A workflow is a management tool that both leaders and case managers can use to follow best practices. As the word suggests it is something like a flow chart. It documents a series of steps or tasks you need to complete. It adapts well to the process you must follow for making home visits as part of child welfare services. It can involve different people, tools, and resources. Case management platforms like Casebook provide a workflow builder a case worker with basic computer skills can use to design a helpful process. This is particularly critical when the federal government updates it rules and guidance for child welfare services. In fact, in November 2023 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules for Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act. Child service providers for children and youth in foster care must collaborate with educational agencies. Leaders can insure compliance simply by adding new steps to their standard workflows. This simplifies their oversight. Requirements to collaborate with community-based and government agencies are not new. Given the number of entities in your community that may be part of the child welfare system this could get complicated. Efficient case management software will help you organize and coordinate services with your collaborators. You can even set up workflows for the processes your agency has for creating and maintaining each one. You can use calendar functions to plan homes visits and follow-up activities you do by phone or email. Another advantage for overworked case managers: automate repeating steps in your processes. Workflows can trigger the system to complete certain steps for you, such as populating information based on a value you assign in the workflow’s design. Say you work with a particular agency frequently. You can assign that agency’s name as a trigger that automatically fills in its service type, license type and its status, and the contact person. That eliminates four steps! You can use workflows as a task checklist for each process. When you set up the workflow it can create a list of all tasks that you need to work through in a particular order. They can be established as recurring or one-time tasks. When you open or update a record you can choose only those tasks that are pertinent for that individual case. Supervisors can use the workflow as a staff planning tool to assign cases to people. Case managers can use the Assignee field for tracking who will perform other tasks in a collaboration. Common Workflow Needs Child welfare cases have multiple steps, each of which may have relevant tasks and data collection needs. The agency can define a workflow for each step. You can connect data to a given step, such as a link to a stored document. This will keep your organized despite heavy caseloads and deadlines for completing certain actions. Referral: Research into a family’s history may be your first step when you receive a referral. If your agency uses a case management system you can start with searching internal records to find out whether there have been previous reports about the family’s welfare. Even if the case was originally closed as unsubstantiated additional reports may suggest more is going on that it appeared to be during earlier inquiries. If you make inquiries of other agencies that take reports you can scan their responses and upload them to the case file. There is value in a client record beyond any history of child welfare reports. A record for any social services your agency provided to a family will have basic data. You can review any historical information although you will want to bring your own perspectives to the case. Still, it never hurts to have another professional’s observations. Investigation As readers know, investigations start with a referral from a concerned party, who may be a teacher, neighbor, health care provider or as a part of a routine wellness check. Agency policies, governing rules, and legislation can establish what kind of reports warrant an investigation. Your agency’s case management system (whether it is computer based or uses paper records) should include fields that you use to document the incident and its characteristics. A strict process for this decision and the documentation for it may be a critical factor if a complaint is made later that the decision led to a poor outcome.