Streamline Training and Administration With Relias

Founded in 2015, Community Based Care (CBC) has become one of the largest intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) service providers in the United States. With locations across Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, including 54 residential locations, it has become a vital part of IDD care within the communities it serves.

Working across diverse populations, CBC supports its clients via residential, day supports, and individual services. Through these services, the organization aims to achieve three goals for all of its clients: growth, incremental independence, and community involvement.

While having such a deeply rooted presence in communities across three states brings wonderful opportunities to both CBC and their clients, it also results in increased complexity. The ability to enforce standard training practices across the organization, while also meeting state-specific requirements, proved difficult. To help manage this complexity, CBC turned to Relias.

Creating Standard Training Procedures

With more than 50 locations, creating a standardized system of training had been a thorn in the side of CBC for a long time, according to Kimberly Shobe, Director of Staff Development and Training. For Shobe, the first step was to create standard trainings for staff members based on federal and state requirements within the Relias Platform. The ability for CBC to use one learning management platform to create these standards across all of its locations provided a boon to its training efforts.

With all staff members able to take their required compliance training within the Relias Platform, CBC next turned to training its administrators. According to Shobe, this is a key piece of CBC’s new training policy. With staff spread across such wide distances, she can’t possibly help every staff member who encounters a training question.

To that end, she works tirelessly with CBC’s administrative and supervisory staff to ensure it has the requisite knowledge to help staff. Again, Shobe has turned to the Relias Platform to meet this training demand.

Meeting Clients’ Needs and Staying Compliant

The human services-specific training, as well as the ability to create custom trainings tailored to CBC’s organizational needs, has allowed these new training programs to thrive. Among its IDD support staff, 90% of CBC’s training needs are covered by the content that comes with the Relias Platform. The ability to create custom content has also been used as CBC has developed “training plans for supervisors and training plans for admins, because we need them to know specific things directly related to the organization,” Shobe said.

Through these training efforts, CBC has been able to increase the level of care it provides for its clients. With the Relias Platform, CBC’s IDD support staff members can learn to better care for their clients, and leadership can learn how to better support their staff. At the end of the day, this results in better client outcomes.

CBC has also found Relias instrumental in meeting its state and federal compliance needs across Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Using the Relias Platform, Shobe and her colleagues can create organization-wide training that meets their federal compliance requirements. For their state compliance and more localized needs, Shobe noted how Relias allows her and her team to “drill down deeper” and create plans tailored for individual states or locations.

CBC Found a Partner in Relias

To create a learning culture within an organization, it’s key to have a strong relationship with the provider of your learning management platform. As administrators and staff alike begin using the platform, questions will undoubtedly arise. Having the ability to lean on your provider to answer these questions is crucial.

CBC has established a true working relationship with Relias. By working with CBC’s dedicated Relias Client Success Manager, Shobe noted how effortless it is to get answers to any and all questions that arise. “If I have a drill-down question, I email my Client Success Manager and they figure it out,” she said. “It’s been a very good working relationship.”

“If I have a drill-down question, I e-mail my Client Success Manager and they figure it out. It’s been a very good working relationship.”

-Kimberley Shobe,
Director of Staff Development and Training

This relationship has allowed CBC to get the most out of its Relias Platform. By working closely with its Client Success Manager, CBC has created smoother processes around several operations, including:

• Bringing in a new organization that joined its network of providers
• Creating a Relias account for newly hired staff members
• Helping admins to identify the best training options within the Relias Platform

In Relias, CBC has found a true partner in its journey to create a learning organization.