 |
| Screen grab from the Binti online portal for families: one of three strategies to help recruit resource families |
Efforts like Continuum of Care Reform (CCR) in California are part of the statewide goal to place more foster youth in family settings. However, many county child welfare agencies are struggling to meet these goals due to a shortage of available resource families, a group that includes both foster parents and kinship caregivers. It is important to alleviate the shortage so that every child can have a stable, loving home.
Santa Barbara County has been able to increase the number of new resource families by 500% from 2015 to 2017, in part with a three-pronged technology strategy: a mobile-friendly online portal for families, a public-facing recruiting website, and software for social workers. Read on to learn more about this effort so far, and where it's going next!
DSS worked on this project with Binti, a company that builds software for government and private foster care agencies. In 2015, before the Binti software went live, 10 new families were recruited in our County. As the software launched in 2016, 36 new families were recruited. In 2017, 60 families were recruited (a 500% increase over 2015).
Here are the three strategies Santa Barbara County employed in developing a wider network of resource families.
Strategy #1: a mobile-friendly online portal for families
The status quo was that families would need to call or email the county and request an application. They also had to get a large physical pack of paperwork, which can be overwhelming. Further, the family had to wait to get started if the county was busy with other families. This could leave a negative first impression on the family, rather than letting them get started as soon as they are ready.
DSS worked with Binti to create an online portal that lets applicants complete their entire application online. The entire application is mobile-friendly, so applicants can apply on their computer, tablet or mobile phone. The great part is that if a family is interested, they can complete the entire application on their couch on a Friday night. They don’t need to wait for anyone to help them get started. This also gives a positive first impression to families that the county is making an effort to enhance their experience by making the process as easy as possible for them.
The application saves the progress of the applying family, thus allowing them to pick up where they left off should they decide to pause at anytime. Binti only asks applicants for information once, even if five different forms ask for their phone number, and it will populate it in all the right places. An applicant is able to upload copies of supporting documents such as identity documents and proof of car insurance.
We also automate references by automatically emailing their references a link to an online reference form. When the applicant is done, Binti lets them electronically sign their application and it’s submitted to the agency, eliminating the need to print, scan or fax.
Strategy #2: A public-facing recruiting website
DSS realized that families in the community who were interested in completing an online application might have some questions before getting started. They needed an informative, modern website for families to learn about the process of becoming a resource parent. That's where the Our County, Our Kids (OCOK) website comes in.
The OCOK website (ourcountyourkids.org) has information on fostering, adopting and volunteering. It also has frequently asked questions on the process, and testimonials from existing resource parents. The site is available in both English and Spanish. Finally, if the person is interested in getting started with an application to be a resource family, they can click the link to do so, which takes them to the online portal.
The website is one of several parts of the OCOK branding, media and recruitment campaign, launched in 2015 under a contract with Consortium Media. The contract was funded with Foster Parent Recruitment Retention & Support dollars which were allocated to the counties by CDSS to assist with Continuum of Care Reform implementation efforts.
In addition to the technological advances made in resource parent recruitment, OCOK uses tried-and-true techniques to reach potential resource families, including recruitment activities centered around community organizations, churches and schools. Gustavo Prado, the OCOK Coordinator, works with contracted recruitment specialists to find new resource families, and to offer support and guidance to our County resource homes.
Strategy #3: Software for Social Workers
Binti and DSS developed a solution that could help the team spend more time on social work and less time on paperwork.
The agency dashboard lets workers see, at a glance, all of the families and where they are in the process. They can see progress on the application, supporting documents, training hours, background checks, health screens, references, documents for other adults in the home, agency casework and more. Workers can also filter their applications to help them prioritize their time on applications that need the most immediate attention.
Applications are organized into different stages – applying, approved, withdrawn, etc. – and social workers have the ability to input new families via an intake form. The software also tracks renewals and will remind workers when renewals are due and when CPR certifications are expiring. Workers can also log and investigate complaints made on a family.
At the supervisor and director level, there are reports that help them manage their team and understand their agency’s data. Reports include case load summaries, approvals over time, public website analytics, geographic heat maps of families, and much more. Custom reports can also be pulled at will directly from the dashboard.
Moving forward: placement module to optimize matches
While a 500% increase in applying families is very exciting, it also poses challenges to the team to handle this increase. DSS and Binti continue to work together to come up with additional innovations, e.g. ways to automate administrative work for workers to help them save time and serve more families.
One such innovation is a placement module. DSS is working with Binti to add this module to our existing features, and it should be live in the next month or so. This module will allow staff in our Family Engagement and Placement unit to streamline manual placement searches and tracking, and make better placement matches for our kids in care.
Binti already has the data on all of the approved families – such as their address, capacity and child preferences. The new placement module will let the worker enter child information, and then surface which families could be the best fit. It will show the distance to school for each family to each child's school, and allow sorting by that. It will show which families would allow us to keep siblings together. It will also match based on a family's preferences and a child's characteristics. It will also let the placements team keep track of who they've called and who they still need to call.
Finally, it has the capability, in the future, to automate reach-outs to families, FFAs and group homes over text or email – with recipients able to reply if they have availability – which would reduce the workload of the placements team from having to call each one.
The big picture
A key part of the County's strategy for organizational sustainability, per the Renew '22 initiative, is to leverage technology to simultaneously improve service and increase efficiency. These technology initiatives are a great example of how that can work.