Prioritizing Accessible, Effective Services for Older Adults: Strategic Planning with the California Department of Aging

The California Department of Aging (CDA), California’s federally-designated State Unit on Aging (SUA), operates under the California Health and Human Services Agency and administers programs serving older adults, adults with disabilities, and family caregivers. The department manages California’s network of 33 Area Agencies on Aging, contracts with 38 Multipurpose Senior Services Program agencies, and certifies 242 Adult Day Health Care Centers. CDA collaborates with multiple state departments to advance its mission of supporting wellness, longevity, and quality of life for Californians through comprehensive service delivery and strategic partnerships.

• Designed and deployed a staff engagement process (one survey and a series of focus groups).
• Conducted promising practices research on other SUA’s approaches to strategic planning.
• Facilitated strategic implementation planning with CDA’s executive leadership team.
• Developed the strategic plan content with ongoing input from CDA’s executive leadership team.
• Created communication materials for internal and external audiences.

CDA engaged Collaborative Consulting for our experience developing and deploying a comprehensive strategic planning process. The project’s goal was to equip the California Department of Aging (CDA) with a forward-looking strategic plan to strengthen the California Aging Network’s capacity to meet the needs of a rapidly growing and increasingly complex aging population. The project focused on:

• Developing a strategic framework and plan that involved working closely with executive leadership, incorporating input from staff, and integrating learning from past network-wide projects such as CA 2030.
• Ensuring ownership and a commitment to implementation from executive leadership through a collaborative and participatory approach.
• Preparing clear, audience-tailored materials to support executive leadership in effectively communicating their strategic priorities to staff, stakeholders, and the public.

We conducted internal and external research to design a four-year strategic plan for CDA. We engaged CDA staff through focus groups and an open-ended survey. We gathered perspectives on CDA’s current and future strategic direction and priorities from 150 staff members. We also researched other states’ strategic planning practices, including a nationwide scan of SUA organizational structures and strategic planning efforts, a content analysis of 12 SUA strategic plans, and interviews with three SUAs that took different approaches to strategic planning. Drawing from this research, we met bi-weekly with three CDA leaders and monthly with CDA’s executive leadership team to develop and refine a strategic framework for their plan, which was used to organize the department’s strategic goals and objectives.

The project culminated in developing an internal implementation plan, including responsible parties, tasks, deliverables, performance indicators, and communication strategies. Ongoing engagement with the executive leadership team helped ensure that the implementation plan details were accurate and that the objectives were well understood by the individuals responsible for leading and implementing the strategies. We recommended a structure to keep the department updated on strategic successes and barriers and to revise strategies when needed. We also developed a presentation on the strategic plan that CDA will use to onboard new staff, socialize the plan with existing staff, and inform stakeholders about the department’s upcoming priorities.