Page 16 - Federal Computer Week, January/February 2019

High-Impact Government Engagement
Better outcomes
for children and families
Protecting children requires rethinking how we use technology to enable the important work of child welfare
Valerie Armbrust
Managing Director of North America Child Services, Accenture
and is often spread across multiple agencies, denying caseworkers ready access to data. In fact, far too often caseworkers must comb through reams of paper documents or multiple computer screens for pertinent case and family information.
At Accenture, we realized that if we were serious about changing the outcomes for families and their children, simply adding new technology to today’s systems would not be enough. Instead, we brought together representatives from across the child welfare ecosystem — judges, caseworkers, supervisors, providers, educators and young people who had been in foster care — and worked with them to identify what a new child welfare solution should look like.
The result, the Accenture Case Insight Solution (ACIS), was designed and built
IN THE U.S., there are 4 million reports of child abuse and neglect every year. Every day, five children die under
those conditions. In the face of that reality, we must push ourselves to think differently about how we approach child welfare. It’s time to be bold and challenge the status quo: What would better outcomes look like? What role can technology play in achieving them? How might technology provide insights that keep more children safely at home with their families? In cases where children need to go into foster care, how can we make sure they find permanency sooner?
At the heart of those answers is human- centered, outcome-based service delivery that weaves together technology and casework. It isn’t about simply deploying better or faster technology for caseworkers;
it’s about placing families and their children at the center of every investment and interaction.
A human-centric approach engages families and empowers them to succeed. It also provides caseworkers with deep — and timely — insights and information on the children they serve.
From reactive to
proactive intervention
The more information we can gather on families, the more effectively we can help them. Yet existing child welfare systems
are often siloed and support reactionary, compliance-based workflows. In other words, they are not designed for human-centered, proactive intervention in a child’s life.
Information often sits in different systems
davooda/Shutterstock/FCW Staff
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