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August 2016
Policy&Practice
35
Powering Better Child Welfare and Social Services
technology
speaks
By Mark Allen
D
espite national spending on child
welfare services reaching $28.2
billion (according to the latest data
from 2012), caseworkers across the
country are burdened with heavy
caseloads and cumbersome tools. With
the welfare of hundreds of thousands
of children at stake, anything that
can make the day-to-day life of case-
workers easier would yield massive
benefits, both socially and financially.
This is not a new understanding. In
1993, the federal government devel-
oped regulations around a statewide
automated child welfare information
system (SACWIS). This technology
was supposed to simplify the process
of information gathering and stream-
line case management for states that
adopted it. Unfortunately, in many
cases, it did not achieve these results,
and over the last 23 years many states
have been left with a myriad of legacy
systems that are not always effective.
Proposed changes in federal rules
could allow states to modernize
their systems with much simpler and
more efficient solutions. One of the
most critical components of success
for solutions is a business rules
engine (BRE). A BRE is an advanced
software technology that helps child
welfare agencies automate rules that
govern decision-making, as well as
easily make changes when regula-
tions change. This kind of agility can
make the daily lives of caseworkers
far easier. Crucially, a BRE can allow
them to leverage existing data to make
better decisions that could positively
impact children and their families.
The 23-Year Legacy
of SACWIS
The initial goal of SACWIS regula-
tions was to establish a comprehensive,
one-size-fits-all case management
system for agencies in a particular
jurisdiction. While not required, 34
states have adopted SACWIS to provide
child welfare services. States hoped to
make data collection easier and better
determine eligibility for Title IV-E, a
reimbursement that states get from
the federal government for the costs of
administering child welfare and foster
care programs.
However, many systems have
been hindered by severe glitches. In
Michigan, eight months after imple-
menting their $61 million system in
2014, they were still dealing with
delayed payments to foster care pro-
viders, lost case files and an inability
to close cases, among other issues.
Officials were fixing up to 100 defects
per month.
The list goes on: In Tennessee, case-
workers have been dealing with bugs
in their system since it was created in
2010, reporting that even entering data
about child visits—a basic task critical
to daily work—required herculean
effort. In Oregon, foster care parents
weren’t getting their payments on
time, and caseworkers had difficulty
accessing data about response times to
child abuse reports. In 2007, Ohio’s $92
million SACWIS developed data issues
that could have caused agencies to lose
track of foster children.
Technology and child welfare
practices have undergone significant
changes since 1993, and many agencies
complain their SACWIS is slow and
inefficient. In Michigan, system mal-
functions required submitting an IT
ticket that took two to three days to
resolve. For a child, “two or three days
could be a matter of life and death,”
See Child Welfare on page 47
Photo illustration by Chris Campbell