Celebrating Partnership: A Night of Recognition
 

By Diana Hilsman, MPH, Former Partnering to Protect Project Manager, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services
 

February 2025

“APS cannot do this work alone” has been a motto for Texas Adult Protective Services (APS) for the past few years and has become the foundation for Texas APS’s Partnering to Protect initiative, which launched in 2023. This initiative is focused on the APS program strategically and effectively engaging community partners such as law enforcement, other first responders, courts, and mental health providers, as well as improving working relationships with those community partners. It is an APS priority for all team members — from case specialists to program administrators to district directors — to invest time in developing partnerships.   

Partnering to Protect began with feedback from APS staff regarding partnerships. According to a staff surveys in 2021: 

• Staff don’t always have an easy time accessing partners
• Some of our more tenured staff strongly disagreed that working with community partners is easy
• More than a third of all respondents disagreed that community partners understand how they can help APS clients
• There is a need for greater engagement with our partners
   

This feedback left APS leadership pondering the question, “Is there a better way to partner?” There certainly has to be, and APS leadership included a partnership goal in the Texas APS Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2022-2026 and later included it in the Elder Justice Act Operational Plan. 
 

How to get buy-in?
Texas APS builds buy-in from partners for the Partnering to Protect initiative by highlighting our common client and goal and promoting a “One Team, One Goal” ideology. Through ongoing communication, shared decision-making, and emphasizing mutual benefits, APS fosters strong, collaborative relationships that support long-term participation.

What does Partnering to Protect look like in action?
Every year since 2023, Texas APS leadership and management teams from our six districts along with a team of community engagement specialists have been implementing new community engagement planning practices. The idea behind the planning efforts is to be more intentional with our community engagement efforts with partners. An example of a new business practice for us has been creating strategic and targeted annual district engagement plans. In each plan, we detail specific partners in specific communities and specific engagement actions we will take over next year to engage, build, and sustain relationships with critical partners. 
 

Partnering to Protect in action looks like a myriad of things such as reaching out to establish points of contact with partner organizations, hosting meet-and-greet(s) with partners, offering APS 101 presentations to partner organizations for their staff, hosting symposiums or community events for organizations to learn about APS and share information about their own organization, inviting partner organizations (and footing the bill for travel costs) to our annual APS conference, publicly recognizing valued partners, and spending quality time with partners. 
 

In October 2024, I had the privilege of attending the Texas APS Partnering to Protect Awards Dinner at the 41st annual APS Conference in Galveston. The dinner served as a Partnering to Protect partner engagement strategy. 

The dinner brought together APS staff, stakeholders, local leaders, and community partners who have been at the forefront of positive change in their communities. 
 

Comedian and public speaker Joel Zeff emceed the event. We had lots of laughs, and I certainly felt my spirits lifted. 

 

The main event was the presentation of the inaugural Texas APS Partnering to Protect Awards to organizations across the state that have demonstrated outstanding work or contributions to the APS program or its clients and demonstrate a genuine passion by going above their normal duties or responsibilities related to the APS program. 
 

Each of the six Texas APS districts awarded one or two partner organizations. The award recipients included probate court judges, first responders with police and fire departments, staff at other state agencies like Health and Human Services Commission, an assistant attorney general, Area Agency on Aging, and staff at a credit union. 

 

Texas APS also awarded one out-of-state organization, Georgia Bureau of Investigations Crimes Against Disabled Adults and Elderly Task Force, for its exemplary example of partnerships in combating human trafficking/benefits trafficking. 
 

As people shared stories of success throughout the night, the underlying message was clear: no one can achieve lasting change alone; we need each other. The work being done by APS and its partners is a powerful reminder that positive change is not only possible but already happening. It’s easy to get bogged down by the challenges we face day-to-day and the bigger issues whirling around us, but events like this dinner remind us that when we work together, we can achieve incredible things, and we should pause to celebrate. 
 

I encourage other APS programs reading this to take the time to recognize their community partners. Recognition can come in many forms from things as simple as a personalized Thank You card to a fancy awards dinner – there is no wrong/right way to do it – we just need to do it.  
 

The APS Blog is updated regularly with posts from contributing authors and new publications from the APS TARC.

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