Casey Foundation Grantee Featured in Policy & Practice

The Amer­i­can Pub­lic Human Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion fea­tured Case Com­mons, a Casey Foun­da­tion grantee, in its June 2015 issue of Pol­i­cy & Prac­tice, a lead­ing author­i­ty on pub­lic human services.

In the arti­cle, the Foundation’s Tere­sa Markowitz cites Cas­es Com­mons’ case man­age­ment tool, Case­book, as an exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can improve the qual­i­ty of case­work and child wel­fare services.

The men­tion is part of a broad­er look at the crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy deficit found in today’s human ser­vices agen­cies due to reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers and pro­cure­ment chal­lenges. ​“Despite these road­blocks,” says Markowitz, ​“real tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion in human ser­vices is pos­si­ble — and with­in reach.” The sto­ry also cel­e­brates a recent fed­er­al waiv­er that is unleash­ing new tech­nol­o­gy oppor­tu­ni­ties in the human ser­vices sec­tor and offer­ing state and local agen­cies more lever­age to break log­jams and achieve their tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion goals.

The arti­cle iden­ti­fies Case Com­mons as a prime exam­ple of how greater fed­er­al fund­ing can improve tech­nol­o­gy oppor­tu­ni­ties for state agen­cies, which can lead to bet­ter ser­vices and out­comes for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies and chil­dren. The state of Indi­ana has suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed Case­book as a com­po­nent of its updat­ed child wel­fare sys­tem, and it will con­tin­ue to fund soft­ware updates and main­te­nance for the tech­nol­o­gy thanks to a new fed­er­al waiv­er grant­ed in 2014. In Markowitz’s words, this suc­cess shows ​“how small moves can yield big results.”

To learn more about Case Com­mons and the role of fed­er­al financ­ing in improv­ing tech­nol­o­gy for human ser­vices, read the full arti­cle.