The conversation around finding ways to effectively support the Health and Human Services (HHS) workforce and set them up for success is nothing new. Agencies across the country are facing detrimental workforce shortages as a result of recruitment, retention, and resiliency challenges. What’s more, is that challenges like these are leaking from the inside of the organization out, negatively impacting clients and ultimately, their outcomes. Making the day-to-day experience for workers easier, reducing their administrative burden, and fostering a healthier, more efficient work environment is critical to making a change.
Adult Services caseworkers, while not often extensively highlighted, face many of the same challenges as those that we see among Child Welfare workers. These individuals carry overwhelming caseloads, witness difficult family situations, and struggle with burn-out caused by an excess of administrative burden. Unfortunately, in the HHS Information Technology (IT) industry, the needs of Adult Services agencies are sometimes overshadowed by major systemic changes in Child Welfare. Yet, Adult Services programs have nearly identical IT and organizational needs, meaning that the innovative point solutions being used for Child Welfare can be applied for Adult Services to make an impact.
Workers in Adult Services are seemingly always playing catch up, struggling to manage home visits and administrative tasks while already carrying abnormally large caseloads. It is difficult for workers to get upstream and provide the best support for clients when there are only so many hours in the day. Further, Adult Services clients are in a vulnerable position and often struggle with trusting the system, making the quality time workers spend with them all the more important. That said, finding ways to give these workers more time is a big step in the right direction and technology can help.
Workflow management solutions streamline case management tasks, making them more efficient to reduce administrative burden and give back valuable time for workers to spend time building a trusting relationship with their clients. NCT CaseWorks provides robust capabilities to alleviate these burdens for over 200 human services organizations nationally.
With features like Auto-Fill Forms and Packets, Automated Workflows and Document Routing, Strong Security and Permissions, and more, NCT’s CaseWorks makes on-paper processes simple. In Washington County, the eSignature feature alone saves workers 30-40 minutes per assessment. Now, workers have 30-40 more minutes to spend with their clients, and that’s just one of the many features of CaseWorks that optimizes workers’ day-to-day experience.
CaseWorks is an enterprise content management platform that supports agencies’ document management & workflow automation needs and is being used to save time for Adult Services workers today. Washington County, Minnesota’s 75-person Adult and Aging team needed efficiency and intuitive features to help navigate the complex eligibility process for their most vulnerable citizens. Their team processed cases solely on paper. Paper processing required hours of tedious data entry, time in the car acquiring and shuffling cases from office-to-field-to-office, and agonizingly slow postal mail delivery for form completion. Then, in 2017, Washington County and NCT partnered for change, to streamline processes and make the lives of their workers, and ultimately, their clients, easier.
By reducing the time that workers spend on paper-based administrative tasks, not only is CaseWorks giving back time for Adult Services workers to spend with clients, but it is reducing stress, increasing organizational productivity, and helping to foster a healthier environment for workers. At the agency level, the improved worker experience aids in recruitment, retention, and resiliency, helping them to take a big step in the right direction as they aim to solve ongoing challenges related to HHS-wide workforce shortages.
To learn more about how NCT’s CaseWorks can make an impact for your Adult Services workforce, contact us today!
