By Emma Fidel
Associated Press
LANSING (AP) — Michigan’s foster care and adoption system is launching a new information-sharing platform that advocates say will help improve outcomes for children through increased transparency and more accurate data.
The Department of Human Services initiated the online system last week in a “soft launch” of the rollout when workers can adjust to it and fix glitches.
The system consolidates databases for the state and agencies it works with, and aims to allow real-time sharing of case data — a crucial capability that was not possible in Michigan previously.
Introducing an effective data platform is a key aspect of improving Michigan’s troubled child welfare system and will “help transform foster care into the safety net that kids deserve” if done well, said Sara Bartosz, lead counsel at Children’s Rights, a national advocacy group based in New York. Michigan’s child welfare system came under federal oversight in 2008 after a lawsuit by Children’s Rights.
“The ability to track and report data is the first step in identifying, and ultimately fixing, systemic problems that harm kids,” Bartosz said in an email.
Kevin Ryan, one of two court-appointed monitors for Michigan child welfare, said the platform will help shed light on areas that cannot currently be evaluated. Monitors don’t know whether kids are receiving psychotropic medication when needed, for example, or whether kids are promptly enrolled in school, according to the monitors’ most recent report.
It’s also unclear whether children at high risk for perpetrating violence or sexual assault are placed in foster homes in compliance with state requirements, the report said. DHS can’t show whether it’s compliant in physical and mental health care or dental care, and can’t track whether children are visiting with their siblings as required.
“Once the rollout is operationalized and normalized, once that happens — it depends, in some states that’s been a matter of months, in some states it’s been a matter of years — but once that normalizes, the public in Michigan will have its first very substantive and comprehensive view into a wide range of outcomes for children,” Ryan said.
The monitors’ eighth report filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit covers January to June 2013.
More than 6,000 caseworkers will eventually have access to the system, according to a DHS statement. DHS spokesman Dave Akerly said state officials won’t be available for interviews about the system until it is fully implemented, which could be this week or later.
Inefficient communication and inaccessible information have left room for human error in child welfare system data, said Diane Goodemote, director of child welfare for Child and Family Charities, based in Lansing. She said one improvement in the new system is a red notification on an individual’s profile if a safety concern has been identified.
She and other child welfare professionals say miscommunications have not put children at risk, but limiting miscommunications with the new system will increase efficiency and accuracy.
Goodemote, who is also a former foster care and adoption worker, gave an example of a foster child who had dental work done last year but who DHS believed was overdue for a dentist visit, causing confusion that might be avoided with real-time reporting in the new system.
“What they had tracked and what we had tracked were different,” she said.
The new system was required in the settlement to bring Michigan up to federal standards. As of January, 34 states had operational systems and 13 of those complied with federal guidelines, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
DHS officials notified court monitors in October that they would delay the system launch by six months. Ryan said the decision by DHS to delay the launch was “exactly the right judgment.”
“The damage that could have been done by having thousands of child welfare system (employees) work in a database that was flawed would have set the system back on its heels,” Ryan said. “By now, the country is well acquainted with what happens when websites roll out before they’re ready.”
Despite the extra testing and planning, people involved expected the system to have glitches at first — and they were right.
Gary Bennett, Michigan director of quality management for Bethany Christian Services, said some of the organization’s Michigan locations have been able to access the system, but workers in Grand Rapids “got locked out.”
“The soft launch wasn’t soft at all,” Bennett said. “All across the state, it’s both in the public and private sector. DHS is having as many struggles as we are. We’ve been walloped ... from the standpoint of little glitches.”
Bennett said the benefits will be clearer once the initial issues are worked out, and they will eventually lead to improvements for children and families.
“It’s unfortunate that Michigan didn’t have an efficient database to begin with — it might have solved a myriad of problems,” he said. “But now that we’re going to get it, I think it will launch us truly into the 21st century.”
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