Serving abused and neglected youth with better business processes and connected departments

To better serve the needs of the region’s abused and neglected youth, the City of Hamburg, Germany, wanted to improve the processes for client intake and case management. To address these challenges, the organization partnered with Cúram to design and deploy an outcomes-based solution that would help standardize processes and automate workflows.

The challenge of prevalent child abuse and neglect 

Fighting fraud, waste and abuse 

The prevalence of child abuse and neglect is a major problem in Germany. In the City of Hamburg (also a federal state of Germany), the responsibility of protecting this vulnerable population falls to the seven local Jugendämter (Youth Welfare offices) in the seven districts of Hamburg, with approximately 40 local agencies and two special organizational units for the whole city area. The Hamburg Authority of Labour, Family and Integration (Hamburger Behörde für Arbeit, Soziales, Familie und Integration [BASFI]) is responsible for the defining and monitoring the policies, and provides the financial and technical resources for the local agencies.

To better serve the needs of the region’s abused and neglected youth, BASFI wanted to drastically improve the processes for client intake and case management, as well as overall organizational effectiveness and communication.

Specific business needs included:

• Improved speed and efficiency: Social workers received police reports containing allegations of child abuse and neglect by fax machine. The faxing process was slow and difficult to manage.

• Enhanced collaboration: Existing systems did not adequately support timely communication of case data and insights among various district and specialist authorities.

• Data integration: Multiple legacy systems were in use that did not communicate effectively with one another, leaving gaps in critical information. 

Transformation story 

Customized solution designed and deployed 

To address these challenges, the organization partnered with Cúram to design and deploy an outcomes-based solution that would help standardize processes and automate workflows. The result was JUS-IT, a business application based upon Cúram’s Child Welfare solution. It includes components for social program management, support, verification, provider management, social enterprise collaboration and appeals. The solution was implemented in two stages over four years.

In Stage 1, standards for the JUS-IT solution were determined and Cúram modules were deployed for general social services, including foster care, nursing care services and youth welfare financial expenditures. An interface between JUS-IT and SAP enables all expenses and claims for youth services to be fully settled.

In Stage 2, BASFI’s inventory procedure system, PROJUGA, was replaced by additional Cúram modules to support the areas of alimony, custody, guardianship, maternity leave and juvenile court assistance.

JUS-IT provides the local and special agencies of youth and family welfare with extensive integrated case management capabilities, allowing them to better document their interactions with children and families as well as information related to services, contacts, worker visits and judicial processes. Caseworkers can easily view and manage the information they need to help clients. And because rules and regulations frequently change, the ability to submit electronic rather than paper files helps BASFI improve its regulatory compliance.

The solution also enables better collaboration between caseworkers and departments across multiple agencies. The social workers can access a single application that supports the full range of case activities — from the point of initial receipt of an allegation or other contact through to a final conclusion of reunification, adoption or independent living.

For example, when a child neglect allegation is made, the details of the initial intake assessment immediately lead to the creation of a child protection case. Supporting information, such as police reports, is imported directly 4 from the police department into the system and forwarded to the appropriate department for processing. The system is then used on an ongoing basis to manage all aspects of the child protection process, leading to greater system efficiency and helping ensure that children are put first.

Using the Cúram workflow management solution, BASFI defines and maintains workflows to ensure that best practices are followed and to improve the speed, consistency and quality of its business processes.

For example, when a child protection case is raised, a workflow is set in motion that automatically alerts a supervisor if the case has not been selected from the work queue by a caseworker within 24 hours. This ensures that serious child protection issues are dealt with promptly. Other business-critical workflows manage the handling of cases from initial task assignment right through to case closure and conclusion, as well as the automatic generation of letters and case correspondence. JUS-IT is also fully integrated with the City of Hamburg’s existing financial systems, and an interface supports the settlement of medical services. 

[getModule name="blockquote" quote="The JUS-IT system provides the local and special agencies of youth and family welfare with extensive integrated case management capabilities." author="Employee at Hamburg Authority of Labour, Family and Integration"]

Results

Serving children, families and social workers

By enabling multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation, the JUS-IT solution is helping the Jugendämter and police authorities make informed decisions as they interact with children at risk of harm and families in crisis.

Implementation resulted in a significant decrease in time required to bi-directionally exchange data between social workers and police. Since BASFI first implemented JUS-IT, it has seen a greater than 60 percent increase in cases processed over five years compared to the legacy system.

The fully operational JUS-IT system includes:

• 1,300+ users

• 200,000+ cases

• 370,000+ clients in the system

• 50,000 transactions processed per month