If you had to choose, which of these would be the most important?

• Improving foster parent support
• Boosting foster parent engagement
• Increasing foster parent retention
• Raising foster parent recruitment effectiveness
• Giving foster parents easier access to service providers
• Enhancing child well-being
• Monitoring child welfare
• Reducing caseworker turnover
• Optimizing caseworker efficiency
• Facilitating a mobile workforce
• Enhancing communication
• All of the above

We know, trick question. It's not often you find one tool that is so adaptable and flexible, that it can provide such diverse benefits. But nice job. You just did.

Let them do social work

The last thing your caseworkers need is "one more thing" to do. Unless of course, that "one more thing" simplifies their job, eases stress and makes them more efficient. Caseworkers are trapped in a role that increasingly requires them to collect paperwork and input data, rather than working with people. Our system is designed to streamline data collection and authoring, making caseworkers more efficient and freeing them to spend their extra time changing lives, improving outcomes and actually doing social work. Allowing them to do more of what they love and less of what they don't, goes a long way towards boosting caseworker retention. Do you know what else does? Effective communication.

Change relationships with effective communication

Without clear, effective communication, the relationship between a caseworker and foster parent becomes strained and could become adversarial. This simply adds more stress for two people that certainly don't need it. By simplifying the communication process, making it more efficient, and accurately documenting who said what and when it was said, we keep these relationships professional, collaborative and team-oriented.

Reduce disruptions

Instead of receiving messages scattered through email, text, phone, fax, voicemail, instant message or any other communication tool, caseworkers can have all communication redirected to a single source for collection. This minimizes interruptions and allows them to focus on their day. Not only is this information documented and organized, but the caseworker can access it at their convenience. It's also searchable. Research shows that workers spend 6 weeks per year just looking for information because it's scattered among so many communication channels. We address this with superior search and filter capabilities.

 

As a foster parent, days start blurring and you forget about behaviors. If you don’t do your journals daily, it’s easy to forget an important aspect that could cause your child to end up losing services because you aren’t reporting everything accurately. But with FosterCare.Team, you can talk and it transcribes your notes in a few seconds.

 

David T., Foster Parent

Increase foster parent retention

30% - 50% of foster parents quit in frustration. Why? Usually, it has to with one of these 5 reasons:

• 1 Lack of agency support
• 2 Poor agency communication
• 3 Inadequate training
• 4 Burdens of stress
• 5 Struggles with grief and loss

Journaling is the number one tool therapists recommend for people dealing with stress, grief, and loss. It helps them organize and freely articulate their thoughts and feelings in a controlled environment where emotions of other people won't escalate a situation. Not only is journaling high therapeutic for foster parents, but it is a gold mine for the rest of the team charged with supporting the foster family. By facilitating communication and improving support, our platform helps child welfare agencies address the five primary reasons foster parents list for quitting.

Retention is recruiting