In December, following the death of four young girls in a family that “fell through the cracks” of Washington's social services network, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced major changes to the city's Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA), including a requirement for more detailed reporting in the agency's cases. One of Fenty's proposed reforms to CFSA procedures is a requirement for more complete descriptions of information that caseworkers gather in the field and the entry of that data into the CFSA information management system. Members of a public/private partnership, the Family Services Technology (FaSTech) Council, say the Washington case is not unique and are outlining how technology can improve caseworkers' performance to reduce failures in the social services system.

Formed in August 2007, the FaSTech Council is comprised of private technology companies and associations, including the Arlington, Va.-based Child Welfare League of America, Seattle-based Casey Family Programs and the Washington-based National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Scott Eckert, one of the council's founders, formed the organization after his company, Austin, Texas-based Motion Computing, finished a project with the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) that provided mobile computing technology to caseworkers to improve production and job satisfaction. DFPS has 3,000 caseworkers who handle approximately 300,000 abuse cases a year. “They were very paper-based out in the field,” he says. “[They] were seeing a combination of data transcription errors. People were out in the field making notes on a piece of paper, and then they'd come back and type it into the system. There were errors produced in that process.” Also, there was a delay, sometimes of four or five days, between the caseworker's visit to a family and data entry.

As part of the project, the caseworkers received hand-held, clipboard-sized tablet computers with wireless Internet connections that allowed them to update records from the field. In addition, Texas officials implemented a transcription service for caseworkers to call in their notes immediately after contacting a family. The service operator converts the notes to an electronic format for caseworkers.

For the DFPS service to be successful, writing information down early is critical, particularly when the caseworker receives another call about the family, says Thomas Chapman, a former DFPS commissioner who now works as a consultant and is involved with FaSTech. “The longer they wait to write it down, the less involved it is. There's less information, [and it is less accurate],” he says. “In our business, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen.”

With the new technology, 76 percent of the Texas caseworkers reported that they were completing their documentation faster, Eckert says. Also, 63 percent said the quality of their documentation increased. “Because they were capturing and entering the data right after they saw the family, they remembered everything,” he says.

FaSTech is researching how similar technology is being implemented around the country. The council hopes to complete a white paper on best practices by mid-2008, Eckert says.

NASW is working with FaSTech on the study and plans to distribute the white paper to the organization's 150,000 members, says Tracy Whitaker, director of NASW's Center for Workforce Studies. Better technology also may help agencies retain caseworkers. “You can't hold on to people if they're constantly under siege or overwhelmed by paperwork,” Whitaker says.