Care Partner Network

Unmet social needs and an overall lack of service coordination are barriers
to good health and quality of life for individuals and families in our community...
the Care Partner Network seeks to remove these barriers. 

The Vision:  Individuals are supported by organizations working together to make efficient, effective, and appropriate referrals to meet their needs.

What is the Care Partner Network?

The Care Partner Network is a health and social services collaborative initiative serving Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas, and Northeast Oklahoma. 

More than 100 regional healthcare providers, social service agencies, and other community-based organizations work together to better support the comprehensive health and social service needs of individuals in our communities by:

• Enabling direct and efficient communication between community organizations through regular emails and monthly meetings.
• Adding organizational value through relevant trainings or brainstorming deep dives on a quarterly basis.
• Offering an annual Summit for additional training, networking, brainstorming, and touchpoints.
• Using a web-based platform for closed-loop referrals to facilitate inter-agency needs sharing and support for individuals, gather collective community data, and identify gaps or shortfalls in local services.

Addressable needs include important issues such as housing, utilities, transportation, education, food insecurity, health, safety, and other personal needs.

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Stronger Providers  |  Stronger Collaboration  |  Stronger Results

The Care Partner Networks creates relationships that benefit our neighbors in need AND each other.

Inter-Agency Communication, Training & Collaborative Planning
The Care Partner Network fosters a culture of collaboration among organizations by creating frequent touchpoints for information-sharing, training, networking, and community brainstorming.

• Monthly Meetings.  The CPN has a recurring meeting on the second Tuesday of each month.  Members are invited to attend either in-person or via teleconference, with all sessions recorded and later shared to the entire network along with minutes of the meeting, flyers, or other relevant program updates or documents.  These meetings feature organizational updates, a spotlight on current programming from one organization, process improvement discussions on use of the referral platform, insights into data gathered from the referral platform, community or organizational needs brought forth in real-time for solutions-based discussion, and other training or topics as relevant.  In late 2025 and early 2026, CPN meetings have also featured guest speakers on Beating Burnout – part of a new series on “Care for the Caregivers.”

• Bi-Weekly Email Communications. The CPN receives at least three email communications per month including meeting materials, meeting minutes, organizational updates, timely events, training information, collaboration opportunities, or other relevant information.  The communications platform is managed by United Way staff but accessible for CPN members to submit information for broad-based distribution to all members.  The platform can also be used to share CPN information externally to a broad group of community stakeholders, which is also supported through social media channels. 

• Regular “Peak” Events.  In early 2026, the CPN launched a plan to, at least quarterly, host a two-hour, in-person deep dive session into a relevant training or topic.  The first topic, De-Escalation Intervention, was well-received with 54 in-person attendees joining the event, free of charge.  Future events will focus on, for example, trainings such as Mandatory Reporting, Motivational Interviewing, Trauma-Informed Care, or Enhanced Communications or community-focused planning around specific needs such as children’s mental health or food scarcity.

• Annual Summit.  Each May, the CPN hosts a free conference for local front-line workers and other community stakeholders to provide training, networking, and community collaboration and planning sessions to translate needs assessments into actionable items.  The 2025 Summit had 110 attendees.  In 2026, the Summit will feature: 1) Organizational Expo, 2) trainings on Active Listening, Results-Oriented Management Accountability, and Navigating Legal Aid, 3) an education-based lecture on Bridging the Divide: Translating Data into Actionable Items, 4) a keynote on Change Management, 5) a panel discussion on Collaborative Problem-Solving featuring local community action agencies, and 6) readouts of recent community needs assessments followed by table work and panel discussions to develop real plans to address these needs. 

Streamlined Referrals & Case Management
The shared vision of Care Partner Network organizations is that individuals in need are best supported by a wide array of organizations working together to make efficient, effective, and appropriate referrals to meet their needs.

• Referral Platform.  Since 2021, CPN partners have supported clients’ needs using a closed loop web-based referral platform.  The nature of this system increases case management capabilities for all organizations. The result of a common platform is more consistent outcomes for the client, more efficiencies for frontline workers across multiple community-based organizations that need to touch the same basic client information, and a reduction in duplication of services. 

Example:  A client seeking assistance at United Way for utility support may also have need for food support, medical care, or children’s supplies.  From one profile in the platform, with client consent, United Way can manage our own case while seamlessly referring that client to other organizations that might be able to support those other needs.   Those referrals can be direct – United Way to one food organization – or a batch – United Way to three children’s care organizations (with the one that chooses to “Receive and Serve” first now owning the case, and the other two referrals auto-recalled).   In either case, United Way will be able to see whether the organization accepts the referral, whether they have the capacity to serve, and if/when the client has received aid and the case is resolved.   If a referral is rejected, United Way can then look for alternative sources of help. 

• Data Insights.  This person-centered care approach has served 2,692 individual clients with 4,883 online referrals for specific needs.  The referral platform enables the CPN to see the largest service needs in the community (Utilities, Housing & Shelter, and Food), track volume of requests over relative time periods to see shifts in need, and identify program shortfalls or gaps using real data.  Network usage and community information are shared at least twice a year with the network to gauge shifts in local dynamics and needs.

Measuring Effectiveness
The CPN is governed by a Leadership Committee comprised of major stakeholder representatives, that meets monthly to discuss the health and needs of the collaboration. 

Since 2017, the Leadership Committee has utilized the Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory twice a year to measure member views of the strength of our collaboration across eight categories – Environment, Purpose, Process & Structure, Communication, Membership Characteristics, Resources, Continuous Learning, and Engaged Stakeholders. 

Members consistently score the CPN’s common purpose, infrastructure for frequent and candid communications, and dedication to continued learning to be the strongest tenets of our collaborative efforts.  Results of the Wilder survey are presented to the entire CPN following each measurement and takeaways for improvement discussed as a broad group.

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The United Way of Southwest Missouri and Southeast Kansas is proud to coordinate the Care Partner Network. If your organization would like to be part of the Care Partner Network or would like more information, please call our office at 417-624-0153.