Hennepin County Profile
Hennepin County, Minnesota sent this bulletin at 03/29/2016 10:19 AM CDT
Learn more about how Hennepin County works for you, the District 3 team conducts a profile series with employees of the county who live in the district. Each month we spotlight a different person from varying departments and occupations. Find out about the day-to-day aspects of occupational fields and work environments at the county, and how each person’s work affects your life.
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Carol Jud |
Describe your work.
Human service center managers were hired a few years ago as Hennepin County began looking to open regional Human Service Centers (HSCs) across the county to provide better services to residents in their own communities. Previously, I had been part of the team that coordinated the opening of the Northwest Family Service Center, and was hired to oversee the opening and operations of the new HSCs across Hennepin County. I currently coordinate different service areas in the Human Services and Public Health departments to provide holistic services at the west HSC in Hopkins, and for the South region, which currently operates out of Century Plaza in downtown Minneapolis, but will open in South Minneapolis at Lake and Hiawatha when construction concludes in late 2017.
This job is a great opportunity for me to learn about the variety of services available across the Human Services and Public Health department and to figure out how the actual process of moving through an HSC will work best for our clients. For example, I worked on developing technology to support the new work environment for county workers at hubs in different departments, such as a Sharepoint intranet site for workers to coordinate services. That way eligibility workers can see who is available on coverage in child services and connect their clients directly rather than force them to go through a number of different doors themselves.
This continuous process improvement is an integral part of the county’s mission to serve residents as efficiently as possible.
What part of your job do you find most challenging?
My role is unique in that I’m working to bring a number of different work areas together, but do not specifically work in any of these areas. Each department has their own priorities, and my role is to pull them into looking at issues more holistically and push them to collaborate with others. These areas also have different work cultures, and it can be difficult to pull some of these workers out of the silos they’ve been working in to promote cross-departmental goals.
What do you find most enjoyable?
I enjoy being able to learn about all the different services being provided in Hennepin County, and working with a variety of different county departments. Being in the community has been an incredible change from the downtown center at Century Plaza. I enjoy seeing people get in, get out, and get their needs met without having to go downtown. I love reading client surveys and seeing that people are happy with the services we provide. Developing the services for these new, welcoming sites is really rewarding.
I also enjoy working with organizations whose goals align with our own. For example, at the west service center we coordinate with Resource West, and I enjoy the puzzle of figuring out how we can work together to provide other services. We also have children’s dental coming into the west service center to provide dental care, which is fantastic. I love finding new ways to work together with organizations to serve the community.
What is one thing everyone should know about the work you do?
Hennepin County really believes in our vision of a future where residents are healthy and successful, and where our communities are safe and vibrant. We really strive to meet and exceed expectations by engaging people and communities in developing innovative solutions to the challenges we face, and these regional human service centers being available in the community is a huge step in that vision. Just in my work in the last few years developing services at these centers, I have a lot of optimism for where we’re going. We can really see how the service integration at these centers impacts the community, and I’m really excited for the south Minneapolis service center to open.
Carol Jud is a resident of the Pennsylvania Park neighborhood in St. Louis Park, and is Human Service Center Manager for the West Suburban Human Service Center in Hopkins, and the South Minneapolis Human Service Region currently operating out of Century Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. The completion of the South Minneapolis Human Service Center construction at the Lake and Hiawatha site is expected in 2017. Hennepin County has made a commitment to residents to continually improve the way we provide services, which is why we are moving toward a regional hub system, bringing our services to residents. Each regional site that we have opened has outperformed expectations, which affirms the years of planning and implementation by leaders like Carol in the Human Services and Public Health Department. To learn more about the south service center, click here. To learn more about the human service hubs at Hennepin County, click here.
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