Policy & Practice | August 2019

locally speaking By David A. Hansell

Leveraging Technology to Strengthen New York City’s Child Welfare System

W e all know how important tech- nology is. Of course, it’s helpful when you need to access breaking news, order a taxi, or look up direc- tions. But, in the human services industry it’s even more critical—poten- tially life or death. New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) is respon- sible for protecting the safety and well-being of the city’s children. Each year, our child protective special- ists (CPS) conduct more than 60,000 investigations of possible child abuse and neglect. As you can imagine, it’s immensely challenging work and our success rests on thousands of com- mitted and courageous staff who carry out this work. It’s of the utmost importance that child protective staff be well-equipped and fully supported. With this in mind, I’ve paid close attention to the ways in which better technology could strengthen their work and make it more efficient. Last year we provided more than 2,000 front-line child protection staff with electronic tablets. These tablets enable our staff to access critical infor- mation while conducting investigations out in the field. The tablets also allow CPS to maintain timely documentation during down time between home visits, waiting for a case to be called in Family Court, or sitting on a subway. This means they don’t have to run back to the office after each visit and can nowwrite their notes on-the-go. Giving CPS the capability to work in real time helps us enhance child safety, reduce overtime hours, and improve morale overall. In addition to their tablets, our CPS now have access to new

investigators’ progress on every case, and monitor key performance indi- cators comparing their teams to the system as a whole. This is a major step toward automating what have previ- ously been manual and burdensome processes, and we will be making this valuable tool available to our provider agencies over the coming months. Both of these new technological enhancements are part of a much larger effort ACS has put forth to strengthen child protection work here in New York City. We’re also using technology to help ensure that CPS can get to families across New York City much more quickly. Many abuse and neglect reports are called in at night, over weekends, or on holidays and they are dispersed across the more than 300 square miles of the city’s five boroughs.

software known as the Safe Measures Dashboard. Technology and other improvements have enabled us to reduce average caseloads, but CPS generally have to interview multiple individuals relating to each child in a family’s case. Imagine: if a family has three children—that’s three different teachers to interview, maybe three dif- ferent doctors to interview, along with friends, cousins, neighbors, and so on. The Safe Measures dashboard, devel- oped by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, helps staff keep track of next steps and deadlines on all their active investigations and moni- toring cases. The software also means that our front-line workers can dig deeper into the history of ACS involve- ment with the families and children on their caseloads. And it allows supervisors and managers to view each caseworker’s workload, track

See Locally Speaking on page 31

Image via Shutterstock

3

August 2019 Policy&Practice