FosterCare.Team was designed from the ground up with your foster care agency in mind. Relationships can be defined between caseworkers, supervisors, program managers and directors (or any of the custom roles you define for your agency). Those higher up in the organizational chart can see team information and dashboard statistics for everyone assigned below them in the organizational chart. In the example below, Caseworker 1 can only see their teams. They cannot see team information for Caseworker 2's teams. However, Supervisor 1 has access to both of their teams, but they do not have access to any of Supervisor 2's teams. It's not shown below, but Program Managers can report to a Director. The purpose of this structure is to silo the information and make sure only the people that need access to it, have it. If you maintain these relationships in another system, talk to us about integration possibilities.

Role-based teams are useful for quickly disseminating training material, articles of interest, important dates to remember, licensing information, shared files and embedded training videos. Our Pages module even allows you to create your own web pages within your team. The content editor makes it simple to add and edit content on these pages.

While a team is initially created by a caseworker or a licensor, the team runs itself. For a standard foster care team, the majority of the information communicated will come from the foster parent. Then other team members can respond and react to what was provided to the team by the foster parent. Your agency is simply providing the tool that allows this communication and collaboration to flourish.

Another challenge caseworkers face is where to look for information. The information presented to a caseworker can be spread across multiple communication channels: voicemail, email, fax, text message, instant message, face to face, secondhand from someone else, etc.. Caseworkers have to comb through all of these communication channels, without forgetting or overlooking anything, to combine all of that information back into a single source document that only they see. Or, you can use FosterCare.Team as the communication hub and collector of team information. The caseworker now only has to check one source for complete information. Also, having commonly requested files available to your team members mean they access them without needing to request them from the caseworker.

The task list keeps all of the team's tasks organized and visible. Important tasks are less likely to fall through the cracks and more likely to get done. This reduces frustration, improves support, and child welfare.

Without good 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 and making it more efficient, we keep these relationships strong, collaborative, and team-oriented.

Want an example?  How about one where the caseworker doesn’t have to do anything? Here’s a real-life example. One foster family was dealing with some significant bedtime behavior issues. They opened a discussion topic about it on FosterCare.Team. Within an hour, one of the children's counselors was able to reply with strategies. An hour later, the other counselor was able to see the problem, see the first counselor's reply, elaborate on it and offer some additional insights and steps they should take. Based on the discussion view history in FosterCare.Team, the foster parents knew their caseworker was in the loop so they didn't have to make a special email or call to her. So at their next therapy session, instead of finally talking about the problem they had been dealing with for a week, they were able to talk about the solution they had been using for a week and how it worked. Did you see what the caseworker and agency had to do to increase support for that foster family? Nothing other than providing access to FosterCare.Team. Shared support is a naturally occurring byproduct of team collaboration and it’s one aspect of the system that everyone appreciates.

Most foster care agencies are extremely diligent regarding HIPAA compliance, and they should be because the cost of HIPAA violations can be up to $50,000 per record!  Plus, securing PHI and ePHI is the right thing to do.  While most agencies have great policies and procedures about how they manage and store that PHI once they have it, many agencies overlook how they collect that PHI from birth parents, foster parents, and others.

Typically, this information is transmitted to foster care agencies via email, text message, or even Facebook messages.  The documents sent could include drug screen results, prescription information, mental health diagnoses, general health information, completed medical forms, etc.  All of those items are considered PHI and all of those methods of communication are unsecured and sent without encryption in violation of HIPAA guidelines.  Even if an agency uses a secure messaging solution to upload formal medical documentation, they're still missing the informal PHI that is included in unsecured, casual communication between caseworkers and others.

That's where FosterCare.Team steps in and offers a secure, encrypted method for communicating all information, including PHI.  This can include casual communication or formal communication requiring digital signatures with a detailed audit trail and signature evidence package.