Nancy Norman, associate director of Iowa State’s Social and Behavioral Research Center for Rural Health, recently received the 1996 National Board Leadership Merit Award from the Child Welfare League of America.

The award is given to board members of child welfare agencies who have distinguished themselves with their service.

Norman recently completed a two-year term as board president of Orchard Place Des Moines Child Guidance Center, a member agency of the Child Welfare League of America, which represents 425 child welfare agencies in the United States and Canada.

Orchard Place was founded in 1886 as an orphanage, and today ” … is a facility in Des Moines that provides mental health services to kids, and also services to kids that are involved in the juvenile justice system,” Norman said.

Norman led Orchard Place through a period of major expansion in its community delinquency program, expansion of its physical plant, restructuring of its residential operations and a merger with the Des Moines Child and Adolescent Guidance Center.

Earl Kelly, executive director of Orchard Place, said the award was “well deserved.”

“Nancy served two years as president of the board of directors … and she piloted it through some real periods of expansion and growth and did just a wonderful job,” Kelly said.

“Usually our board presidents sit in office for one year, but she graciously accepted for another year, which I think is a sign of her untiring ability to rise to the occasion,” he said.

“Then she started a merger process with the Des Moines Child Guidance Center, so we merged with another agency in mid 1996. It was very significant; it’s the first time that’s happened to us in 100 years,” Kelly said.

Norman said the nominating committee asked her if she would serve another term.

“They just thought it was such a time of transition that maybe the existing officer should continue,” she said.

A major portion of Norman’s time as president of the board was spent on the merger with the Child Guidance Center.

“We completed the merger … and it probably took us more than a year, because we had to figure out if we wanted to do this, and the staff of each organization had to learn about the other place, and everybody had to get comfortable with it,” Norman said.

In addition to the merger, Norman has worked on several other projects in the last few years.

“We joined a network to provide adult as well as children’s services called Golden Circle. Then the Pace Program, the program that works with delinquent kids began to grow, and we had to find an additional facility.

“We had to think about providing service at more than one location, and that was kind of a change for us,” Norman said.

She is working on a collaborative effort of five years to introduce a new system of health care to rural Iowa.

Called “Hometown Health,” test models are being run in Waverly, Pocahontas and Glenwood.

“We go into communities, we try to find some people who make decisions in the community, and we set up a steering committee. The whole idea is to get people in the community to take responsibility for their own health care and not just leave it to the professionals, although [health care] providers are very critical to the process,” Norman said.

“It usually takes more than a year to implement the process, and part of the process is surveying the residents … I have analyzed the data in several of the cases, and we go back and share that information with the community. Then the communities take the project on, and determine a couple of things that they can do, and move forward.

“A lot of times in these communities, although the providers know each other, they don’t know exactly what everybody does, and so that’s one of the first steps that they seem to go through; establishing a formal relationship, or steering committee or an inter-agency group,” she said.

“All of this is timely, because of health care reform that really didn’t happen at the federal level, but it’s happening at the local level as providers and communities realize they’re going to need to do something different,” Norman said.

Norman is also an administrator at the Center for Family Research, and formerly served on a subcommittee of the Insurance and Annuities Committee that set up the new ISU Benefits Plan, and as commissioner for the Iowa Department of Human Resources.