Transcription of Kristen Farnham, vice president of development at Spurwink for the show Love Maine Radio #311: Kristen Farnham and Christina McAnuff
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Kristen Farnham leads the fundraising, marketing ,and communication teams at Spurwink, a nonprofit statewide organization that provides behavioral health and education services for children, adults and families. Thanks for coming in today.
Kristen Farnham: Thank you for having me in.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Spurwink’s been around for quite a while, hasn’t it?
Kristen Farnham: Yeah, we’re coming up on 60 years.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: So I’m not sure that people are as familiar with what Spurwink does. Can you give us a little background?
Kristen Farnham: Yeah of course. Spurwink for a long time sort of hid its light under a bush, and was doing great work in the community but wasn’t really talking about it as much. So I think that’s a familiar feeling that not as many people knew about Spurwink or what it did, or maybe knew something. Maybe had someone in their life who worked there or maybe knew someone who was served by Spurwink. So yeah, so a lot of what we’re doing now is trying to talk about the work more and shed some light on all the wonderful things that happen.
So Spurwink started in 1960 with a home for eight boys out on Riverside Street and we still have that building actually. So there’s kids who still live in that building and they were eight boys whose needs, developmental needs couldn’t be met in their own home or in their school. So they came to Spurwink and lived with house parents and that was the start. So really serving kids is the genesis of what Spurwink is all about and what it still does. It’s grown quite a lot since then, so now we serve about 7,500 children and adults and families every year and we have locations all around the state.
We have six different residential and school hubs, so we have six special purpose private schools around the state, and then lots of residential facilities for kids who can’t live at home. And then for kids who have graduated out of the youth system, we have residences and day treatment programs for adults who also can’t live at home, maybe can’t live independently, will live in a group setting out of Spurwink Home. Then out of that grew a lot of other ancillary but really connected programs. So a lot of outpatient clinical services for a variety of diagnoses.
We run the child abuse clinic in the state and we run a treatment foster care program. So a lot of things that are connected to that germ of a program of working with kids whose needs really weren’t met at home or in their referring school district.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Have you seen the numbers of children and families who have need of these services increase over the years?
Kristen Farnham: Yeah, absolutely they have. The acuity of the kids that we serve is much higher now than it used to be, and there’s a number of reasons for that. We serve kids who… and I talk mostly about the kids because that’s really the heart and the bulk of what we do. The kids that we serve come with a variety of different backgrounds and diagnoses. Some have autism somewhere on the spectrum. A lot have developmental disabilities but really the common thread is kids who come with a trauma history of one form or another. As a physician you probably know about ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences.
The kids who are referred to us, it may be because of behavior issues but it really goes back to ACEs and some sort of trauma often in their family history. The Spurwink model is really a therapeutic model of how to work with the kids, and it’s very individualized. We often have one-on-one match-ups between a staff member and a student either in school or in the residential setting, and getting them to a place where ideally they can maybe go back to their family. Or you know a place where they can be independent after they leave Spurwink.
The opioid crisis is a huge contributor to kids in need as well. That’s obviously spiked more recently within the last couple of years in particular. But all of those are contributing factors to both high need as well as the intensity and acuity of the kids that we serve.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: This wasn’t your original path.
Kristen Farnham: Nope.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You went to Middlebury and Boston College Law School and you actually worked as an attorney.
Kristen Farnham: I did, I did.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You’ve made this big change although you’ve always had an interest in non-profits and educational organizations.
Kristen Farnham: Yep.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Tell me a little bit about that.
Kristen Farnham: Yeah, it’s definitely a lesson in being patient with life and seeing where the different threads of your life will come together. I feel really so fortunate to be at Spurwink because I feel it sort of brings together lots of parts of my life. I really feel like I have the best nonprofit job in Maine and big and for me personally it’s a great organization. It has great leadership. I’m really privileged to serve with an amazing team of people on our senior leadership team. And then the work is really important, it’s really serving in my view the people who our community has kind of left behind in some ways and really addressing their needs and helping them get to a place where they can lead the best life that they can lead, and be as independent as they can. Be contributing to their community and living independently.
So for me on my professional side, it sort of weaves together a lot of things that I’ve done. I have a background in marketing and fundraising from working with a variety of non-profits. I’ve worked in some educational institutions and so… we run schools and so that plays into the work that we do and occasionally my legal background will come in handy. We obviously have very capable HR staff, but we also as a senior leadership team will sit around the table and talk about issues that impact the whole organization.
So for example, workforce development or the minimum wage issue that has just come up in Maine, we all contribute to discussions around those topics that affect the whole agency. The fundraising side of my work, I do a fair amount of tax work and estate planning working with donors. So those are all different threads of my life that professional life that sort of come together. I feel really fortunate to find this place that I love working with people who do incredible work and sort of taps into lots of different parts of my skill set, I hope.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: So most of what you just described is kind of in one area, but I’m still kind of intrigued by this going to law school and becoming an attorney. I’m just out of interest because people who listen to the show are often kind of similar where they’ve done one thing and then something switched for them and they said, “Oh, I need to go do this. This is more true to who I am.”
Kristen Farnham: Right, yeah sure that’s a fair point. I went to law school thinking I was going to do public interest law. So that was my motivation. In the summers I worked in Boston. There were great opportunities so I worked one summer in a domestic violence unit of the Norfolk County district attorney’s office that was doing really groundbreaking work. This is quite a few years ago. So kind of groundbreaking work in the domestic violence arena. Things like bringing a case forward without the victim. Things that sound sort of commonplace now and practices now in a prosecutor’s office, but it was at the time pretty groundbreaking.
Doing a lot of education with police forces and other referring entities. That was really to me important and meaningful work and another summer I worked in a child protection unit of the Department of… Massachusetts equivalent of our Department of Health and Human Services in Maine. It’s called DSS. Department of Social Services in Massachusetts. That was also really hard but meaningful work in terms of child protective work. I graduated and I clerked for a year for a federal judge which is kind of a common thing to do after law school and had some great trial experience down in Providence and then was looking for my first position and also had a bunch of loans to pay off so.
Anyway my husband I looked to… we kind of looked outside of Boston where we were living at the time, and so I got a great job at one of the firms in town, Verrill Dan, and great group of people and helped me pay off my loans and meet that commitment. And I guess I moved from that towards, kind of gravitated back more towards nonprofit work. I went to work for one ultimately after a few years of Verrill Dana working with a great team of people, were moved to Bowden College which was one of our clients. Great place as you know. So there sort of wove a little bit back and forth between private practice and nonprofit work, but being in the in the nonprofit sphere is really where my heart is.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, it’s a very practical thing. There are educational loans and you have to find some way of doing it. What I think is really remarkable is the fact that some people can get caught up in going down a path because it looks a certain way financially and kind of that’s not really where they ever intended to go, but you were very clear it seems. That this is where you wanted to come back to.
Kristen Farnham: There were lots of uncertain moments along the way. I don’t want to create a false impression, but I guess that’s the be patient lesson. To sort of keep waiting and finding the threads that come together and make more sense ultimately. I mean the great thing about… I still keep up with a lot of my friends that I practice with and some of whom are still practicing law in a law firm setting. Some of whom aren’t, and I think that there’s a lot of qualities that you get from legal practice that are really valuable in other settings. No task is too boring after you’ve an associate attorney at a law firm, and you’re not afraid of long hours or hard work. You’re with hierarchy.
There’s lots of things that you get from that setting that make other settings pretty appealing after that. There’s also an intellectual rigor to it that’s really engaging and interesting and working at a place like Verrill Dana. One of the things I loved about being there, I was there in I guess like the late ‘90s, was they are a state-wide firm. I was new to Maine. I hadn’t lived here before, but working with that firm, doing good work for lots of Maine companies, primarily businesses, but all over the state. So I just learned all about Maine and sort of dove in that way.
So that for me was like just a wonderful introduction to Maine and what’s going on in the Maine economy and how Maine operates. So I feel really lucky that I landed in that place.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I’m thinking as you’re talking about the number of attorneys that I have interviewed that have gone back into the nonprofit world. I was thinking about the Casco Bay Keeper from friends of Casco Bay.
Kristen Farnham: Ivy.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Ivy Frignoca and that’s just one example. I believe the head of Good Shepherd Food Bank may have been an attorney. I could be wrong about this so if you’re listening and I’m wrong, then I apologize. Then there was another person who was a Maine live speaker who now does conservation work. So it seems as if having this sort of background really can be very useful ultimately. Tell me about your ability to work with a population that can be very… I don’t want to say challenging, it’s more that there is a very emotional component to some of these family stories. I mean I have some of these families as my patients and they will come in, and I am so struck by the fact that there’s a significant amount of misfortune.
Being born into a bad situation. There’s stuff that happens that you just you can’t believe actually happens in this day and age. That people can be walking around and still living these lives. These traumatic circumstances. Abuse, neglect or even just being born to an opioid-addicted mother. What is that like on a day to day basis to be working with that population?
Kristen Farnham: Yeah, I think it’s incredibly important work. I think a lot of people who come from a background of poverty, who’ve had really hard things happen in their life, who have mental health challenges. We used to not talk about it or at best and lock them up at worst. I think the fact that they can be respected and given opportunities to move beyond their history, I think is huge. Both in Maine and nationally that we have a different dialogue around mental health issues and what that means. I want to be clear, I don’t do the hard work, it’s Spurwink.
We have clinicians who are trained and they work with the clients and the people, legions of people who work day to day with the clients. I do the easy part which is talk about their work, promote their work, try to build brand awareness around Spurwink and bring in more supporters. Whether that’s new clients, donors, referrals, foundation support. Those are all… that’s the easy part. The people who work with the clients, that can be the daily hard part, but they also are so dedicated to it and they’re really inspiring to be around because they’re so committed to the person and to helping each person address their history and move forward in a positive way.
We use a model that’s based out of Cornell University called the CARE Model. I’m not going to even pretend that I know what the acronym care stands for, but it’s a therapeutic model that is really about valuing each person and finding a path for them and giving them unconditional positive regard. So that’s the work that’s really done on a daily basis with the clients and each therapeutic plan for each client is different. Because each one comes with a different past. They work with families when it’s appropriate, sort of bring that family forward.
So they just do incredible work. One example is we have a client named Samantha and I can share her name because she gave us… she and her foster parents gave us permission to make a video about her that’s on our website. Samantha had been in… she was 13 and she had been in 13 different homes. You can just let your mind go about how is that possible. You think about your own family, your own children, and she finally found a place at Spurwink where she grew to trust her teachers who did an incredible job in our Lewiston School with her, and then she was living with a couple in a therapeutic couple model that we had been working with in a home. It’s kind of like a foster family.
She was going to have to move out of that placement and her foster parents who had worked at Spurwink changed their jobs and changed their whole career trajectory so that they could officially foster her and she could become a part of their family. So that’s just the above and beyond story of people’s dedication and how her life has really taken a different trajectory. She’s doing well in school, she goes to after school activities and gymnastics and things, that Boys and Girls Club in Lewiston. It was really a different path for her now than there was before. So that kind of work is to me just so incredible and really inspiring.
So my job is just to talk about it and to help to share that work and support it and tell the story. Our goal overall is to crack open people’s view of people with mental health challenges or with a difficult past and really help to redefine what success looks like. For everyone it’s not Ivy League, being a lawyer, being a doctor. Sometimes it’s go into your job and showing up or having your own apartment and can we help people to understand that and to help create that opportunity for people.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Tell me about the work that Spurwink is doing with new Mainers, with people who have come to our state from other places and might be having similar challenges to people who have lived in our state for many years. This has become an increasingly important issue that all of us are working with.
Kristen Farnham: We have a ton of intersection with new Mainers right now on a couple of different fronts, which is really pretty cool and exciting. On the client side, we’re working more and more with new Mainers. I mean they often come with a lot of mental health challenges and a lot of trauma history that we don’t have to go into detail about how that could be. Lots of relocation, family loss, violence. So we work more and more on the client side. We have school groups, we have public school counselors embedded in a huge variety of schools throughout the state, so they do school groups.
And then we just got a really significant federal grant to fund a program called Shifa, which we work in consultation with the Boston Children’s Hospital, and that program is implementing a therapy called Trauma Systems Therapy for refugees. And so it’s really exciting, it’s Spurwink’s first federal grant and it’s over a five year-period. So what we’re doing there is rolling out a program first in Lewiston, Auburn where there’s a big refugee population. Then in Biddeford, Saco, and then in Portland and Westbrook. It’s in three stages, and it works with kids and with families using cultural brokers.
There’s a lot of stigma against mental health counseling in the refugee community, and so this program really works with people in the community to open those doors, and to work with families and in particular with kids and their families. So that’s really exciting work. That specifically and there’s a woman named Sarah Patton who’s leading that program and she has a PhD, and she’s just doing phenomenal work in that area with her team.
Then on the employer side, we’re finding that we’re employing more and more recent immigrants. We have more than 900 employees throughout the state. So we’re a pretty sizable employer. We estimate that about 10% of our workforce now are recent immigrants and then in our adult program, there’s about 30%. So that’s all friends and family. Refer your friends and family to come and so that is a great opportunity for Spurwink. Because as you know probably from talking to lots of folks, workforce development and recruitment and retention of employees is a huge issue across the state and Spurwink is no exception to that. That’s a huge issue that we focus on as leadership and focus on throughout the agency all the time.
So to find a population where people are referring their friends to come because it’s a positive work experience is really great, and it does present different challenges though, that we’re conscious of and that we’re working on as an employer. So a recent immigrant might come with language barriers. There’s some cultural norms that they might not be familiar with. They have some different needs in terms of wanting to take different holidays. When they go on vacation they might go back to their country of origin for either a holiday or a wedding celebration.
So those are some different needs than the typical main employee you might have. We also are really conscious of… some of our jobs have certain educational requirements and so their degrees, if they have them from their country of origin might not translate very well to American standard. So we work with them to sort of help manage that and figure that out. Then we’re also really conscious of making sure that those employees have opportunities for growth and development. That they’re able to move through a supervisory system and sort of move to positions of more responsibility in the agency.
So there’s a lot of layers to that, but we feel really lucky to be part of that dialogue and be able to participate that because they’re great employees. They’re really hard working as a group, empathetic. They’re sort of unfazed by some of the things that our clients come with because they’ve seen a lot in their own lives. So they’re in a lot of ways really ideal employees for a lot of the work that we do. So yeah, so it’s pretty… both of those fronts it’s pretty exciting to be a part of that because it’s obviously a huge discussion point in the state. So we’re looking for more and more ways to be a part of that dialogue about supporting that community in all the ways and integrating them in a really positive and effective way.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You reference the stigma around counseling therapy for mental illness within the refugee and immigrant population. This is a stigma that has existed within arguably I don’t know the traditional Mainers population for really as long as I can remember. I’m sure beyond that. How does Spurwink work with that stigma? How are you working to change the way that we view mental and emotional issues that people might have, that are holding them back?
Kristen Farnham: Well I think the most important work is done with the clients. Every day helping people not feel shame about their history, but to really work through it and get to a more positive place in their life. So that I think is definitely the most important work that happens. Then in our efforts on sort of the marketing and communication side, we view it as a responsibility to talk about it. To talk about hard things and to make it seem like it’s not the other, how people relate to it and tell people story. We just had a stewardship lunch where we brought in a bunch of donors and funders and people who had been supportive of Spurwink.
So we had some of our leadership speak and there were program directors but really it was the two kids, you know, the teenagers that we… They were so brave and they told their story to this group of people that they didn’t know and the, our donors and supporters were so moved by that. And so it’s, you know, those are kids trying to make their way in the world and do the best that they can with the tools that they were given and the supports that Spurwink is able to offer.
I think when people can see person-to-person, it breaks down a lot of the barriers and stereotypes. So we just try to find ways, it’s hard, we try to find ways to connect people with the clients and the work that’s done. It’s not always easy because we can’t accept a lot of volunteers and some of our programs aren’t really suited to that, but try to find ways, we’re always looking at … We have pretty active social media presence, trying to tell stories through that, through video, newsletters, some events, trying to connect people with, people with people, because that’s where people are understood more and barriers are broken down.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Kristen Farnham who leads the fund raising marketing and communication teams at Spurwink nonprofit statewide organization that provides behavioral health and education services for children, adults, and families. Thank you for the important work that you’re doing and for taking the time to talk to me today.
Kristen Farnham: Thanks so much for the opportunity.