Karin VanZant Discusses CareSource's Life Services Program

CareSrouce’s Life Services program is a voluntary program in which individuals can decide on their own whether they would like to participate, a feature that Karin VanZant, executive director of Life Services at CareSource, said is especially appealing to their members.

Transcript (slightly modified)

CareSource’s Life Services program is voluntary. How do you pitch is and educate customers to get them to participate?

One of the big proponent that I’ve seen in 20 years is I’ve seen all kinds of anti-poverty programs kind of go through the voluntary versus required. And I believe as human beings, anytime something’s required, we have this natural instinct to resist it. Even if we know it’s exactly what we need to do, it’s kind of parental to be told that you have to do something.

And so as we started building Life Services, we wanted it to be completely voluntary. And our initial meeting with members as they learn about this pilot program that we have as we tell them this is not like some of the other programs that you might be enrolled in where you have to log your hours and you have to report back to a case manager. This is 100% voluntary and we hope to just partner with you to get to know you better as a person and then help to connect you with the right resources.

We really found a lot of partnership with our department of Medicaid and with our community providers in understanding that the people coming into Live Services want to be there. They’re self-selecting in instead of us going out and telling them this is something that they should do. And I think our retention rates on the other side, where we have 95% retention on the job passed 90 days is a testimony to that, is that people that want to work are coming into the program. We’re connecting them with viable employment opportunities and then they’re staying on the job long term.