Creating Connected Communities: Ep. 9 of the ‘No Wrong Door’ Podcast
No Wrong Door is a podcast that explores how social care delivery is evolving to better support whole person care. Hosted by Findhelp VP of Marketing Amy Gordona, the series features conversations with social care experts, healthcare and government innovators, and Findhelp leaders who are shaping the future of access, coordination, and connected care.
Each episode offers an inside look at the systems, decisions, and ideas driving change—and what it takes to build a social safety net that works at scale.
Live from the Texas Social Care Summit, this special episode of No Wrong Door takes us out into the wild with Alex Reed, Division Manager of Community Health at Denton County Public Health.
Denton County recently took home the 2025 Model Practice Award from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)—and for good reason. Alongside host Amy Gordona, Alex breaks down the recipe behind Denton’s highly successful, cross-governmental, community-wide rollout of their Findhelp network, proving that true social care transformation requires a mix of proper digital infrastructure, raw data, and a whole lot of patience.
In this episode, we explore:
Moving past “sticky note technology”: How Denton County transitioned away from bulky physical binders and outdated print resource directories toward a unified digital referral ecosystem.
Fostering true community ownership: Why the City of Denton and Denton County intentionally removed corporate and governmental branding from their platform to ensure local non-profits felt equal ownership.
The power of a slow-baked launch: Why rushing a technology deployment can cause a network to fracture, and how 11 weeks of intentional, hands-on partner onboarding made all the difference.
Watch episode 9: “Creating Connected Communities”
Key themes from the conversation
Building an integrated social care ecosystem takes far more than just launching new software—it requires cultural buy-in, radical cross-agency trust, and a deep respect for the boots-on-the-ground practitioners. In this episode, Alex maps out the core philosophies and practical strategies that helped Denton County move away from fragmented workflows and build a unified, award-winning care network.
Retiring the resource binder
For decades, social workers have relied on heavily bookmarked, manually updated binders to connect residents with food, housing, and healthcare.
If a point of contact leaves an agency, that hard-earned relationship breaks, leaving care navigators scrambling and patients falling through the cracks.
Alex highlights how building a shared, digital infrastructure finally allows case managers to close the loop, track outcomes, and sleep a little easier at night.
“Whenever someone came to me and said, ‘Hey, I have a three-year-old concerned about food security. I need to know who to reach out to.’ I would take this [binder], open it, and go to the food resources section. And then there would be like someone’s name that I had crossed out because they used to be my point of contact, and now they don’t work there any longer… Now, we have very advanced technology.”
Alex Reed
Division Manager of Community Health
Denton County Public Health
Cultivating radical collaboration and community ownership
Cross-governmental initiatives often stall due to territorial budget battles or competing political agendas. Denton County and the City of Denton bypassed this entirely by letting go of individual branding.
By creating a neutrally designed platform, they positioned the network as a public square belonging to the community rather than a strict county or city program, driving massive adoption among local community-based organizations (CBOs).
“Let’s let the community own Findhelp. It doesn’t belong to the City of Denton. It doesn’t belong to Denton County. Let’s let the community own it.”
Alex Reed
Division Manager of Community Health
Denton County Public Health
The art of “slow baking” community & CBO engagement
Implementing new technology is exciting, but forcing an overnight launch often alienates community partners who are already stretched thin.
Denton spent 11 weeks strictly on partner preparation before going live:
- Hosting local webinars
- Helping agencies claim their programs
- Mapping workflows
Taking the time to build trust ensures the network won’t crack under the weight of real-world demands.
“Don’t you dare open the oven before it’s ready. Give it time. Because I’m an impatient person, I think that it’s really easy to just jump two feet in, and at some point we do have to open the oven, right? But as you’re baking these tools into your community, listen to the community, wait for the dough to rise or the meringue to stiffen, and then open the oven whenever it’s ready.”
Alex Reed
Division Manager of Community Health
Denton County Public Health
Turning search analytics into tangible county public health resources
A closed-loop social care system provides more than just streamlined referrals; it generates hyper-local data that uncovers structural gaps.
In Denton County, Findhelp analytics revealed that over 50% of searches were specific to housing, exposing a massive discrepancy in available support.
This hard data now directly guides municipal conversations, grant applications, and even the physical deployment of mobile public health units to high-need areas.
“We didn’t have the data or visibility on the data set. So this has been really instrumental, even as a local public health department… when we’re sending out our mobile unit, we can look at the geographies where people are having a high search volume and send the mobile unit into those spaces.”
Alex Reed
Division Manager of Community Health
Denton County Public Health
Learn more about Denton County’s award-winning social care program
Connecting residents to the right social services at the right time is a critical challenge facing every growing community. In Texas, the City of Denton and Denton County Public Health acted as conveners, funding and facilitating a community-wide solution.
This case study details how this partnership, and collaboration with community service providers, led to the creation of a centralized resource hub that strengthens the entire network of care. As a result of this work, Denton County was one of 19 local health departments nationwide to receive the Model Practices award in 2025.
How Denton County Created a Community-Wide Solution for Social Care
What’s next for No Wrong Door?
“Creating Connected Communities” is available now—Episode 10 will be released on June 24, 2026 and features Kraig Dalton, Findhelp’s Director of State Accounts, discussion the innovative implementation of the Tennessee Community Compass, the state’s social care platform.
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