Ten percent of Utah's children were using roughly ninety percent of the state's behavioral health funding, and no one system owned them.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Denise Jensen, LMSW, Partner and Lead Operating Officer at Stronger Consulting, and the founding director of Utah's children's system of care.
Denise grew up as the oddball in a family of seven kids in a conservative Idaho Mormon household, where the mother stayed home and the father went to work. She questioned that from childhood, made a lot of her family angry, and built her own path anyway. That questioning became a career: therapist, then state system builder, then the person leading client delivery across a national consulting firm.
She walks Mike through what a system of care actually is. The kids arriving through corrections, courts, child welfare, disability, and schools, all with nowhere to land. The judges, school districts, Medicaid administrators, and parents she pulled into the same room. The state hospital she asked to loosen its own admission criteria. She also earned Utah's Governor's Award of Excellence for tearing apart substance use treatment payment models so people in recovery could choose their own care instead of being told what recovery had to look like.
The second half turns to leadership. Denise makes the case that leaders, and women leaders in particular, are still armored up in a professionalism handed to them by people who are no longer in the room. Her word for the alternative is softening, and she is specific about what it buys an organization.
Listen in for why she believes every person already knows what they need, and what leaders owe them once they admit it.
Chapters:
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00:27 Denise Jensen on leaving a conservative Idaho childhood to build systems
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03:37 The oddball in a family of seven who made people mad
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06:09 Refusing to let motherhood be her only identity
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10:47 You cannot be one person, so you wear many hats
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11:58 Ten percent of kids, ninety percent of the funding
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12:39 Getting judges, schools, and Medicaid into the same room
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16:47 The Governor's Award for letting people choose their own recovery
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19:34 Everybody already knows what they need
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24:54 Scalpel, hammer, and sometimes chainsaw
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29:31 Retention beats replacement, and the cost is momentum
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31:19 The armor women leaders are still told to wear
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35:29 Softening creates psychological safety, and safety keeps teams
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37:57 Find your community and know your value
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42:51 You do not control everything, and that is okay
Links:
Stay strong.
Episode 37