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Child welfare agenciesare always adapting. As the landscape continuously shifts, so do the demands on child welfare workers, who must be equipped with the right tools to respond quickly and effectively, no matter where they are.

Mobile technology enables workers to stay connected, access and share important information on the go, and streamline their work. In turn, workers can focus on fostering relationships, providing holistic support, and helping families make positive change to achieve their goals.

Another year is coming to a close and that means it's time to recap our top blogs of 2023. Whether you're new here (welcome!) or a regular reader (welcome back!), we hope you'll find something new and insightful in this year's list.

Subscribe to the blog via email so you never miss out on future content or get in touch with our team if certain trends, topics, or challenges are on your mind as we head into the new year. As always, thanks for reading along with us!

Child welfare technology is constantly evolving: trends ebb and flow, policies and mandates change, and new tools become available seemingly every day. Beyond changing how work gets done, it’s also changing the way you talk about it—both about your challenges and how technology can be used to help solve them.

We’ve compiled a list of terms you’ve likely heard or read about related to technology, along with their definitions, how they relate to each other, and what they mean for child welfare.

Adult & aging caseworkers are stretched for time and resources trying to balance paperwork requirements and spending quality time with clients. They want to focus on assessing clients’ needs and coordinating services, but administrative roadblocks stand in the way.

“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.

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.

“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.