Kristen Farnham, Spurwink

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Kristen Farnham leads the fundraising, marketing and communication teams at Spurwink, a non profit 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 has 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. So Spurwink for a long time sort of hid its light under a bushel 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. So sperwing 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. Is the genesis of what Spurwink is all about and what it still does. And it's grown quite a lot since then. So now we have. 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 at a sperwink home. And then out of that grew a lot of other ancillary but really connected programs. So a lot of outpatient clinical services for 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. And as a physician, you probably know about ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences. And so the kids who are referred to us, it may be because of behavior issues, but it really goes back to ACEs in some sort of trauma, often in their family history. And so 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 matchup 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. Sperwink. The opiate 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:

So you've made this big change, although you've always had an interest in nonprofits and educational organizations.

Kristen Farnham:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me a little bit about that.

Kristen Farnham:

Yeah, it's definitely a lesson in. In being patient with life and seeing where the different threads of your life will come together. And I feel really so fortunate to be at Sportwink 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 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, you know, 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. And so, for me, on my professional side, it sort of weaves together a lot of things that I've done. So I have a background in marketing and fundraising from working with a variety of nonprofits. I've worked in some educational institutions. And so we're school. You know, we run schools, and so that plays into the work that we do. And, you know, occasionally my legal background will come in handy either, and we obviously have a 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, you know, we all contribute to discussions around those topics that affect the whole agency. And in 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. So 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.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I hope so. Most of what you just described is kind of in one area. I'm still kind of intrigued by this. Going to law school and becoming an attorney.

Kristen Farnham:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how did just. 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, fair point. So I went to law school thinking I was going to do public interest law. So that was my motivation. So 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. So that was really, to me, important and meaningful work. And another summer I worked in a child protection unit of the department of the department, Massachusetts equivalent of our Department of Health and Human Services in Maine. It's called dss Department of Social Services in Massachusetts. So that was also really hard but meaningful work in terms of child protective work. So 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 trials 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 and 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, Veraldena, and, you know, great group of people and helped me pay off my loans and meet that commitment. And I guess I moved from that towards, you know, kind of gravitated back more towards nonprofit work. Went to work for one. Ultimately, after a few years at Veraldana, working with a great team of people, we moved to Bowdoin College, which was one of our clients, you know, great place, as you know. And so they are sort of wove a little bit back and forth between private practice and nonprofit work. But being in the nonprofit sphere is really where my heart is.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's a very practical thing. I mean, 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 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:

Oh, 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. And, I mean, the great thing about, you know, I still keep up with a lot of my friends that I practice with and some of whom are still, you know, practicing law in a law firm setting, some of whom aren't. And, you know, I think that there's a lot of qualities that you get from legal practice that are really valuable in other settings. You know, no task is too boring after you've, you know, been an associate attorney at a law firm and you're not afraid of long hours or hard work or you're okay with hierarchy. You know, there's lots of things that you get from that setting that, you know, make other settings pretty appealing after that. And there's also an intellectual rigor to it that's really, you know, engaging and interesting. And working at a place like Veraldena, one of the things I loved about being there, I was there in, I guess, like the late 90s, was, you know, they're a statewide firm, so you kind of. 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 and. 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've interviewed that have gone back into the nonprofit world. I was thinking about the Casco Bay keeper from Friends of Casco Bay, Ivy. Ivy Franoka. 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. But then there was another person who was a Maine Live speaker who now does conservation work. So it seems as if, you know, having this sort of background really can be very useful.

Kristen Farnham:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Ultimately.

Kristen Farnham:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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 the these families stories. I mean, I have some of these families as my patients. 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, there's stuff that is, that happens that you just, you can't believe actually happens in this day and age and that people can be walking around and still living these lives, these traumatic circumstances and abuse, neglect, or even just being born to an opiate addicted mother. What is that like on a day to day basis to be working with that population?

Kristen Farnham:

Yeah. Well, I have, 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. And so I think the fact that they can be respected and given opportunities to move beyond their history, I think is huge. Both you know, in Maine and nationally that we have a different dialogue around mental health issues and what that means. And I think so I want to be clear, I don't do the hard work at SPRO Inc. You know, we have clinicians who are trained and they work with the clients and the people, you know, legions of people who work day to day with the clients. And you know, I do the easy part, which is talk about their work, promote their work, try to build brand awareness around Spurwink in terms and bring in more supporters, whether that's new clients, donors, referrers, foundation support. You know, those are all, you know, that's the easy part. You know, 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, you know, 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, and giving them unconditional positive regard. And 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 and, you know, because each one comes with a different past. They work with families when it's appropriate, you know, sort of bring that family forward. And. And so they just do incredible work. There's 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. And Samantha had been in. She was 13 and she had been in 13 different homes. And so, you know, you can just let your mind go about how is that possible. You know, 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. And 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, you know, the above and beyond story of people's dedication and how her. 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.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And.

Kristen Farnham:

And it was really a different path for her now than there was before. So that kind of work is, you know, to me, just so incredible and really inspiring. And so my job is just to talk about it and to help to share that work and support it and tell the story and to really, 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, you know, for everyone. It's not Ivy League being a lawyer, you know, being a doctor. Sometimes it's going to your job and showing up or having your own apartment. And, you know, 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:

Yeah, we have a ton of intersection with New Mainers right now on a couple of different fronts, which is really pretty cool and exciting. So 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. You know, lots of relocation, you know, family loss, violence. And 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 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. And 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. And so it's in three stages, 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's specifically. And there's a woman named Sarah Patton who's leading that program, and she's a PhD and she's just doing phenomenal work in that area with her team. And then on the employer side, we're finding that we're employing more and more recent immigrants. So we have about. We have more than 900 employees throughout the state. So we're a pretty sizable employer. And we estimate that about 10% of our workforce now are recent immigrants. And then in our adult program, there's about 30%. That's all friends and family. Refer your friends and family to come. 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 as leadership and focus on throughout the agency all the time. And 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 Maine employee 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 standards. So we work with them to sort of help manage that and figure that out. And 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, you know, 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 hardworking 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. It's on 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. 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 referenced 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 Mainer population for really as long as I can remember, I'm sure. From beyond that, how does Berwink 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:

Yeah, well, I think the most important work is done with the clients, you know, every day helping people not feel shame about their history, but to really work through it and. And get to a more positive place in their life. So that, I think, is, you know, definitely the most important work that happens. And then in our efforts, you know, 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, you know, help people relate to it and tell people's story. We just had a stewardship lunch where we brought in a bunch of donors and funders and people who'd been supportive of Spurwink. And so we had some of our leadership speak and our 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, you know, with the tools that they were given and the supports that Spurwink is able to offer. And so, you know, 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. You know, 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 accept a lot of volunteers. You know, some of our programs aren't really suited to that, but, you know, try to find ways. We're always looking at, you know, we have pretty active social media presence, trying to tell stories through that, through video, newsletters, some events, you know, trying to connect people with people with people, because that's where, you know, people are understood more and barriers are broken down.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've been speaking with Kristin Farnham, who leads the fundraising, marketing, and communication teams at. At Spurwink, a 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:

Oh, thanks so much for the opportunity.