NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the least
discussed, yet most significant problems for state and local
government today is the management of social worker caseloads. For
most cities and counties, social services is one of the largest,
most resource-intensive departments with social workers delivering
a host of critical services ranging from child welfare and family
services to mental health, corrections, addiction and gerontology.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical social
worker has an average caseload of more than 12 cases, which means
they're dealing with as many as 70 individuals at a time. A 2016
report by the Department of Health and Human Services, however,
noted that social workers typically spend only 20 to 35 percent of
their time in direct contact with their clients, while 60 to 70
percent of their time is spent on other case-related activities.
With a growing number of caseloads to manage, this imbalance of
time spells problems for the social workers themselves as well as
the government agencies and citizens they serve. The obvious goal
is to increase the amount of time these valuable public servants
spend in the field while maintaining best practices behind the
scenes. According to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions
and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), by relying on
technology to create a more digitally enabled workplace, a variety
of virtual tools and self-service portals can help eliminate
inefficiencies, allowing social workers to better serve their
constituents and better manage their caseloads.
"There's a huge opportunity for local governments to
dramatically improve how they serve the public by digitizing a
larger portion of the social worker's job," says Adam Petrovsky
GovEd Practice Leader, Logicalis US. "By examining what a
government agency does and asking ourselves how we can digitally
enable some of those functions, we can help local government CIOs
transform their organizations' efficiency and productivity in
meaningful and cost-effective ways. And we can help those
CIOs deliver more consequential data to county boards of
supervisors which can result in larger monetary distributions to
those agencies from the state and federal government."
Four Ways to Virtualize Social Work and Improve
Outcomes
While some of the human elements of social work are essential,
many of the processes that add inefficiency can be modified or even
eliminated with advanced technology solutions. The idea of
the "virtualized social worker" is one that local governments are
beginning to embrace. To help CIOs envision how some of these
technologies might work in action, Logicalis' GovEd experts have
created a list of four important examples.
- Self Service Portals: Just as you can renew
your own driver's license online today, in this client-focused
model, tools for common requests can be established on an online
portal or via a mobile application to allow better access to social
services once the client is established in the system. This
self-service approach can eliminate tasks that were previously done
manually, sometimes submitted in-person with the social worker's
help, or via US mail which required data entry when the data was
received. With the right technology in place, weekly reports,
required submissions of documents, and even photos can be uploaded
and processed digitally by the clients themselves, dramatically
reducing the overall behind-the-scenes data entry work that has
become a bottleneck for caseworkers nationwide.
- Teleservices: Almost everyone has a mobile device with a
camera or can access a public facility or kiosk close to them that
is video-enabled. By providing collaboration and scheduling
tools along with conveniently located public portals or mobile
applications, social workers can perform virtual visits with their
clients while the application automatically records and documents
the visit. Imagine the social worker who holds virtual office
visits from 9 a.m. to noon once a
week; how many more visits could be worked into that timeframe
virtually than if the caseworker had to drive to each individual
location. This kind of digital enablement does not eliminate
the need for face-to-face interaction and interventions, of course,
but with the right communication and collaboration tools, routine
checks can easily be virtualized. And in many social
situations, the more frequent these routine checks, the better the
outcome for the case.
- Contact Center: While most local government social
services agencies already use a call center for incoming service
requests, the actual services that can be addressed there are
minimal. But, by integrating these call centers with email,
databases, applications, the Internet and the cloud, a much more
robust modern contact center evolves – one that can provide
"virtual social work" on the fly. As systems become fully
digitized, call center employees will be able to use these kinds of
integrated capabilities to tap into cases, to document interactions
in real time, to compare historical information before decisions
are made, and even to complete typical requests that previously
required a lengthy manual cycle before any action could be taken.
In a fully leveraged and digitized contact center, any client that
can authenticate themselves adequately can take advantage of
real-time social services right on the call.
- Big Data: As more and more data becomes digitized, the
more that data can be gathered, analyzed and used to search for
trends. Not only is this valuable to help the ongoing effort
to provide better services to the public, but it also allows for
analytical evaluation of "data pointers" which can predict outcomes
and even indicate fraudulent activity. The Department of
Public Social Services in Los
Angeles, for example, has already put this to the test: Its
Data Mining Solution for Child Care Welfare Fraud Detection sorts
through childcare case files and identifies situations that may be
more likely to involve fraudulent activity. While the tool
does not replace trained investigators, it identifies and
prioritizes the cases which need to be reviewed more closely.
Want to Learn More?
- Find out why Logicalis has been a leader in public sector sales
and solutions for over two decades: http://ow.ly/T82q306L1qS.
- Learn more about our range of services in the public sector:
http://ow.ly/iXxt306L1TC.
- Read Logicalis' expert GovEd blog posts, then explore our
recent GovEd news: http://ow.ly/LjFW306L24j.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international multi-skilled solution provider
providing digital enablement services to help customers harness
digital technology and innovative services to deliver powerful
business outcomes.
Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our
focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical
markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications,
media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government,
manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of
our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center
and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace
communications and collaboration, data and information strategies,
and IT operation modernization.
We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's
leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp,
Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North
America, Latin America and
Asia Pacific. It is a division of
Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the
AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.
For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.
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Media contacts:
Nickie
Peters, Director of Marketing,
Logicalis US
nickie.peters@us.logicalis.com
920-338-7622
www.us.logicalis.com
Karen Franse, Communication
Strategy Group for Logicalis US
kfranse@gocsg.com
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com
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SOURCE Logicalis US