendall and Grundy counties!