Time2Connect
A scheduling & monitoring platform for foster child visits
The Department of Child Services in Los Angeles, California spends 2 million hours a year arranging 4 million hours of Foster Child visits. DCFS was awarded a grant to spend on a much needed digital tool to shore up inefficiencies. They partnered with Sidebench to develop an MVP platform from which they could improve their process into the future.
Business Case
DCFS is made up of multiple offices throughout the county with each office tracking and managing visitations slightly different. There was no visibility as to the cause of missed appointments, and with visitations crucial to family reunification, the system was impeding the best efforts of DCFS staff.
Solution
Sidebench needed to give the offices a digital tool to streamline their process allowing them to save money and refocus their energies elsewhere.
After repeated user tests and information gathering sessions, we arrived at a hybrid, step-based platform solution. The tool was built to act as a “filing cabinet” where all visits and visit requests are attached to the case in question and organized around the request itself.
The system tracks the full history of visits and cases which caseworkers can collate to better inform the courts that monitor each case. This solution segmented views to allow for different user types with different permissions which better protects the children’s information.
“Sidebench is a dream team—fun and easy to work with, and they turned around a great product in record time. Most of all, we’re excited to have a potential solution that could improve the lives of thousands of children at-risk of abuse and neglect.”
Genie Chough
DCFS
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