Juvenile Justice Archives

Juvenile justice related blogs

To Build or Buy? The Pros and Cons of Buying Off-The-Shelf vs. Building Your Own Case Management Software

December 19, 2016/in Juvenile Justice, Technology, Tribal Government/by Even Brande

In 2017 Handel will celebrate our 20th year in business. It really does not feel like 20 years since the day I sat up Handel’s first office in the basement of my house. We got our first break from customers who wanted us to build custom database solutions for them. Since I didn’t have a product to sell them, building custom software was the only way to stay in business. We initially developed a variety of custom software solutions including point-of-sale software (our POSIE POS software for local florists were an early hit), reporting software for bank portfolios, inventory management, and many other solutions long forgotten. Most of these solutions were so individually tailored that they were almost impossible to mass-market. However, they paid the bills and kept us in business during those early years. One day in 1998 an old college friend contacted me. She was working in the IT department of the human services division of a large Colorado county and they were looking for a database for managing youth in a juvenile diversion program. Perhaps because English is my second language or maybe because I had never had much exposure to the human services world, I neither knew what a “juvenile” was, nor what a “diversion program” was. Not that this would stop me. I had bills to pay and a family to feed. “Of course I can do this” I thought. 2 months later, the pre-cursor to RiteTrack was delivered. The system did exactly what the customer had asked me to do and it worked really well. That is, until 15 or more employees used the system at the same time. Somehow in our negotiations we failed to discuss how many users would be using the system on a regular basis. The chosen solution was built on Microsoft Access. For all its power in terms of developing quick applications, Access at the time was not designed to support a large number of users, a task better handled by its big brother, Microsoft SQL Server. This was only one of many lessons we learned in those early years. Probably the most important lesson I learned: If you want to build a business you have to be really good at something. It is very hard to be successful at doing many different things for many different customers. The custom-shop model kept us alive for our first years and it led us directly to RiteTrack. Both good things because we would not be around today if we hadn’t started out this way. We chose to follow the path that RiteTrack created for us into the field of human services. We soon ditched all of our other efforts and became really good at one thing. A strange thing happened when we did this. Our business started to grow.

If you are a government agency looking to implement a complex human services software for managing the clients that you serve you are faced with a variety of choices. You can build a system in-house, you can hire a consultant to build a system for you, or you can choose from a variety of vendor-provided products. Unlike the late 1990s when we started out, the marketplace today offer “COTS” (commercial off-the-shelf) software for virtually any market niche. However, unlike the 99 cent apps you buy in an app-store, the type of social services government software we develop (often referred to as enterprise resource planning software, an unfortunate term in my opinion since most human services programs don’t think of themselves as an enterprise -a customer once asked if it had something to do with “Star Trek”) has to meet several complex requirements including business rules (rocket science has nothing on TANF eligibility), the number of different departments and users served, reporting requirements, security models, customizations specific to their particular county, state, or tribe, and many other variables. Large state software projects involving major government contractors frequently run into 8 figures ($10 -50 million is not uncommon). Needless to say, small government entities do not have total budgets (never mind IT budgets) that come close to such figures. In the perceived absence of existing COTS systems that can be had for much less, government entities often go the route of developing a custom solution system in-house or hiring a local developer with the expectations that the system will cost them a lot less. Unfortunately what may seem like a great deal up front ends up costing considerably more over time and exposes your organization to a great amount of risk.

The process often goes something like this:

Said project has a finite budget. A request for proposal (RFP) is put out. Vendors bid on the project. A local software developer comes in with the lowest bid. By law, you the customer has to go with lowest bidder. The local software developer has stellar credentials when it comes to having all the right technical skills but has no domain expertise (like us at the start, they have no concept of your domain, being it juvenile justice, child welfare, TANF or other). You on the other hand have all this knowledge but no expertise with complex software projects. Seems like a match made in heaven. Or not.

Having been on both sides of the fence, both as the custom software developer and later as the “COTS” vendor, we feel qualified to speak on this subject. While the low-bidder-local-custom-shop developer may look good on paper, there are a lot of hidden costs and risks associated with custom software projects. We have seen some of these projects succeed, many fail outright and most never living up to the customer’s expectations.

Here are some of the common pitfalls of custom software projects:

The Vendor Does Not Understand Your Job

Software developers are very good with what is in their technical toolbox whether that is mobile app development, web development, database design, or traditional desktop software development. However, the left-brain dominant traits often found in those attracted into the computer science field, such as problem solving, algorithmic thinking, and a general excitement for technology also can be a detriment to these same individuals trying to understand common problems faced by those who work in the human services field. As somebody who probably falls more into the left-brain category, I can assure you, 100s of projects in the human services field can not substitute for actually having been a social worker or worked in the field of human services. First, I would dare to say that those attracted to the field of computer science are generally disposed of the typical people skills required when serving other human beings. Second, until you have actually worked in this field, it is very hard to put yourself into those people’s role. So, no matter how well you communicate the job of a social worker, even the most well-meaning, right-brain inclinded software developer will never get a complete understanding of your needs.

Your Organization Lacks Experience with Complex Software Projects

For lack of anyone else in the organization who volunteers, you become the point person for overseeing the new software project. You went to school to get a degree in social work because you love helping people, yet, here you find yourself in charge of overseeing the implementation of a highly complex software system. You are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the software developers you are working with, all the while tearing your hair out and wondering how you ended up in this situation. You find yourself Googling words like “scrum”, “agile development” and “procedural design”.

You and the Vendor Both Underestimate What It Will Take To Succeed

Complex custom software projects always come in ahead of schedule and under budgets. False. Most complex software projects where there is a great amount of uncertainty usually stick to the original design document? Again, false.

The truth is, when you are dealing with a vendor (or an internal programmer) who have been tasked with developing software for something they know very little about and you have been tasked with being the representative for your organization in charge of the project, something you have never done before, suggesting that there are a lot of risk factors would be the understatement of the year. These projects always start out with a lot of positive energy. This should be easy! We should have something up and running in two months. There are two primary reasons why projects like these rarely come in on time and on budget. The first category is that there is a lot of uncertainty with these types of projects and you simply can’t know what you don’t know. There are often a lot of surprises lurking around the corner. Once you got the eligibility matrix in place you realized that you had forgotten to account for some of the key data points required to calculate eligibility. Back to the drawing board. The second reason is what is commonly referred to as “scope creep”. That scenario goes something like this: We have already created a place for tracking staff and caseloads. While we are add it, it should be easy to add in a piece to track our staff’s various certifications. I once had a software developer ban me from ever using the term “should be easy” in the context of software development. Once one “should be easy” turns into ten “should be easy” you have a problem: It is no longer easy. Our recommendation is to have great initial design specs and save the “would be nice” and “should be easy” for a future phase.

You Wait Until Everything is Perfect to Go Live

This is somewhat related to the previous paragraph. If you wait until everything is perfect in your custom software solution, you will probably never go live. Nothing in life is perfect and this is rarely more true than when it comes to technology. Even the best developed most quality tested software will have unforeseen glitches once it goes from production into the hands of the end-users. You will never be able to foresee all the challenges your end-users will put you through. Furthermore, some of your design assumptions will always turn out to be wrong anyway, so no need to wait until everything is perfect. No matter how perfect you think it is, you will find something you forgot once you go live. Better find this out sooner rather than later.

Vendor Is Not Around To Support You in the Long Run

When we implement RiteTrack for a client it is not uncommon that we replace an existing system that was developed in-house. The two most common reasons for switching to a new system are:

The technology is obsolete.
The person who wrote the system is long gone.

Working with a vendor who is providing an off-the-shelf system you are less likely to run into either of these situations. The vendor typically provides upgrades so that the software stays current. The vendor is less likely to disappear than an employee. While the latter does happen, we find that most vendors in our market space has been around for a long time. Sometimes companies get acquired but the software typically continue to exist under the new owner.

Not Playing Well With Others

Another common issue we see in home-grown systems is that they are often not designed to easily integrate with other systems or they are not built using standardized data schema, thus making it hard for third-parties to pull information out, or for integrating with other systems.

Conclusion

There are many hidden risks and costs associated with building a human services software system in-house. While this option appears attractive on the surface, it often ends up being much more expensive than finding an existing solution from a vendor who has experience in your space. Worse yet, with a custom-built system you have little assurances to fall back on in the likely risk of failure. With a vendor, failure is typically not an option because the vendor stakes their entire reputation on their product. If you have any questions about this, I would welcome the opportunity to hear from you.

“Who is Going to Do My Data Entry?” -Real-Time Data Entry in RiteTrack

April 15, 2016/in Juvenile Justice, Tribal Government/by Even Brande

Do you ever find yourself asking “I don’t have time to use social media because I can’t find anyone to do the data entry for me” ? Probably not. Most of us post on social media such as Twitter, FaceBook, and Instagram when the mood strikes us. We do it real-time as events in our lives unfold. We take a picture and we post it. We see a post we like and we click “like”. Social media platforms are so easy to use that it has almost become an extension of ourselves.

Why then is it that most government case management software is still looked upon as a burden, something we have to enter data into? Here at Handel we often hear objections from prospective clients like “who is going to enter the data for us” or “our staff is so busy we can’t burden them with any more work”. Fortunately, we rarely hear these complaints from our customers who have already implemented RiteTrack. When correctly implemented a system like RiteTrack can become an extension of the work you do. You don’t need additional staff to do your data entry. Rather than going back to your office to “catch up on paperwork” the paperwork is generated as you do your work. Rather than being a burden to your staff, it empowers them to do their job better. In fact, the majority of our customers will claim that RiteTrack enables their employees to spend more time with the clients that they serve and less time doing paperwork. As a system generates better data and frees up staff time, this ultimately leads to better services for the people that you serve. Better data leads to better information, which in turn informs better decisions. Everyone wins.

So how is this possible? I believe there are four areas in particular that contributes to how RiteTrack succeeds in this area.

Distributed data-entry
Relational data
Intuitive user interfaces
Web-based software

Distributed Data-Entry

RiteTrack is a role-based system. This means each user has a role and they enter the data relevant to their specific job. This reduces the “data-entry” burden because it is not one person’s responsibility to enter all data relative to a specific client. Each person has a little piece of the software in which they do their work. An admissions manager at a juvenile facility does the intake. A caseworker establishes a treatment plan. A counselor enters a progress note after providing services. Over time, different people contribute different pieces of information which gradually builds the case, improves communication, provides better information, and creates better outcomes.

Relational Data

All data in RiteTrack is related in one way or another. RiteTrack uses a highly relational database that reduces the need for re-typing data. For example, in a traditional database, you may need to enter a clients name, phone number, address, parent information each time they come in. Let’s say that a client is entered into RiteTrack. This client has a sibling who was previously entered in the system. Through RiteTrack’s relationship module, it becomes easy to “inherit” select information from the sibling such as parents names, addresses, phone numbers. This reduces the data entry burden on your staff and provides better information across the board. Let’s say during intake it is established that the client has a new address. The old address is archived, the new address is entered, and now everyone have access to the latest address information.

Intuitive User Interfaces

Frequently, traditional “data entry systems” were difficult to use because they were poorly designed and/or built on old technology platforms. Anyone remembering having systems where you had to click 5 or more times to get to the screen you needed? RiteTrack was built from the ground up to optimize the work-flow and minimize the number of clicks or keyboard strokes that a user have to execute. With frequent use of customizable drop-down boxes and hyper links, navigation and data entry is optimized to be as efficient as possible. This allows the user to focus on entering information, not looking up or navigating.

RiteTrack facilitates easy navigation through hyperlinks.

Web-Based Software

Because RiteTrack is web-based you can access your information from anywhere you have an internet connection. This means you can enter data while in the field, while in a court-room, or even in your office. You enter data as events happen, not afterwards.

We hope to have an opportunity to help your organization transition to an information solution where data entry is no longer viewed as a burden but rather a process that is built in to and aligned with your daily activities. That has been our mission since day 1 and continues to become easier as technology evolves, as broadband expands, and as we all become more used to technology being part of our daily lives.

Linking JDAI standards to RiteTrack

April 11, 2016/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice/by Tiffany Edmonds

The JDAI helpdesk website states, “Since 1992, the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has demonstrated that jurisdictions can safely reduce reliance on secure confinement and generally strengthen their juvenile justice systems through a series of interrelated reform strategies.”

As you may know, I was a former Director of the Perry Multi County Juvenile Facility (a juvenile community ACA correction facility in Ohio) and our focus was on treatment of juvenile, male felons through a cognitive-based treatment program. I do want to point out that I am not an expert in Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI) standards; however, in my current position with Handel I have become much more familiar with them. JDAI standards closely align with the American Correctional Association (ACA) standards and they incorporate the Prison Rape Elimination Standards (PREA) as well. Both the ACA and PREA standards are areas that I am very familiar with having completed two ACA audits and a PREA audit.

As revealed in the JDAI Detention Reform Brief Cost-Saving Approach, some of the JDAI strategies are to increase system efficiency, develop a non-secure alternative that is less expensive than detention, help keep kids out of state facilities and help explore the most cost-saving intervention for a youth. From my experience in a juvenile facility, I know first-hand the ease with which the juvenile correction community easily faults to the “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it…” or “That’s just the way it’s done.” I was a process-oriented director and one of my skills was to always look at why we do something and if we could do it better. I think that is why I am intrigued to learn (from my exploration of JDAI) that a focus seems to be to look at problem solving differently and to focus on different options and outcomes beyond the traditional way of committing youth to detention.

However, I am not here to give you more information about the JDAI standards. I want to tell you about a software solution that can greatly help facilities recognize and implement the JDAI strategies in their communities and better manage their cases and facilities as well. This solution is RiteTrack and it is juvenile facility software that assists in managing your facility and the youth in that facility. It is equipped with a powerful reporting module that can incorporate many of the JDAI required reports. Additionally RiteTrack can also assist the JDAI local community that is responsible for entering, collecting and generating data to address compliance with the JDAI standards. RiteTrack is a software system that tracks common functions like incident, restraint and room confinement documentation, along with common practices of treatment plans, group notes and room assignments. RiteTrack excels as a facility and youth management system while allowing you to generate JDAI data not only from a juvenile facility level but also to a functionality level that compiles JDAI data for a whole JDAI community.

I will focus on three points about RiteTrack and JDAI: generating and managing data, using data to make decisions and managing the facility.

Point 1: Generating and Managing Data

Data is an essential component of JDAI, and it only makes sense that you have to generate data as the first step before you can analyze and use that data. While JDAI encourages the person or persons who share(s) the responsibility of data generating to use the simple format of Excel, it is not the most effective or efficient method. JDAI might recommend Excel because so many people have access to it; and in a JDAI community, the data come from many different areas and levels. Data generation has to occur at the probation officer level, the court level, the community alternative placement level, detention level and other agencies such as community mental health or community drug and alcohol treatment organizations that may be involved with the youth. So there is a possibility that you have many different organizations collecting data that then have to be transferred or given to one centralized “data collector” to process and manage. RiteTrack can play a very important role in this “collection” by acting as the central point of entry.

RiteTrack allows youth to be entered into the system and then additional data added to the youth’s record. Once information is added to RiteTrack then it is saved and will stay with the youth throughout his/her involvement in the process, even including if the youth is placed in an alternative placement or detention. Data such as race, gender, age, geography, prior placements, prior and current criminal offence, offence type, involvement with child welfare, involvement with substance abuse treatment and length of stay in detention are all areas in which data needs to be collected for JDAI standards. RiteTrack offers all those components as standards within the basic RiteTrack system, so a youth’s record in RiteTrack can contain all this information (generated by various agencies involved with the youth) in one record in one place. Additional areas that are important such as risk assessments, which are done either on paper or in another system, can be added to the RiteTrack system so that all information that is collected on a youth is stored and accessible in a centralized data collection location. This whole set of data can be recalled or opened at any time by qualified RiteTrack users. RiteTrack is a web-based solution that is easily accessible with internet access, so long as the user passes security clearances set up in each facility system.

Point 2: Using Data in Making Decisions

We all are aware of the trends in juvenile justice to use evidence-based practices to make decisions based on data. Decisions should not be based on how we feel or what is available, but they should be objective tools to assess level of risk. JDAI suggests that we evaluate data on a regular basis (e.g., daily population counts of youth in detention, quarterly reports and continual review of the data collected such as race, gender, age and geography). Therefore, data must be gathered and analyzed throughout the process and throughout the community that is involved in the JDAI. Data analysis can help shareholders decide when and if an effective community-based alternative would be appropriate. Data analysis can assure that detention is used only when appropriate and only for those youth that are high risk of reoffending. Data can assist in determining bias in the system based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and geography, among others; and determine if there is “institutional bias” within the system. Only when we see the data over a period of time can we make good decisions.

RiteTrack allows for all data, generated by a JDAI community to be stored in a centralized location and readily available to help in the decision-making process and JDAI reporting. Such a system is more cost effective and more efficient, and allows easier tabulation of data, which facilitates a better, more streamline decision process for the youth in a JDAI community.

Since RiteTrack is also facility software, data generated from youth being in the facility (i.e., number of incident reports, number of restraints, time in room confinement, number of hours of group participation, and facility population reports) can also be used to make decisions and determine a youth’s progress while in the facility itself.

Point 3: Managing a Facility

To participate in JDAI a facility must track and report on the following: race, ethnicity, gender, age, geography, placement history, child welfare involvement, mental health, substance abuse, education, family history, housing, prior offences, probation status, offence and offence type, aggravating factors and length of stay in detention.

RiteTrack tracks all of these data points. Each of these points are collected and tracked via drop-down menu options that are accessible and may be customized by a system administrator. In addition, many of these points have models in RiteTrack that allow for input of descriptive narratives. For example, tracking aggravating factors would most likely involve a short story or description of the aggravating factors. Workers unfamiliar with a youth would need to see what led to, or what is being described as the aggrieving factor in the incident entry. Therefore, through progress notes, RiteTrack tracks the number of incidents as well as descriptive elements.

Finally, in addition to collecting, tracking and reporting all the youth personal and participation data for a facility, RiteTrack also functions as a case management and facility management module. RiteTrack, as a case management system, encompasses treatment plans, progress notes and demographic information. As a facility management system it includes functions such as shift reporting, inventory management and incident, restraint and room-confinement reporting. RiteTrack complies with the common practices of attaching pictures, reports, video clips or tabulation of hours and minutes of room confinement time to the data entries. RiteTrack also provides a due process model, which is required for grievances, and which demonstrates compliance with due process related to major incidents within a facility. The RiteTrack design of both a case management model and facility model incorporated into one solution, allows for data reporting from both “parts” of the RiteTrack system.

RiteTrack offers the ability to generate data for the JDAI community while also serving its primary focus as juvenile facility software that manages a facility and the youth within the facility. Doing all this as a single software system, RiteTrack is an effective, efficient and cost-saving approach for any community and facility participating in the JDAI standards.

To see a demonstration of the RiteTrack system and to see how RiteTrack can assist your organization or community in compliance with the JDAI standards, please give me a call at 740-994-0500 or send me an e-mail with any question you may have at steve.koenig@handelit.com

Thinking Differently About Seclusion and Room Confinement in Current Juvenile Corrections

January 13, 2016/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice/by Tiffany Edmonds

My personal introduction to Handel IT and the RiteTrack software system (see my previous blog) was in no small part due to the topic of seclusion. While the topic of seclusion and room confinement is bigger than RiteTrack software, seclusion has become a big issue for juvenile and adult facilities in Ohio and across the country.

Perry Multi-County Juvenile Facility low res

Perry Multi-County Juvenile Facility in New Lexington, Ohio

As the former director of the Perry Multi-CountyJuvenile Facility, I served a mandate to provide rehabilitation to juveniles in a correctional setting, rather than a punitive punishment in an institutional setting. I firmly believed that seclusion, as a form of punishment, was detrimental to our philosophy of assisting and helping youth. In short, if you locked a juvenile in a room (seclusion), how would you expect him to reintegrate into a therapeutic treatment model without unintended consequences such as an unwillingness to engage in a treatment program? My belief is that seclusion, used solely as punishment, was counter to a treatment philosophy of engagement and making better choices. Although as a director, I also understand that there were times in which the only means of protecting an individual youth, my staff and the facility as a whole was seclusion. These issues of when is seclusion necessary, when is seclusion needed, and when does seclusion become a punitive issue are concerns that all directors deal with in our profession. They are also issues that, at some point in time, we have to give answers to for why we did what we did and why we made the decisions we made.

When I had to provide a total of the number of seclusion hours for 2013 in our facility, I believed that my total number of hours would be pretty low (fewer than 100 hours). After all, I opposed room confinement as a form of punishment. After we compiled the numbers, I was surprised to learn that I had signed off on over 300 hours of seclusion for my youth during 2013. That is more than three times my original estimation, and that high number made me re-think my role as a director. Not only had I not stayed true to my principle that seclusion had to be used on a very limited basis, but also my standard had not been transferred to my staff in a way that put that principle into practice at our facility.

In April of 2014, two months after collecting that seclusion data for the state, I watched a PBS Frontline special presentation on seclusion in the Maine State Prison. Prison Warden, Rodney Boufford, was actively attempting to reduce seclusion hours for his inmate population. While I understand that the inmates Warden Boufford was dealing with were much different from the juveniles I was dealing with, the topic of seclusion is still very relevant. It was very interesting to see the inmates in Maine and hear what they were saying, while also hearing from the warden, supervisors, line staff, psychologist and others who oversee them on a daily basis. I was surprised that the idea of reducing isolation was even present in a state institution with very violent and aggressive felons and a generally negative-thinking atmosphere. However, they were not only thinking of reducing seclusion hours; they were beginning to implement it. The show takes about an hour to watch, and I recommend it as an important segment for those involved in corrections.

The Frontline special and new statistics required by the state of Ohio got me thinking. Am I, as an administrator, doing enough to reduce the confinement times in my facility, and do our policies as a facility reflect our need to reduce confinement time? At our monthly supervisory meeting a few days after watching Frontline, I addressed the need to revamp our policies and procedures and to eliminate room confinement as an issue of punishment and time and as appropriate only in cases where the safety of staff and others is at risk. Our current policies were time-focused (i.e., one incident equals so many hours of confinement). Our new policies would be behavior-focused whenever youth were complying and there was no documented threat to the safety of the staff or other youth. The new policies would encourage youth to begin the process or re-engaging into the general population and everyday activities. Because the facility activities were meant to be therapeutic and if you could get the youth to engage in therapeutic opportunities, then you could begin treatment.

While my ideas were agreed upon overall, there were many who expressed reservations. I heard concerns such as the changes I championed would “harm the staff and would make youth believe that we were not serious about dealing with behavioral issues.” Some felt that if we made these changes, focusing on reducing room confinement, that “someone, another youth or a staff member would be hurt.” I listened to all of their issues and then I encouraged my supervisory staff to view the video and then come back to me with their thoughts. I also asked each one of them to estimate the number of seclusion hours that they believe we had accumulated in 2013. I had not given them our actual number, but I had used the number of 300+ seclusion hours as my example. Every single person asked gave me a number that was much lower than that. So I challenged them to watch the video to see what they are doing in the State of Maine and then to tell me why we couldn’t do the same thing in our facility. I also told them that the number of seclusion hours that they all had estimated for 2013 was a very different number than what we had actually accumulated. My point was that we thought we were doing well, but the 2013 seclusion hours showed me that as a group we had failed.

At our next meeting we addressed the topic of seclusion and this time there were very few detractors. All the supervisory staff agreed that we needed to reduce our confinement time, and that we needed also to continue to do our duty to protect the other youth and the staff and maintain the therapeutic environment of the facility. To do all those things we needed to create a balance between protection and seclusion. That balance needed to be evident in our policies and procedures, as well as in our thinking and in our implementation. We agreed that if we could create a balance, then we would better fulfill the need and responsibility for both safety and treatment.

The topic of seclusion was also very relevant in Ohio at the time. The Ohio Department of Youth Services was under federal monitoring for various reasons, and nearing the end of the monitoring the issue of seclusion or room confinement became a concern. The state began addressing how it could reduce seclusion hours of youth. In addition to its being a valid issue, it was also a requirement for “getting out from under federal monitors.” Recently Ohio Department of Youth Series was released from the lawsuit and has made very progressive and needed changes in seclusion hours.
See these two articles: Lawsuit over: Everyone won and Judge ends federal monitoring monitoring of Ohio’s youth prison system

The article above from the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: “The state has also dramatically rolled back its use of solitary confinement – also called ‘seclusion’. An infraction that brings 8 hours of seclusion now would have been punished with 600 hours of seclusion when the lawsuit was filed, according to Cynthia Coe, a U.S. Justice Department attorney involved with the case.”

I was surprised when I read those numbers and remember having to re-read the paragraph again. “…infraction that brings 8 hours now would have been punished with 600 hours.” This was the trend in corrections in adult and juvenile systems just 7 years ago. I was amazed at how “behind” we as a corrections community were, but also pleased with how far we have come.

Looking back, I wonder if I would have addressed the issue of seclusion quicker in my facility if I had had valid data that would have given me a better understanding of seclusion hours. In the recent JDAI reporting the finding suggested the following:

“’The revised JDAI Detention Facility Standards prohibit the use of room confinement for discipline, punishment, administrative convenience, retaliation, staffing shortages, or reasons other than as a temporary response to behavior that threatens immediate harm to a youth or others,’a JDAI summary of strategies to eliminate unnecessary use of room confinement states.” -Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

The JDAI recommendations and goals also address the topic of using data to make informed and educated decisions. If I had a RiteTrack system in my facility just two years ago, I wonder if I would have been more progressive in my decision-making because of the quality data and better statistics generated from the solution to help support better-educated decisions. Because not only would I have had up-to-date and valid data for the day, months and year, but I could have been tracking the data more effectively rather than relying on an end-of-the-year report.

I believe that many of my former colleagues share my belief that room confinement is necessary, on a limited basis, especially due to the nature of the work we perform. However, I also believe that directors and administrators want to always balance the safety of the facility without violating the rights of our youth. With a balance of protection and safety of rights in our policies and procedures and implementations, we can achieve the ideal of safely treating and serving troubled youth. The RiteTrack software system can and will assist administrators in creating that balance at their facilities.

Ramsey County, MN Goes Live on RiteTrack Juvenile Justice Facilities Solution

July 6, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, News/by Tiffany Edmonds

The Ramsey County Community Corrections Department went live on its new RiteTrack Juvenile Justice system in March of 2015. Ramsey County originally partnered with Handel IT after selecting RiteTrack through a competitive bid process in 2014 to replace two separate systems that had managed their juvenile detention facility and residential facility, respectively. The project was begun with aggressive goals not only to combine the two facilities onto one system, but also to analyze business processes and then synthesize them between the two facilities, convert and merge data from the two previously disparate databases, maintain accurate JDAI reporting, and integrate with a data warehouse hosted by the State of Minnesota.

“This project has been a great test of RiteTrack’s powerful security model” says Even Brande, President and CEO of Handel. “It has accomplished one of the key goals of this project which was to reduce duplicate data entry since many of the youth spend time in both facilities at different times. Yet RiteTrack’s security ensures that staff in each facility can only see the data that is pertinent to what happens in that facility, yet shares common data between the two.”

“The outcome of this project has been of great benefit to both my users and myself as a system administrator,” according to Dan Merth, the Customer Project Manager for the software implementation. “We have accomplished all of the goals we had for the initial roll-out of RiteTrack. Two obsolete systems were combined into one intuitive web-based design that is capturing all of the critical client information our case managers need on a daily basis, as well as the high level data our management uses to track trends and focus resources such as staffing levels. The project was completed on time and on budget and I am eager to work with Handel on future customization and enhancements to Ramsey County’s RiteTrack application.”

Throughout the project, Handel’s standard process for implementation of a software system was utilized. This process began with business and systems analysis and was followed by a formal system design. After the design was officially signed off by both Ramsey County and Handel, customization was added on top of RiteTrack’s standard Juvenile Justice Facilities system. Data migrations and the subsequent data merge from the two legacy systems, report development, and the integration with the State of Minnesota data warehouse all happened in parallel with the software customization.

“Large and complex projects such as the Ramsey system have an incredible number of points where a project can run into problems. Especially when large numbers of tasks are running in parallel to each other the complexity of large enterprise-level systems can almost seem overwhelming. The key to project success is clear communication and synergy between the Project Managers and other key staff members on both sides. Ramsey County is a perfect case study in how software implementations should happen; it has been a huge pleasure working with Dan and his team and I am looking forward to a long and lasting relationship with their office,” said Ben McKay, Handel’s Project Manager for the Ramsey software solution.

“The design and development process went better than any other large scale software project I have been involved in,” said Dan. Handel’s design model includes screen mockups and descriptions of each function to ensure that there are no surprises when development begins. Additionally, Handel’s customer support has been excellent, it is nice to know that Ramsey County Corrections has partnered with a responsible vendor who cares just as much as I do about data and reporting accuracy, system functionality, and customer service.”

Ramsey County is currently pursuing a second phase to their RiteTrack project to add additional functionality to further enhance their ability to serve youth in the juvenile justice system.

“We are very thrilled to having had the opportunity to work with Ramsey County on this project” says Even Brande. “Not only are we looking forward to many years of working with Ramsey County but we also believe this solution will be a model for other communities who are in a similar situation.”

For more information on a selection of the technical processes that were incorporated into the Ramsey project and Handel’s Juvenile Justice Solution please see:

Packing Up and Moving Your Data

May 27, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Tribal Government, Tribal TANF/by Tiffany Edmonds

In our age of technology and communication it is common that our customers are adopting RiteTrack after using another data management system, often for a substantial amount of time. One of the largest concerns that we deal with is, “Will we get to keep our data and will it be complete?” At Handel, we understand that historical information is invaluable to spot trends, maintain reporting requirements, and increase interdepartmental communication. That is why we have developed proprietary software to quickly and accurately convert legacy data into RiteTrack.

Our data conversion process starts at the very beginning of our project management process; Handel views data conversions as a key and central part of our software implementations, not as an afterthought. Our trained project managers begin by explicitly mapping out each column in every table in the legacy database and define a place for it to go in the new RiteTrack system. This process takes place alongside the creation of the system design so that the mapping is completed before we start developing the system in order to make certain that no crucial data is left behind. During this process your project manager will highlight areas where the legacy data may not be clean or accurate so that no dirty information finds its way into the new system.

While on the initial site visit, your project manager will sit down with you and your staff to walk through your legacy system to gain a full understanding of its functionality, how your staff uses it, and any potential difficulties that may arise in the conversion process. Since every system is different we make sure to take the time to get to know it. This practice gets to the core of how Handel does business; each project and each customer is unique and we dedicate ourselves to forming a relationship based upon communication, transparency, and honesty.

Once a conversion map has been completed and approved, the data will begin the process of being moved into RiteTrack. Our skilled developers have built software to assist us in the conversion process. Using this single core technology reduces errors, speeds up the conversion process, and lowers cost. Our data conversion experts work side-by-side with our project managers throughout the entire project to make sure that this process is as streamlined as possible.

Much like our software development, our data conversion process involves multiple rounds of testing and validating to make sure that the end product is exactly what it should be. You and your staff will be able to see and test the converted data in a sandbox version of RiteTrack, this will even include any custom fields that have been added. For larger systems this is often done in phases to ensure that nothing is missed in the sheer volume of information we work with.

Handel’s Conversion Process (Click to Enlarge)

We have utilized this process on databases of all sizes, from a few thousand rows of data up to millions of rows. To gain a more complete understanding of how our data conversions fit into the entire software implementation process please read Problem Solved: A Story of Vanquishing Risk and Complexity.
Finally, when the entire data conversion has been tested and approved, Handel will pull a final and current copy of the legacy database for conversion. This information will be what eventually comprises your initial RiteTrack system. At the end of this process your users will have a new, friendly, and easy-to-use software solution complete with all of the data that has been tirelessly entered by users in the legacy system.

This simple, yet powerful, methodology, when paired with our proprietary software, takes the often frustrating and error-prone process of converting data and turns it into an efficient and organized procedure. What is more, our data conversions are fully supported just like our software. If there is an issue found after RiteTrack has gone live our data conversion experts will rectify the error, often with zero downtime for users. Our philosophy for data conversions is the same as it is for building software; we center everything on our clients and their needs in our pursuit for the best product possible.

Problem Solved: A Story of Vanquishing Risk and Complexity

March 30, 2015/in Child Protective Services, Enrollment, Foster Care, Indian Child Welfare, Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Tribal Court, Tribal Government, Tribal TANF, Tribal Treatment Services/by Tiffany Edmonds

I was told growing up that when you experience success you should act like you’ve experienced it before. Don’t flaunt your touchdown reception or first place finish; act like you’ve been there before. However, I quickly realized that there is a huge difference between simply acting like one has done something and actually having done it.

So, what does this all have to do with software implementations and case management? The simple answer is that there is a large collection of companies out there that claim to be able to take on massive projects to design, develop, and implement a large enterprise-level software solution. How should project leaders with large and complex projects choose a vendor from the plethora of options available to them?

Most people know that in enterprise-level software implementations, risk is proportionally tied to the complexity of the project. If the complexity goes up the risk does as well. With that in mind, what are we to think of projects on the extreme end of complexity? What if we are taking multiple legacy systems and want to put them into one single and comprehensive system? What if we also want to bring multiple departments together onto one single system in that same project? What if there are federal and state reports that must justify from the moment the system goes live? What if we need to integrate with other systems at the same time that everything else is happening? If risk of failure is directly proportional to the complexity of a project, should we even bother attempting such bold initiatives?

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The answer to that final question is a resounding ‘yes’. It is worth pursuing because of the benefits that it can lead to. Bringing multiple systems together reduces complexity and duplication of data entry which, in turn, reduces errors. Having multiple departments or facilities operate on one common platform increases communication and improves outcomes for clients. The risk, in other words, is worth the potential rewards that a system that can do all of those things could bring. However, that one question still lingers… What if it fails?

This is where proven success comes into play. It is not enough to know that a company could potentially complete a project. These projects need a company that has been there before. The type of system described above with multiple data conversions, bringing previously disparate departments together on one system, reporting to federal and state agencies accurately from day one, and integrating with other software systems describes most of Handel’s customers. We have proven success on every single one of our solutions, from unifying government agencies of a Tribe to providing a system that unifies detention and residential facilities for a county.

Large and complex projects require the devoted attention of software professionals who have repeated success and a strong, standard solution. We have devoted countless hours to designing, testing, and refining each of our solutions to meet the needs of our clients with our standard functionality, whether it is for a CPS Department, Juvenile Detention Facility, TANF Department, or a multitude of other systems. This standard functionality not only brings down cost, it also lessens risk.

While most systems require small changes, we have found that our standard platform will accomplish most of the needed functionality within the markets that we serve. Completely custom solutions that are built from the ground up may sound wonderful at the beginning of a project. However, these projects are the most likely to end up over budget, behind schedule, and outside of scope. We at Handel know this because that is how we used to build software solutions. We built our latest version of RiteTrack to combat all of those things; we provide a common framework to all of our customers, thoroughly test and refine each one of our software modules, and send updates to all of our systems whenever we make something better or fix the rare bug we run into. This means that not only is your project more likely to be successful on the front end, but also that our customers never have to worry about having a system that nobody knows how to fix or update five or ten years down the road.

And what of those things that will always be custom to an individual software solution? We handle (yes, pun is intended here) data conversions, systems integration, custom reporting, attaching custom modules to our standard framework, training and system documentation, and everything else imaginable on a regular basis. All of our staff, from our sales personnel to our project management staff to our software developers, are trained to create custom alterations and additions to make our software work for you in the most optimal way possible.

This combination of our standard software offering and our staff’s familiarity with providing insightful and accurate consulting creates a unique environment where we can reduce the risks imposed by time, cost, and scope of a project as a whole while also building a software solution that keeps your legacy data, communicates with other systems, and improves upon your organization’s reporting abilities. Handel’s ability to accomplish all of these extremely complex things comes from our more than 17 years of corporate experience and our tireless efforts to make the best standard software for each industry we serve. Our experience and work makes it possible for organizations to dream big about what their case management software can do for them.

Though these types of projects are large, complex, and sometimes even scary, Handel can help mitigate all of that. We have been there before and our customers have experienced great success using our system. Our track record shows that our methodologies, standard software offerings, and innovative technologies work. So, go ahead and dream big and know that if Handel is your partner your project, no matter how big, will be a success.

PREA: Tracking Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Personal Identification

February 2, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Training/by Tiffany Edmonds

One of the core focus areas of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is the concept that each individual deserves to be protected and that one of the best ways to ensure that is through data collection and management. Handel has built RiteTrack to go beyond simply checking a box to designate a person as a female or male. Included as standard in our juvenile justice software is the ability to track not just a person’s actual gender, but also what they personally identify as and their sexual orientation. All of this information is tracked right on the Face Sheet of a resident in RiteTrack.

PREA requires special protections for intersex and transgender youth in a detention environment. Handel has taken this to heart and has designed, as standard product, functionality to track these data points.

Tracking Gender

There are instances where the labels of female or male simply do not encapsulate the reality of each individual resident. PREA recognized this and has set new requirements for working with intersex residents. RiteTrack has been built to scale to each facility’s unique requirements for tracking the gender of each resident. Below is an example dropdown list with three selection options; female, intersex, and male.

The above image is just to provide an example list of gender options. Each facility may custom design this dropdown list to suit their individual needs with as many options as they desire. What is more, if a facility needs to add an additional option in the future an administrator of the system may add the option through RiteTrack’s Admin Dashboard. The average time it takes to do this is under 30 seconds. This means that RiteTrack users can access very powerful functionality, with high degrees of flexibility, with no system down time.

Tracking Gender Identification

PREA defines transgender as, “A person whose gender identity is different from the person’s assigned gender at birth.” While tracking gender is, and will always be, a necessary requirement for juvenile facilities, that physical gender may not be how the resident personally views him or herself. In order to meet this new requirement, RiteTrack has built out additional functionality to track gender identification separately from a person’s physical gender at birth.

Much like the Gender dropdown box, the Gender Identification list may be altered by a facility to encapsulate as many options as is desired. This list can potentially get quite expansive; Facebook currently has 56 gender options. While a juvenile facility may never need to track that many options RiteTrack has been built to scale to that many, just in case.

Tracking Sexual Orientation

While tracking sexual orientation is not an explicit requirement in PREA, RiteTrack has been built with the philosophy that we don’t stop at just the minimum requirements. In working with juvenile facilities and other juvenile justice departments we have found that a person’s sexual orientation can have a great impact on how the juvenile interacts with other residents, interacts with staff, and experiences their stay at detention or residential facilities. This dropdown box works exactly like the two discussed previously; the list may be custom managed, added to at any time, and provide the flexibility that each facility deserves to have.

Accessing Advanced Functionality

While tracking data points is a great concept and a requirement that must be fulfilled, Handel believes that what we can then do with that data is much more important. Once users have access to a system that goes beyond check boxes that can only track if a resident is a female or a male and they are given the additional power of having more comprehensive gender choices, the ability to track how a person identifies him or herself, and the option to track sexual orientation we can begin to leverage that information to lead to better outcomes and track legislative requirements in a more robust manner.

Examples of this include PREA’s requirements to limit cross gender searches and viewings and to only allow trained staff the ability to search intersex and transgender youth. Once we track these three data points, it is then possible to build immensely powerful business logic off of those pieces of information and we can begin to, as an example, reduce the incidence of disallowed searches. Additionally, those fields can be paired with other modules in RiteTrack, such as Treatment Planning to be able to provide analytics on how gender, gender identification, and sexual orientation can play into that process.

Data can be powerful. Talk to a Handel Sales Representative or Project Manager today about how we can make your data work for you.

To learn more about the PREA requirements discussed in this post please go to the PREA webpage for Juvenile Facility Standards.

Room Management: Assigning Rooms to Residents

January 26, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Training/by Tiffany Edmonds

Whether a facility is secure or unsecure, detention center or residential home, being able to quickly and intelligently assign a resident to a room is something that every organization needs to be able to do. RiteTrack not only is able to create a virtual model of your facility’s layout, it also offers users an interface to manage room assignments with ease.

RiteTrack displays a facility’s layout in a tree that is able to be customized to suit each facility’s needs. Sections of this tree can quickly be expanded and collapsed to increase the speed at which users can navigate through the various areas of a facility. RiteTrack provides counts of the number of vacancies for each area and rooms are displayed in different colors to identify them as vacant, not vacant, or closed. Please see the Building Your Custom Facility Layout blog entry for an in-depth discussion of customized room layouts and how it can benefit your facility.

The example shown below displays a resident who has had two separate room assignments during his stay at our demonstration facility. To display the power of RiteTrack’s Room Assignment Module, we are going to temporarily move this resident to a new room, keep his current room assignment open to make sure that his room is not accidentally assigned to another resident, and then close out his temporary room assignment.

As seen below, our example resident, Ben, is assigned to Room 103 in Living Unit 100. However, a co-defendant of Ben’s needs to be housed in that Living Unit during a court hearing and Ben must be moved to another unit. We don’t want to evict Ben from his room, just temporarily move him. This will keep his room from accidentally getting assigned to another resident while he is temporarily placed in another area of the facility.

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A simple click of the Green Plus Sign button will add a record and navigate us to our Room Assignment Tree. By clicking on the arrow next to Living Unit 300 we can quickly see what rooms are available in that area of the facility.

Creating a Room Assignment for a Resident

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As can be seen at a quick glance, there are 10 rooms in Living Unit 300, only one of which is currently occupied. RiteTrack automatically populated the current date and time into the Start Date for the new room assignment to assist in speeding up data entry. This date, however, may be changed if the information needs to be back dated. All the user must do to complete the new room assignment is click the save icon and the room assignment is added to the previous list of entries for this resident.

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Notice, this resident currently has two open room assignments. The new room assignment information will be reflected automatically on RiteTrack’s reports and the original room assignment will be preserved. Once our temporary room assignment is completed, all we need do is enter an End Date for Ben’s temporary room assignment in Living Unit 300 and Room 301 will become available again for another resident.

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RiteTrack provides flexible data entry to users in an environment that is fast and intuitive to use, yet maintains the strict data integrity that is required by juvenile facilities. Handel designed RiteTrack with the philosophy that the tasks that must be done every day by users should be made easier, not more difficult, by the software that they use. We designed the Room Assignment Module around that philosophy. Ask for a demo today to see just how easy and intuitive it is.

Building Your Custom Facility Layout

January 22, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Training/by Tiffany Edmonds

In our more than a decade-and-a-half of experience in the juvenile justice field, we have found many, many pieces of our software can be used with no modification whatsoever for every facility we work with. However, there is one piece that always seems to require customization. Each facility has its own unique layout and its own individual room configuration. As anybody who has worked on a software implementation can attest to, customization means an increase in scope and cost.

If each facility requires a custom room assignment module in its facility management software and custom software development leads to higher costs then the inevitable conclusion has been that this type of software is either expensive or impossible to obtain. So, the question for any organization historically has been which do you sacrifice? Your budget… or your software functionality?

Fortunately, at Handel we strive to provide standard solutions in order to reduce the cost of our product and the ever present risk of scope creep. We have worked to develop a system that is flexible enough to adapt to any facility, big or small, yet retain enough standard functionality to maintain the rigid standards required by juvenile justice facilities.

We have accomplished this with our innovative Facility Layout Management Tool. Below is an example facility that is split into separate living units.

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Each facility starts with its own “Base Building Unit”. Whether your facility is separated into pods, living units, wings, or buildings Ritetrack can take that verbiage and begin a virtual construction of your facility. Each of these Base Building Units may then be broken down into sub-units.

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In this example, Living Units are broken down into Rooms. However, your facility may use different terminology. As with the Base Building Units, sub-units may also be altered at the click of a button to match the existing terminology used in your current facility. In turn, each sub-unit may itself be broken down into more granular units if needed.

Additionally, different areas of a facility may have different layout configurations. For example, a standard living unit may be broken into separate wings while a supervision or medical unit may consist of a single area with beds. RiteTrack’s innovative functionality can build out these distinct layouts with no additional customization.

This flexible yet elegant design allows another powerful piece of functionality for users of the system. At a glance a RiteTrack user can see exactly what vacancies exist in the facility. In the second image Living Unit 100 is displayed with 8 rooms, each of which can hold one resident. Rooms displayed in blue are vacant and thus have one vacancy. Rooms displayed in purple currently have a resident assigned to them and thus have no vacancy in this example. Rooms displayed in black are closed rooms and are not able to house a resident. As we can see, at a quick glance, there are six vacant rooms in Living Unit 100, one room is occupied, and the last is closed and not able to house a resident. This logic is maintained for the entire facility layout and, as seen in the first image, can be scanned quickly by a RiteTrack user.

RiteTrack can utilize your current terminology, construct your facility in a virtual environment, and provide an overview of room vacancies at a quick glance. This is just the tip of the iceberg of room assignment functionality; there simply is too much to cover in one article. Future blog posts will cover how to assign rooms, how to close rooms to occupancy, and even manage multiple room assignments for a resident.

There is, however, one more piece of good news for organizations making the upgrade to RiteTrack. The Project Management and Development staff at Handel will oversee the virtual construction of your facility as part of our standard deployment process. This layout will be tested, verified, and users will be trained extensively in its functionality prior to the launch of your solution. From the very first moment of use your RiteTrack system will deliver this powerful functionality to your users.

Nobody wants to make the choice between blowing a budget and sacrificing quality. RiteTrack offers a way to avoid that dilemma. Ask to see a demonstration of our Facility Management software today.

To Build or Buy? The Pros and Cons of Buying Off-The-Shelf vs. Building Your Own Case Management Software

Linking JDAI standards to RiteTrack

Thinking Differently About Seclusion and Room Confinement in Current Juvenile Corrections

Ramsey County, MN Goes Live on RiteTrack Juvenile Justice Facilities Solution

Packing Up and Moving Your Data

Problem Solved: A Story of Vanquishing Risk and Complexity

PREA: Tracking Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Personal Identification

Tracking Gender

Tracking Gender Identification

Tracking Sexual Orientation

Accessing Advanced Functionality

Room Management: Assigning Rooms to Residents

Building Your Custom Facility Layout

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