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IT Solutions Management for Human Services

Cognos, an IBM Company

ISM Conference-San Francisco, California

August 24-27, 2008

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Implementing Tools and Data Warehousing for Data Quality and

Reporting

Eboni WashingtonFamily ServicesClark County, Nevada

Lori HigdonInformation TechnologyClark County, Nevada

August 26, 2008

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Agenda

Family Services Overview Changing Climate External Business Drivers Technology Drivers Challenges Cognos Solution Q & A

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Our Mission Statement: “to protect children by building and supporting nurturing, stable families in collaboration with community providers”.

Services Provided: – Child Abuse Hotline – Child Abuse and Neglect Investigations– Foster Care Services– Adoption Services– Children’s Advocacy Center

Department of Family Services

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Family Services Overview

“Vision Statement”

Caregiver Services

Child WelfareServices

AdministrationServices

Shelter Services

Specialized Services

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Facts and Figures I

The Department of Family Services employs 750 Full-Time and 125 Part-Time staff and the operating budget for fiscal year 07/08 was $97.1 million

In 2007:– 14,317 referrals were received at the hotline. – Of those, approximately 10,000 referrals were

assigned for investigation.

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Facts and Figures II

In 2007:– 1,902 investigations were substantiated– 3,457 children were removed from their homes.

Of the approximately 300 children served by the Receiving Team per month, two-thirds are placed directly with relatives or foster families.

If a placement cannot be identified w/in 24 hours, the child is placed on the Child Haven campus.

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Changing Climate State of Nevada Assembly Bill 1 (2001) mandated that the

Child Welfare services in Nevada be integrated.

Leading up to 2005, there was a series of child fatalities, overcrowding in the County’s children’s emergency shelter, a severe need for foster and adoptive families and rapid growth in the number of children needing emergency placement and services. This prompted systemic and administrative changes.

New senior management developed the “Safe Futures” plan for overhauling the troubled Child Welfare system. This plan promotes program improvement through data driven decision making.

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External Business Drivers

A Federal Program Improvement Plan was issued which threatened loss of federal dollars to Nevada to support child welfare services

National Center for Youth has filed a suit in Federal District Court alleging Clark County is failing its responsibility to protect children

The Administration for Children and Families cited numerous deficiencies in Clark County’s progress toward achieving National standards for safety and permanency

Youth Law Center has actively engaged the County in negotiations in lieu of filing a lawsuit

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Technology Drivers IT Staff unable to meet Department reporting needs:

– Numerous ad hoc reporting requests to support various litigation.

– Lack of sufficient operational reports in Statewide system.

– Inability to measure organization and cost-effectiveness due to primitive reporting capabilities.

Fixing the current system is a cumbersome process.– Modifications are completed by the State and require a

jurisdictional change management process.– Reporting requirements not always the same for each

jurisdiction.

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Challenges

Data challenges faced prior to implementation– Transactional system with limited reporting– Information silos (Source system, Access databases

and Excel spreadsheets) – Limited information about case management

Data/information required much programming time– “Rogue” systems attempting to be implemented in

violation of Federal Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) regulations

– Hand-counting conflicts– Immediate need for specific and real-time data.

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Challenges

Management Skill Set– No alignment of measures to strategic plan– Lack of understanding how to interpret and analyze

the data– Very little use of data to initiate program

improvement

Organizational Climate– Phenomenal growth within the Department as a

result of the Child Welfare integration of State and County entities

– Organizational climate for learning and improvement not established throughout the Department

– New Senior Management

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New Management and Data Needs

The Number of investigations per worker The Number of investigations open beyond 45

days The Number of new foster homes The Number and length of Child Haven

placements Reunification within 1 year Length of time from Removal to Adoption

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Cognos at Family Services

Cognos user since 2005 Using Cognos across 8

areas of business Over 100 users accessing

outputs for decision making

24x7 operation; daily updates

Delivering over 100 reports / month

Generating more than 8 cubes

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Family Services

Carson CityUNITY

Database

Clark County ReportingDatabase

Family Services, Courts, DA, & External Agencies

1.5 FTEDevelopers

Cognos Environment

Data MartsCubes

Scorecards

ETL

Requests forInformation

ReportsAnalytics

IndicatorsDataEvery

5 Minutes

Enters Data

Data Warehouse

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Business Value

Post Implementation

-Over 90% of reports developed by DFS management analysts

-6.5 hrs. average development time per report Process Improvements, 55% reduction

Pre Implementation

-100% of reports developed by IT staff

-14.3 hrs. average development time per report

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Business Value

Post Implementation

-Reports available on Executive Dashboards, shared Web server, and distributed as attachments to emails

-News items are displayed on Executive Dashboards for easy monitoring of critical thresholds

Pre Implementation

-Reports available by accessing DFS Reporting Module data had to be imported into Excel to create graphical representations

-No threshold alerting capabilities

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Placement Dashboard

Daily News Items

Report Links

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CHILD HAVEN POPULATION

Shelter Program: Campus Only Comparison FY06 to FY08

as of December 2007

146133

113

146158

171 167 158 154 159171

187174

144

119 124 126109

91103 111 119 126

10999

110

8573 71

47

020406080

100120140160180200

July

Augus

t

Septe

mbe

r

Octob

er

Novem

ber

Decem

ber

Janu

ary

Febru

ary

Mar

chApr

ilM

ayJu

ne

Months

Ave

rag

e n

um

ber

of

chil

dre

n

2005/2006 2006/2007 2007/2008

Child HavenPopulationtrending down.

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LENGTH OF STAY IN CARE

Average and Median Days in Child Haven

1311 12 13

1720

18

14

4 4 4 4 4 5 4 4

0

5

10

15

20

25

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Year

Nu

mb

er o

f D

ays

in

Pla

cem

ent

Average Median

Downward

Trend

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368 378394 400 409 419 426

450 455 472 476 487 493 508

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Month

To

tal H

om

es

Foster Care Licensing SnapshotDecember 2007

Regular Foster Care Homes*Average: 10 new homes per month (net)

Increase in FC Homes

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Overdue Investigations

Overdue Investigations (Jan 1, 2004 to Dec 31, 2007)

36.16%38.38% 38.43%

32.79%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

2004 2005 2006 2007

Per

cen

t o

f O

verd

ue

Inve

stig

atio

ns

2004 2005 2006 2007

Beginning of a downward trend

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Removals/Investigations

Downward Trend

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Other Successes

AFCARS: Adoption, Foster Care and Analysis Reporting System – 92% Improvement Rate for errors

when compared to the previous year

Implementation of Performance Based Management – Business processes are

improved with fact-based decision making.

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Child Contacts Metric

Sample ofDaily Metric

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Investigation Monthly Cube

Decrease in Investigations

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Summary

Single Source of Truth Flexible, dynamic environment that provides user friendly

Web-based, Zero-footprint interface Cost Effective reporting solution for non-IT staff Reduction in reporting turn-around Evaluate and compare trends in caseloads across the

spectrum of services

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Eboni WashingtonFamily ServicesClark County, NevadaOffice: 702-455-5983EboniW@co.clark.nv.us

Lori HigdonInformation TechnologyClark County, NevadaOffice: 702-455-6899HIGDONLA@co.clark.nv.us

Contact Information