Overview
Across Washington State, thousands of children are placed in foster care or other out-of-home settings each year. Social workers and service providers coordinate visits, track services, and make high-stakes recommendations about family reunification and long-term safety. Until this project, most of that work lived in paper files and email: visitation logs, case notes, and reports stored in manila folders and filing cabinets. It was difficult and time-consuming to answer basic questions like which services a child had actually received, how reliably parents and children were showing up for visits, and whether a case was moving toward reunification or toward terminating parental rights.
The challenge
Across Washington State, thousands of children are placed in foster care or other out-of-home settings each year. Social workers and service providers coordinate visits, track services, and make high-stakes recommendations about family reunification and long-term safety. Until this project, most of that work lived in paper files and email: visitation logs, case notes, and reports stored in manila folders and filing cabinets. Partners for Our Children and the University of Washington saw an opportunity to use technology to make service providers’ lives easier and to generate more reliable data for case decisions and system-wide policy, without losing the human connection at the center of the work.
“No one had ever asked them how their tools could be better. They felt overlooked by technology.”
What we did
Substantial was asked to convert a paper- and email-driven system into a digital platform that social workers and providers would actually use in the field. We needed to shape a clear product vision that would resonate with funders and align partners at the nonprofit, the university, state agencies, and private providers. We also needed to reduce duplicate data entry, simplify complex forms, and improve reporting and compliance across child welfare, foster care, and homelessness services — all while meeting strict privacy, security, and accessibility requirements for highly sensitive data and a wide range of user abilities.
Spent extensive time in the field with social workers, supervised-visit providers, and foster families across the state. Listened to front-line staff who often said no one had ever asked them how their tools could be better, and who felt overlooked by technology.
Worked with Partners for Our Children, university experts, and social-service leaders to define the product strategy and roadmap. Created and tested clickable prototypes balancing different local workflows and terminology with the need for a consistent, statewide approach to data and reporting.
Designed and developed a suite of web-based tools to replace paper forms and scattered spreadsheets — easy-to-use forms for visits, services, and case notes, role-appropriate views for caseworkers, providers, and administrators, and dashboards showing the trajectory of a case so staff could walk into court with clear data instead of piles of paper.
Implemented strong HIPAA-aligned security and data-handling practices. Prioritized product accessibility including support for screen readers and multiple languages, ensuring no user group was left behind.
Rolled out the platform provider by provider across Washington with on-site training and close support. Coordinated communication and decision-making across the nonprofit, university teams, state child-welfare leaders, and front-line service providers. Supported a multi-year journey ending in successful handoff of the platform into state ownership.
The results
Replaced a fragmented paper system with a single digital platform
The platform now supports child and family service providers across Washington State.
10,000+ families served per day
Providers serve more than 10,000 families per day through the platform, with over 52,000 service reports captured and managed digitally in the early years of deployment.
Faster, more reliable visibility into each case
Turning hours of manual compilation into a few minutes on a dashboard.
Privacy, security, and accessibility as first-class requirements
In an environment with highly sensitive data and a wide spectrum of user abilities, these were treated as core requirements, not afterthoughts.
Successful handoff to state ownership
Demonstrated that, with the right process and support, even tech-skeptical professionals doing emotionally demanding work can adopt new tools that genuinely make their jobs easier and improve outcomes for children and families.