The only way out of the capacity crisis is to serve our customers completely and immediately. And data can now help us do this, when used correctly and applied at the most opportune time.
When the public health emergency (PHE) and pandemic waivers come to an end, agencies must renew all existing Medicaid recipients. For many agencies already struggling with staff capacity to meet existing demand, they will no doubt be overwhelmed. To help agencies prepare for and tackle the wave of renewal workload, we offer specific steps that agencies can take to meet this increased demand.
While it is wonderful to recognize the heroes during National Foster Care Month, we must also be aware of the realities of the foster care system and be willing to make a change. A change that will allow the heroes we celebrate to shine, unencumbered by complicated, outdated processes. If we take a glance through the lens of capacity, we will find a starting point so that we can do more good for children and families.
Turnover is an unprecedented challenge that threatens the well-being of children. But staff is hard to find, harder to retain, and we are hiring back into the same systems that haven’t addressed fundamental challenges that have existed for decades. The only way to improve this reality to rethink our approach.
What if, instead of working so hard to appreciate the sacrifice, child welfare leaders took a long look in the mirror to see why social workers must sacrifice work-life balance in the first place? Maybe the question isn't about how we appreciate social workers well. Maybe the real question is how we get off the hamster wheel and create system capacity, so appreciation is reserved for a job well done, not to make up for a personal life lost.
For more than a year we shifted work to a virtual platform out of necessity, and as we safely return to in-person activities it would be easy to sprint as fast as possible back to “the way we did things before COVID-19”. But, what if instead of sprinting we took the time to pause and reflect? Perhaps some of our new virtual practices make child welfare better.
The goals associated with Family First are both noble and needed. If we do not fix our capacity crisis in child welfare, we may never see the results we hope to achieve.
The new promise of CCWIS is to build systems that support and coach and help caseworkers move the work.
Human Service Agencies across the country are grappling with a new wave of customers seeking support—many for the first time—due to the COVID-19 health crisis and subsequent economic downturn.
While new technology can help us with everything from tracking work to enhancing our safety models, by itself it’s not enough.
