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Putting the Human Touch Back in Government Service

Kentucky automates its child protection service, allowing caseworkers to spend more time with their clients -- the children.

It is a common lament: When seeking help from the government, you spend more time dealing with machines, voice mail and form letters than with human beings. Over the past few years, the Commonwealth of Kentucky Child Protection Agency -- which maintains information on about 40,000 cases at a time -- found itself swamped with paperwork.


"Up until two years ago, we had no automation to speak of," said Ishamel Preston, implementation manager for the office of Child Protection Services. "People are what our job is all about -- helping the children, making sure they are cared for properly and helping parents to provide that care -- but it also means paperwork and tracking. The office was spending way too much time filling out forms and it was wasteful, both financially and resource wise."

With the help of the Pennsylvania-based Unisys Corp., the commonwealth developed TWIST: The Workers Information SysTem, a client/server application that has freed caseworkers from their cubicles and put them back in front of the kids that needed help.

The Kids

"TWIST has been a lifesaver, probably in real ways that we will never be able to calculate," said Karen Hurt, family services worker and chief with the agency. One of the biggest benefits she has seen is that one entry populates into a variety of forms and areas in the system. A child and their vital statistics now only have to be entered once, and when a new form must be filed, the basic information is already filled in.

"It is our job every day -- and often in the middle of the night -- to follow up on reports of abuse and neglect, to find foster homes where we can place children that we have found in untenable situations, and to help parents do a better job, if that is what is needed," explained Hurt. "Our people need to be in the field to do any real good." That was hard to do when workers spent most of their time filling out paperwork in quadruplicate, one form after another.



"TWIST has been a lifesaver, probably in real ways that we will never be able to calculate."


Children placed in foster homes often need to be driven to doctors and psychiatrist appointments, or maybe just to visit family members. Being available "in the field" helps caseworkers evaluate the child's living situation, explained Hurt. When there is an abuse or neglect report, caseworkers need to be on the phone or walking the neighborhood, talking to neighbors and family members, asking questions to ferret out the truth.

The system also assists caseworkers in making sure that cases don't "slip through the cracks or that a family with a problem didn't just slide from county to county to stay ahead of the game," said Hurt. Previously, if a case came up that a caseworker hasn't seen before, he or she would have to call CPS offices in other counties for a record on the family. Now, it's just a couple of clicks and the whole case history is on their screen.

Implementation

Unisys came in late in the development effort and assisted in completing the design specifications, system development and testing of the system. They also provided implementation services and supported the system's roll out to 129 offices statewide. TWIST has cost the commonwealth $11 million thus far, but they now have over 2,000 computer work stations helping the agency to serve its 3,713,000 individual client base.

Recently, the state begin to roll out laptop computers for use by agents in the field. The roll out is starting small -- computers were supplied to six different CPS offices in October -- but workers think it will have a huge impact.

"I am on-call this weekend coming up. I will wear my pager and can be called in to duty at any time of the day or night," said Hurt. "Well, if I have a case call at two o'clock in the morning and I need to place a child in foster care right then, it means making phone calls to every foster parent we have until I find one with an opening. If I've got a laptop with me, I could type in the child's situation and parameters and any openings should pop right up on screen." Having a laptop would also save Hurt the time of driving 30 minutes to her office in town to look up a case history -- time that could instead be used helping a child.

Still, even without the laptops, Kentucky's investment has paid off in terms of user satisfaction and peer recognition.

"This has completely automated the process of child protection; we are keeping more accurate records, not wasting time duplicating paperwork in various departments, and our records are more timely than ever before," said Preston. "The system is relatively easy to learn and to use and we are able to spend more time where it counts now. In addition, this has made state and federal reporting requirements easier than ever and, especially with some of the added features we will be implementing in the next few months, we are saving the commonwealth money.

"We are currently bringing up an internal e-mail system and, while I don't have exact savings estimates, we are certain that this is going to mean even less money spent on paperwork, stamps and phone calls across the state."

Funding

In July, Kentucky's child welfare management system was recognized by the National Association of State Information Resource Executives (NASIRE). TWIST was one of nine entries selected out of 50 from 19 states and recognized with the association's Innovative Use of Technology Award. To many state executives though, it is perhaps just as impressive that Kentucky found the money for such a massive information makeover in an era of belt tightening and budget crunching. According to the commonwealth's Preston, it was just a matter of taking advantage of what was available.

Their key was in leveraging the state's available money with a federal fund that was designed to encourage state child protection services offices to utilize technology to help them do their job better. The federal government's State Automated Child Welfare Information Fund put up 75 percent of the money needed, while Kentucky only had to kick in with the 25 percent left over.

Challenges

Still, with its early success, Preston admits there have been some challenges to implementing the system.

"From a management standpoint, this is a perfect dream; we know that in the long run it means better, more efficient service for our clients in the commonwealth," said Preston. "But a lot of people here have been doing things a certain way for a long time and it didn't involve much automation until now. When you talk to the workers, the feedback seems to have no in-between ground -- they either love the system or it is a pain." The agency had to do several levels of training to get people up to speed and comfortable with using the system.

"It has been challenging sometimes, but we are so busy that we really never had a chance to slow down. Sometimes when we were confused or the system had a glitch we resorted to paper, but we never slowed down," explained Hurt. "Now, just about everyone is up to speed and there will come a time, I believe, when people will look back on the days of handwritten paperwork like it is a myth. There will be a time when everyone will say: 'How did they ever do all this on paper?'"


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