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Chautauqua County giving caseworkers new technology to manage cases

DUBLIN, Ohio — Chautauqua County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is investing in new technology for child welfare caseworkers to help them better serve vulnerable children and families and reduce caseworker stress, which contributes to high turnover.

“We recognized that our performance measures were down, and we were drowning in paperwork, and that was contributing to high caseloads, overdue investigations and a lot of worker stress,” said Christine Schuyler, commissioner of social services/public health director, Chautauqua County DHHS.

The agency will arm 90 caseworkers in child protective services, preventative services, foster care, adoption and juvenile services with the product Traverse® to collect, view and share case content from anywhere at any time.

Caseworkers will use the web-based application in the office to scan and upload documents and a companion mobile app to easily take photos and complete forms during home visits.

All the data and content collected both in the office and in the field is automatically analyzed by Traverse using artificial intelligence to surface data that often becomes dark, or virtually impossible to retrieve. Traverse extracts critical information about the major topics in cases, related events and people connected to the case to help caseworkers make informed, confident decisions about safety.

Commissioner Schuyler believes Traverse is one of the key strategies Chautauqua County DHHS is using to help caseworkers reduce stress, meet mandates, and do high-value work, which directly benefits the children and families they serve.

“Child welfare is hard work. We needed to modernize the way that our caseworkers meet federal and state requirements and still do the absolute best one-on-one work with clients. We want to give our caseworkers more time to spend with children and families,” Schuyler said.

“Because Traverse is a system of engagement designed to integrate with state systems of record and other child welfare technologies, it will be compatible with any future upgrade the state of New York makes to its case management system,” Schuyler said.

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