Blog

Our blog isn’t about us. It’s about you. We discuss business challenges and real issues human service agencies and caseworkers face everyday. You’ll find traditional human services software articles about things like document management for human services and social work technology. But you’ll also find inspirational stories to boost caseworkers’ spirits and tools to help agencies find and gain support for technology in human services.

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2023 by Team Northwoods

Creating a Sustainable Workforce: 3 Keys to Support Human Services Heroes

Sustaining the workforce. Increasing capacity. Building resiliency. If you work in human services, you’re certainly familiar with these terms.

As agencies across the country continue to feel the effects of staffing shortages and a shrinking pool of quality candidates to fill their vacant positions, leaders are looking to address one of the major underlying causes contributing to the workforce crisis—staff burnout.

The reasons for burnout are many, including long hours, low pay, and lack of support. While many workers who enter the field expect the job to be stressful, they don’t anticipate the added burden of paperwork and bureaucracy. Yet, 64% of their burnout stems from these work-related causes.

Read More
Posted Monday, August 28, 2023 by Brittany Traylor

Links We Love: Change Management Resources for Human Services

If you’ve ever started a new health or fitness regimen, you know this feeling: you recognize that trading in your existing habits for something better will have a positive impact on your well-being. But getting started seems so … daunting.

 

In human services, the same goes for making change on an organizational level. Whether you’re implementing a new tool, technology, policy, or practice model, it may seem scary at first, but it gets better as you begin to experience the value and benefits of change.

We recently published our own change management guide, Change Management 101: Empowering Human Services Agencies to Embrace Innovation, to ease your journey. Today we thought it would also be helpful to round up expert resources. Keep reading for an overview of how each resource can help you.

Read More
Posted Monday, July 31, 2023 by Team Northwoods

Change Champions: The Key to Modernizing Human Services Technology

You may have heard the adage “technology projects are people projects.” This is because when your human services agency embarks on a modernization initiative, the technology itself isn’t what drives the change. People do. If workers aren’t willing to open their minds or change their habits, the technology won’t provide value and your agency won’t realize the intended return on investment. To be successful, you have to lead with change from start to finish.

Read More
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2023 by Team Northwoods

Elevating the User Experience Through Product Education [Q&A]

Human services software needs to be simple, intuitive, and meaningful for today’s caseworkers to use and love it. At Northwoods, this concept is at the foundation of everything we do—from how we build our products, to how we train and support the workers who use them.

However, we know that even the most tech-savvy workers need a little extra help sometimes. You may hear us talk about “software that supports itself,” which allows users to get help when and how they want. But what does that really mean? We invited our product education team to give us a behind-the-scenes look at how our efforts continue to grow to meet customers’ needs.

Read More
Posted Friday, June 30, 2023 by Laura Haffield

Unlocking Innovation: How Code for America and Minnesota are Charting a New Path

The public health emergency has significantly altered the delivery of government assistance programs over the past four years and has also spurred on a great deal of innovation to better serve those in need. Traditional concepts of what it looks like to apply for benefits have drastically changed.

Read More
Posted Tuesday, June 20, 2023 by Team Northwoods

Overcoming Obstacles That Slow Organizational Change in Human Services

Change is hard, especially in human services. When you’re so committed to empowering clients and families to change their own behaviors, it can be challenging to flip the lens and see the value of change for yourself—especially when your capacity is already limited.

There are plenty of reasons that human services agencies may be hesitant to change that often boil down to the same key issue: workers are already so overwhelmed they simply don’t have time and energy to add one more thing to their plate.

Read More
Posted Wednesday, May 24, 2023 by Brittany Traylor

How Technology Can Help Build a Child's Foster Care Story

Children are deserving of their story. And a connection to their family. The impacts of foster care and out-of-home placement vary for each child but have been proven to cause unique challenges that affect a child’s behavioral, emotional, and mental health. However, providing a detailed and comprehensive story of a child’s journey can help mitigate potential negative impacts and vastly contribute to their future well-being.  

Read More
Posted Wednesday, May 10, 2023 by Team Northwoods

A Fresh Approach to Electronic Forms in Human Services

Releases of information and consents.
Court orders and modifications.
Income statements and employment verifications.

These are just a few examples of the hundreds of forms that human services agencies rely on to operate every day. Forms are essentially an agency’s primary method of communication—both internally and externally. They also support the adage, “if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen.”

This is why many agencies have recognized the importance of digitizing their forms as a first step toward increasing their efficiency, timeliness, and service delivery capacity. Most importantly, when forms can be completed, signed, and submitted electronically and from anywhere, families can reach their goals in a timelier manner.

Read More
Posted Thursday, April 6, 2023 by Laura Haffield

Modern Technology Tools for Supporting the Human Services Workforce

The current workforce crisis facing the helping professions, including all programs within human services, unfortunately isn’t going away any time soon. Workforce issues will be top of mind for both local and state human services agencies for the next several years, as well as a priority communicated by federal partners. As we come out of Social Work Month with a renewed focus on empowering workers, what better time to talk about how technology is supporting the workforce today?

At Northwoods, we take pride in developing tools that help ease the day-to-day burdens on caseworkers and social workers across the country so they can focus on clients and families. However, we know that’s just one piece of the puzzle. A lot of today’s most impactful technology is targeted toward supporting workers themselves. This is critical since a happy and stable workforce has long been shown to have dramatic positive impacts on the citizens they serve.

Read More
Posted Monday, March 13, 2023 by Team Northwoods

Every Case File, One Solution: The Future of Human Services Software

A child welfare worker evaluating a report of neglect needs to know what other resources and services the family has tried to access (think food assistance or child care) to determine what supports are already in place or might be needed to keep a child is safe at home. A child welfare worker completing a reunification assessment also needs to know if parents have complied with their child support agreement.

Read More
Pages:
Prev
1 2 3 4 5