Non-profits, charities and social services…cont…1
The rule of thumb in the human services is that one in three people are using one of these services at any given time. If you were to include all those people who use primary healthcare services, you’d pretty much have the whole population using these services, which underscores the fundamental necessity of these services.
The human services movement is a cornerstone of civil society and if trends are any indication it continues to grow and develop as our society changes. The essential element provided by these organizations is Care for the individual.
Everyday legions of community social and health workers, social advocates and emergency personnel, make judgements and decisions concerning the lives of people needing assistance. Sometimes these decisions can mean the difference between life and death, between a successful future or continued trauma and distress.[1] These workers have an enormous responsibility to make the right decisions day in and day out; and for the social workers and case managers in human services fields today, it is their training, instincts and their experience through which most of their decisions are ultimately based.
While most of these workers deserve respect for their dedication and their competency, it is an unfair burden that society places on them that they are responsible for the lives of so many people and do not have the adequate tools to back them up in making the best decisions possible. These workers are hampered by outdated and ineffective government and agency information systems and often by poor performance practices brought on by overloaded services. There is a lack of coordination between services and information exchange is poor if existent at all. Many government systems are still paper based with records scattered across multiple office locations and across jurisdictional boundaries. Outmoded “green screen” systems are often time consuming and inadequate[2] and lead to enormous practice inefficiencies in both government services and community services[3]. Yes, they are still being used!
Over the last decade a trend has begun to emerge in human services organizations, the development of Case Management[4] as a practice and the response by the IT community to develop case management applications to provide supporting technology to this practice.
The concept of case management is relatively straightforward and is one of those ideas which are so obvious it seems extraordinary that we even discuss it as something new. And in fact case management is not new, but has been practiced in the medical profession for many years and most of the literature on case management comes from the nursing, geriatrics and mental health professions. I’d bet Florence Nightingale would appreciate case management practice. It is however, a more recent trend in human services organizations.
In short, case management as a practice is, according to the Association of Social Workers, “a method of providing services whereby a professional social worker assesses the needs of the client and the client’s family, when appropriate, and arranges, coordinates, monitors, evaluates, and advocates for a package of multiple services to meet the specific client’s complex needs.”[5]
The trick, of course, is to be able to manage all of the information of that extensive advocacy with not only one client, but maybe 100 or more for each worker in your organization. Once you’ve managed to create a filing and retrieval systems for that information, you then need to compile all of that information to report on your organization as whole and the outcomes of your service delivery, your successes, all associated costs, expenditures, income, and service levels and do it based on relevant statistical standards for your funders and Board. No small task.
[1]http://www.qp.gov.bc.ca/gove/
[2]CWS/CMS Technical Architecture Alternatives Analysis Report, 2003 produced for the California Department of Social Services by Eclipse Solutions, Inc.
[3]The Non-Profit Sector’s $100 Billion Opportunity, by Bill Bradley, Paul Jansen and Les Silverman, Harvard Business review , May 2003
[4]http://www.cmsa.org/
[5]http://www.naswdc.org/practice/standards/sw_case_mgmt.asp#def
The human services movement is a cornerstone of civil society and if trends are any indication it continues to grow and develop as our society changes. The essential element provided by these organizations is Care for the individual.
Everyday legions of community social and health workers, social advocates and emergency personnel, make judgements and decisions concerning the lives of people needing assistance. Sometimes these decisions can mean the difference between life and death, between a successful future or continued trauma and distress.[1] These workers have an enormous responsibility to make the right decisions day in and day out; and for the social workers and case managers in human services fields today, it is their training, instincts and their experience through which most of their decisions are ultimately based.
While most of these workers deserve respect for their dedication and their competency, it is an unfair burden that society places on them that they are responsible for the lives of so many people and do not have the adequate tools to back them up in making the best decisions possible. These workers are hampered by outdated and ineffective government and agency information systems and often by poor performance practices brought on by overloaded services. There is a lack of coordination between services and information exchange is poor if existent at all. Many government systems are still paper based with records scattered across multiple office locations and across jurisdictional boundaries. Outmoded “green screen” systems are often time consuming and inadequate[2] and lead to enormous practice inefficiencies in both government services and community services[3]. Yes, they are still being used!
Over the last decade a trend has begun to emerge in human services organizations, the development of Case Management[4] as a practice and the response by the IT community to develop case management applications to provide supporting technology to this practice.
The concept of case management is relatively straightforward and is one of those ideas which are so obvious it seems extraordinary that we even discuss it as something new. And in fact case management is not new, but has been practiced in the medical profession for many years and most of the literature on case management comes from the nursing, geriatrics and mental health professions. I’d bet Florence Nightingale would appreciate case management practice. It is however, a more recent trend in human services organizations.
In short, case management as a practice is, according to the Association of Social Workers, “a method of providing services whereby a professional social worker assesses the needs of the client and the client’s family, when appropriate, and arranges, coordinates, monitors, evaluates, and advocates for a package of multiple services to meet the specific client’s complex needs.”[5]
The trick, of course, is to be able to manage all of the information of that extensive advocacy with not only one client, but maybe 100 or more for each worker in your organization. Once you’ve managed to create a filing and retrieval systems for that information, you then need to compile all of that information to report on your organization as whole and the outcomes of your service delivery, your successes, all associated costs, expenditures, income, and service levels and do it based on relevant statistical standards for your funders and Board. No small task.
[1]http://www.qp.gov.bc.ca/gove/
[2]CWS/CMS Technical Architecture Alternatives Analysis Report, 2003 produced for the California Department of Social Services by Eclipse Solutions, Inc.
[3]The Non-Profit Sector’s $100 Billion Opportunity, by Bill Bradley, Paul Jansen and Les Silverman, Harvard Business review , May 2003
[4]http://www.cmsa.org/
[5]http://www.naswdc.org/practice/standards/sw_case_mgmt.asp#def
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