Jim Rast, PhD
Chief Executive Officer

As a system of care, wraparound, and human research consultant, Dr. Rast has extensive experience in developing programs, systems, program evaluation strategies and tools to assess community-based service implementation.  Jim has over 25 years of experience in various settings in human service and healthcare organizations.  He is well-versed in medical, mental health, and child welfare issues.  He has been working with children and families in community-based settings for the past 20 years developing individualized services and systems to support theses individualized services.  Jim has extensive skills in both formative and summative program evaluation, continuous quality improvement, as well as, his experience developing and implementing community-based collaborative human services.

Jim founded Vroon Associates in 1984 as a human services consulting firm.  The firm specialized in services for individuals with developmental disabilities for its first ten years, providing direct services, consultation and training in person-centered planning, behavior and functional analysis, supervision, and financing.  In 1994, the focus began to shift to agencies and organizations providing mental health and collaborative services.  In 1996, Vroon Associates added a new focus on child welfare services.  Before the formation of Vroon Associates, Jim was the Director of Kan Focus, a very successful and now sustained system of care project in rural southeast Kansas.

Since 1994, he has been the principal investigator for a CMHS 5-year longitudinal system of care development project to develop community-based mental health services for children and families in 13 rural counties in southeast Kansas.  This has included developing and implementing models for integrated family resource centers supporting the system of care (funded by family support and preservation funds), community-based mental health services, alternative educational environments, after-school and mentoring programs, and an integrated early intervention and prevention system.  It has also included an extensive community assessment and planning process to develop the strategic plan for local control of juvenile justice and delinquency programs.  This process is creating a collaborative juvenile justice system that includes a lifespan prevention and early intervention.

For the past four years, much of his system support consultation has focused on child welfare systems.  This has included doing several extensive system evaluations, developing white papers on the impact of privatization, bifurcation, and system financing.  As a system design consultant, Dr. Rast has worked with programs in 27 states and 13 tribal governments to design and develop systems of care.  His work has focused on service design, program evaluation, personnel recruitment and management, staff training, and funding for programs.  This has included waivers for Medicaid funding, and changes in IV-B and IV-E strategies.  In addition, he wrote funded grants for substance abuse prevention, juvenile justice treatment and prevention programs, and family preservation and support to create local family resource centers, education grants to create neighborhood centers, after-school programs and mentoring.

Jim and his wife, Dee, live in Parker, Colorado.  They have four children, with the youngest one still home.  She is a junior in high school.  They have another daughter who is a college sophomore attending school in Georgia, a married son in North Carolina and a married daughter in Michigan.   When not traveling all over the country for Vroon VanDenBerg, LLP, and aside from an occasional date with Dee, Jim can usually be found at home working in his shop or greenhouse, or watching his beloved Tar Heels play ball.

You may contact Jim at (303) 790-4099 ext. 104 or e-mail jim@vroonvdb.com

Vroon VanDenBerg LLP, 10822 Quail Creek Drive East, Parker, CO  80138
(303) 790-4099 Phone (303) 790-1926 Fax
info @vroonvdb.com