People Sitting At Table Eating Food In Homeless Shelter

Can We Get Personal? Yes!

As new CCWIS and the Family First Act accountability efforts demand, new systems must allow for you to tailor data collection, analysis and reporting to your state’s and county region’s personal strengths and challenges. Though some CCWIS products claim they have artificial intelligence or a supposed algorithm to solve your placement challenges, you cannot and should not assume that a predictive equation that “worked” in one location can generalize to every location. Services and resources differ from state to state, and even across your rural, suburban and urban communities. Response to treatment can differ among individuals. Your time, resources and efforts are valuable. And the VitalChild team believes that the technology you adopt should be guided by realistic, personalized predictive analytic recommendations that meet the contextual demands of your state and county regions’ unique populations.

Now for the secret no one tells you about… If your predictive analytics are not fed an adequate amount of high-quality data, the recommendations delivered will leave ample room for error putting the agency, staff and children at great risk. The quality and quantity of data collected and entered into your new system, could mean the difference between life and death. And to the VitalChild team, making avoidable mistakes in child welfare is not an option.

Plus, if we are going to go through the arduous process of personalizing predictive analytics for state and county child welfare agencies and staff, why would we stop at just risk and safety assessments used to determine placement decisions?

Being More Proactive and Preventative Focused

The New York Times recently highlighted an effort in Pennsylvania that mainly focused on warning signs to guide the decisions of removing a child from the home. Of course, safety is essential. But basing predictive analytics on strictly warning signs will only lead to creating alert systems.

If you are hoping your new technology can help you determine the best preventative approaches to help you avoid crises, new systems should avoid putting a heavy reliance on warning signs. A focus on being reactive, typically will fail to produce proactive efforts leading to preventing crises in the future. With CCWIS and the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) greatly reducing length of stays in group homes in the near future, however, more data is needed.

By utilizing VitalChild to build predictive recommendations on data documenting your agencies’ quality of care, effectiveness of treatment and successful outcomes, you will be able to better determine more fruitful preventative approaches. Thus, making better informed decisions to select placements as well as treatments which lead to more successful outcomes and less services needed. This is the difference between being reactive versus being more proactive and preventative. This is how VitalChild can help you make a measurable difference!

By having accurate information readily available to immediately start treatment and select the best intervention or placement, time and resources can be saved.

5 Reasons to Avoid the Artificial Intelligence Algorithm Hype

There is considerable risk to increased safety concerns and liability associated with adopting artificial intelligence (AI) driven CCWIS products. Beyond possibly giving you the wrong answer, consider how the following might also challenge your staff’s abilities to receive the highly consistent and accurate    decision guidance they need.

  1. You Have to Feed The AI Machine — For AI to perform, somebody has to feed it data. Given most tech companies don’t offer the assistance of a research team, this means your agencies will be responsible for babysitting and constantly making sure the AI machine has the information needed to manufacture artificially intelligent recommendations. Diet is everything.
  2. But It Eats Everything — Note, most AI machines don’t necessarily have “your” algorithm. In order to find this mystical anomaly, it wants you to feed it every piece of data you can… pictures, recordings, reports and forms. With no regard for data quality, they basically throw everything into a statistical blender. And what pours out could be different from day to day based upon the catch of the day. A never-ending data-mining fishing trip, void of quality data control, falls far short of strategically using predictive analysis wisely.
  3. AI Doesn’t Know What it is Missing — If more quality data is needed and most AI products focus mainly on an initial risk, safety and placement assessment, there is a high probability essential information needed to inform more accurate decisions is missing (e.g.,  trauma— ACE’s).
  4. Garbage In, Garbage Out — If the AI is using inaccurate and incomplete data, most will likely experience inaccurate and incomplete recommendations.
  5. Proprietary is a Problem — And if they are not letting you see the recipe for what they are concocting, all you can do is hope their secret sauce is healthy.

Discover a Strategically Connected Modular System

VitalChild can improve your operational and predictive analytics by utilizing actionable data collected on your clients through the following modules:

Intake Module

Connecting concerned citizens and mandatory reporters through their preferred form of communication achieves goals of modernization and enables reporters to provide data in real-time from any location.  Furthermore, this data can be analyzed to better determine which steps or variables contribute to the most predictive models for successful management of CPS reports.

Investigation Module

All features and workflow processes can be custom tailored to your organization’s procedures. And our risk and safety assessments can be tailored to your state’s needs as a means to provide personalized Automated Information Driven (AID) recommendations for placement and treatment decisions.

Case Management Module

The Case Management Module provides child welfare organizations with a more accurate way to identify trauma exposure, track children’s experiences, enabling staff to be more informed and prepared for in-home interactions. With VitalChild’s mobile-enabled case management platform, staff connected to youth can receive tailored Integrated Care Passports, allowing your agencies and agents in the field to keep a pulse on each child’s wellbeing and safety.

The Multi-Dimensional Youth Assessment 360 (MDYA360) Module

With VitalChild’s MDYA360 helping agencies amass a vast collection of reliable and valid data, your predictive analytics can be strengthened dramatically to produce more consistent and accurate electronically generated recommendations for placement and treatment.

Foster Child Placement and Foster Parent Application Module

The data collected through these modules can be analyzed to produce predictive models to better inform the most ideal placements and matching of parents with youth. Additionally, with the MDYA360 assessments monitoring the safety and care being provided by the facilities and families your kids call home, this module can also create a ranking system for the safety level of each facility or home.

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