Do you feel it? The touch of coolness in the breeze as the leaves begin to change hinting at what is to come. The change in seasons allows us to take time to pause and begin to look at what we might want to transition or change in our professional and personal lives.
Read MoreBegun in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday, Fat Bear Week is back for 2021 and, as a small consulting firm focused on the human services and courts, Grays Peak Strategies knows our podcast listeners demand the kind of no-holds-barred fat bear analysis that you can’t get anywhere else.
Read MoreAs most of our listeners know, the child support program has been evolving since it’s creation as part of the Social Security Act in 1975. One of the most significant changes we have seen – and probably the hardest to accomplish – has been the transition from being focused on enforcement to being focused on families. The Child Support program, and the people we serve in the program, has contact with more families than any other social service program and with that we have both a great deal of responsibility as well as a great deal of opportunity.
Read MoreI want to offer my unsolicited contribution to the grand virtual meeting about Child Support Awareness Month: this year put some of your celebratory energy into sharpening your own awareness of how people understand the program.
Read MoreI am so fortunate to be part of the amazing Leif Family and have so many extended Aunts, Uncles and cousins. Our Uncle Greg is a Catholic Priest in Minnesota. Our daughters called him Uncle God growing up which thankfully, he found to be comical! I have gotten to go on many fun hiking adventures with Uncle Greg over the years and we have the most amazing in-depth conversations about the world, politics, life, and recently we have talked a lot about compassion and empathy.
Read MoreThey say time flies when you’re having fun. It seems like one day you are the new kid starting your first job at the local county office, then you wake up the next day and suddenly you are the wise veteran, with enough years of service to think about the next chapter. As retirement becomes a reality, what things should you be considering? What options are available to you, and how do you want the next few years to look?
On this episode, we welcome 4 guests (5 including me) who have all retired in one sense, but have moved on to something new.
Read MoreBeing a college student during a global pandemic has had its pros and cons. Since the pandemic began college life changed for students everywhere . In this article you will be able to get a look into the life of a college student during a pandemic. I’m Jasmine Robinson , Marketing Strategist for Grays Peak Strategies and a Spring 2021 College Graduate. My senior year at UNCG included a whole year of restrictions and precautions because of COVID, this affected us in many different ways whether it was financially, mentally, socially and even academically.
Read MoreWe are pleased to announce the third installment in our “Community Table Talk” series. In this episode we talk about hobbies people have outside of work. This topic was of particular interest to me as I know how important my time away from work is, and how it makes me better at my job and in so many other ways. In fact, everyone at Grays Peak has some kind of interesting hobby that they are passionate about. In the GPS Family, we have people who enjoy skiing, hiking, traveling, music, art, wine, fishing, horseback riding, kayaking and much more. We do our best to encourage these things, and provide space for people to pursue what they love, which in turn makes us a happier and more cohesive team.
Read MoreWe were so pleased to welcome to the podcast Ángela Quijada-Banks.
Ms. Quijada-Banks is a NAACP Image Award–nominated, American best-selling author, Founder and C.E.O of Soulful Liberation (a Book publishing company and podcast), and Consciously Melanated Queens, a community to support young women of color to uncover their divine purpose and holistically heal.
Read MoreIn our second Community Table Talks episode, we ask about leadership. This is one of the topics we tend to hear a lot about but can never get enough of. The questions we posed to our guests were pretty straightforward, trying to get at how they continue to grow and learn as a leader, and also to talk about important risks during the course of their careers. But as is often the case with our show, the conversations take a lot of turns and we learn a lot about our guests, about their leadership ideas, and we gain some really good lessons that most of us can relate to.
Read MorePsychologist Karen Mahler introduced me to the positive youth development paradigm when she was brought in to shepherd along a project I was working on for the New York City Office of Child Support Services.
Our team had been tasked with completely reimagining how parents under the age of 25 enter the child support program. But we couldn’t do that in a meaningful, lasting way if we relied on arm-chair generalizing about The Youth and all the time they spend Tik Tok tweeting their SnappyGrams. We needed someone who could keep the lived experiences and developmental realities of young people front and center, while also being able to absorb the Rube Goldberg mechanics of the child support intake process and the legal and financial realities that shape everything in the public sector.
Read MoreDid you know that 7 out of every 10 Americans use social media? Because of this high saturation, which only continues to rise, it stands to reason that digital outreach is a critical communication tool no matter what your message is or where it originates. Digital outreach is not only effective for eCommerce sites or businesses that produce products. The human services field can benefit immensely as well and for a number of fundamental reasons.
Read MoreDo you ever have those days where the more stressed you get, the more everything else falls apart?
One big source of stress for me at work is multitasking, and I feel like the more I do that, the more errors I make. And the more errors I make, the worse my day becomes.
I was having one of those days last Friday. I was driving up to the mountains with my family that night, a million thoughts running through my mind, and I saw this sign for a runaway truck ramp. “Yes!” I thought, “that’s what I need! A runaway ramp to slow me down!”
Read MoreWe are excited to try out a new podcast format called GPS Community Table Talk! The concept is simple, we invite some interesting and fun people to answer the same 2 questions in 5 minutes. It is a fun way to examine a topic in a quick way and get several different viewpoints from different people. The name comes from the idea that we are all part of a larger community and during the last year sometimes it has been easy to forget that. The table reminds us that some of our most favorite conversations take place over sharing a meal or a cup of coffee. So as you listen, imagine we are asking each other questions while we are sipping on a delicious oatmeal latte in a cozy coffee shop. Hopefully we can all do that for real sometime soon.
Read MoreThis past year we faced unimaginable events that have left us reeling and confused about systemic racism. Prior to the pandemic our nation was facing systemic racism that many people chose to ignore but the pandemic only exacerbated racial inequities. During the pandemic people of color are overrepresented as frontline workers making them more susceptible to Covid-19 infections and more likely to die from Covid-19 due to comorbidities, e.g., diabetes, heart problems and obesity. The pandemic has pushed people of color from food insecurities to hunger and homelessness.
Read MoreWhen I decided to go to law school, more than one person told me I was “too nice” to become a lawyer. “Nice” and “sweet” were adjectives I had heard people use to describe me throughout my life. Occasionally I had also been told I was a “people pleaser.” Determined to prove I could be both a nice person and an attorney, I applied for law school anyway.
During law school I discovered a practice called mediation—a process that encourages the empowerment of people in conflict to communicate with the dual goals of seeking to understand/be understood, while also maybe resolving disputes and keeping people out of the courtroom. Mediators assist parties by facilitating the process and modeling effective communication and listening techniques. The moment I learned what mediation was is the moment I knew I wanted to become a mediator.
Read MoreIn the world of online engagement, strategically incorporating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) within your human service's website is one of the underlying keys to success, for you and the families. There is an immeasurable amount of content throughout the internet and, according to Siteefy, 380 new websites are being created every minute. No, they are certainly not all child support or human service related businesses, but this should give you a pretty good idea just how much competition you are up against and why SEO should be a priority.
Read MoreWe were pleased to welcome Mike Smith to the podcast for a number of reasons. First, I was so interested in the creative outlet he has maintained over the years, and I think a lot of us can relate to the need for something aside from work and chores and responsibility to focus on. Of course, given the year we have all had, this need has become even greater. On this episode we get a chance to talk to Mike about how music has been a part of his life, what has influenced him, and we get some specific insights into the latest Ocean Empire release, Summerland. We hope this will provide some inspiration to our audience to find their own outlet.
Read MoreThis concept of self-care is very difficult, especially for a lot of us in the human services and court industries who got into the careers we did to help others. During the beginning of the pandemic, there seemed to be a great sprint of helping others and running on adrenaline. As we all started to learn that this was not just a matter of staying inside for a few weeks, and this more likely going to be a marathon a different set of emotions set in, isolation for some, despair and hopeless for others. The pandemic has caused so many to loose jobs, have lasting health effects, loose loved ones, and many other negative effects. The effects of these can be or look like post-traumatic stress disorder.
How with all that is going on can we take care of ourselves and one another?
Read MoreIt seems as though 2020 has brought us a lot to feel down about, but at the same time 2020 has also brought into focus what we have to be grateful for as well. Now more than ever we are keenly aware of what and who is important. In uncertain times, we cling to what can be stable and reassuring. Showing gratitude and expressing gratitude have been known to decrease depression and increase feelings of hopefulness. I asked my team if anyone had things that they have been grateful over the past year and here are what some of them said.
Read More
