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“We have all this great data in Traverse. The way we're organizing it, we can pull it out in a meaningful way.” – Cathy Lytch, Social Services Director, Brunswick County Department of Social Services (DSS)

This feedback from a customer is one of the reasons why we built our flagship software Traverse® in the first place. We often hear how workers spend too much time collecting, entering, and verifying data, but not enough time using it to inform decisions and actions. The same goes for agency leaders who have a trove of valuable insight buried in their systems for collecting data for compliance and reporting.

Traverse®—Northwoods' cloud-based document management, forms management, mobility, and case discovery software—digitizes entire case files and mobilizes content to enable social work from anywhere. It surfaces critical information to help child welfare teams feel more supported and manage the complexity of today’s cases. As a result, agencies can better meet performance measures and permanency goals.

Behavioral assessments. Psychological reports. Safety plans. Court documents.
Medical histories. Risk factors. Protective factors. Traumatic triggers.
Previous interventions. Transitions and placements. Drug involvement.

Since the pandemic and so called “Great Resignation,” the staffing crisis has hit helping professions hard. These days it seems everyone is talking about it ... and for good reason. Long term care facilities, treatment centers, day cares and schools, and human services agencies—very few have not felt the effects of unprecedented levels of turnover and vacant positions.

In fact, Aysha E. Schomburg, associate commissioner for the Children’s Bureau, acknowledged the scope of the problem on the Child Welfare Information Gateway podcast, saying “I’m hearing about the mass resignations that are happening in our field, and our field is frankly in crisis.”

Human services caseworkers are constantly exchanging information with people outside the agency, yet historically have lacked the right tools to support the process. We built our secure portal, Traverse® Connect, to solve agencies’ collaboration and client engagement problems—and here’s why.

Since 2016, the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) final rule continues to change the way child welfare and human services leaders think about technology and innovation.

Beyond shifting the focus from monolithic to modular systems, it has sparked an industry-wide shift in thinking about how case data and information can and should be stored and shared for the good of the client. Further, it has empowered us to embrace flexibility and human-centered design, bring emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to the forefront, and raise the bar to deliver the highest quality of services to the most vulnerable.

These advances have been around in other industries for a while. To see them now making an impact in child welfare is exciting, especially when there hasn’t been an investment this big since Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) regulations were first created in the early 90s!

Social worker burnout and turnover have always been a significant problem in human and social services. Turnover in child welfare has ranged from 20-40% annually for the last two decades. But today the stakes are higher than ever. Frontline workers are mentally, emotionally, and physically drained.

Editor’s note: We originally published this post in March 2020—just days after the start of the pandemic as many caseworkers and agency leaders were still navigating the transition to remote work. Nearly two years later, we’ve learned that remote and hybrid work models are now here to stay.

Social services agencies have found benefits in hybrid and remote options for their workforce and clients alike and have begun to implement permanent flexible work polices to stay competitive to applicants. Despite the benefits, the task of fundamentally shifting work models is still a challenge. The same tips are still applicable, but the impact has changed, especially now that the social services workforce is in crisis.

“If we can use our resources to prop the family up and mitigate risks to keep the children in the home, that's an agency win for us at all levels—financial, resource support, workload management. That's what we strive to do as an entire child welfare division.”

Hannah Webster, child welfare manager at Mesa County Department of Human Services, is one of many customers we’ve spoken to over the years to learn why their agency has invested in our document management, forms management, and mobility software, Traverse®, in child welfare.

As another year comes to a close, it's time to recap our top blogs of 2021.

Below is a countdown of this year's posts that our readers found most insightful. Remember, you can subscribe any time to make sure you never miss out on future content.