Episode: Guest:
00:00:00
Pryce
Innovations to Enhance the Frontline Ms. Leah Dienger
Welcome to the second season of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare Podcast. I am Jessica Pryce, your host. In this season, we are focused on reimagining child welfare through technology and innovation. We will hear from visionary leaders on how they are working intentionally and collaboratively to enhance and innovate child welfare. Today on the Florida Institute for Child Welfare Podcast, we are talking with Leah Dienger about the possibility and utility of a digital child welfare worker. What would it be like if every caseworker had an assistant, so to speak, which coordinated schedules, managed navigation, completed transcriptions, and to-do lists? Let's learn more.
00:00:52
00:01:11
1
Pryce
Really glad that you’re here today with us, Leah.
Dienger
Thank you, Jessica, I’m glad to be here.
Pryce
So, Leah, I hear your name so much in the conversation around technology; I am curious, what brought you into social work? And then I definitely want to hear about what got you into technology. So, tell us what sparked your interest with this field?
Dienger
Sure, so it was kind of unique. I was, at the age of fourteen, had such a burning desire to want to help people and to speak on their behalf for those that didn’t have a voice. And so, at the age of fourteen, my mother tells me she remembers the day that I walked into the room and said, “I’m going to be a social worker.” And to this day, I look back and go, “I remember that gut feeling, that that’s what I was supposed to do,” but I actually, don’t exactly recall you, know, what had led up to that.
I had experience personal experience, of being in the foster care system in the state of Florida, and I was adopted prior to my fifteenth birthday by my forever family. And those experiences certainly helped to guide that decision; however, I didn’t feel like at the time I wanted to go into foster care and adoption. I just knew I wanted to help people. I graduated right before my eighteenth birthday, and two weeks later jumped off to FSU knowing, I wanted to go into the College of Social Work. And spent over twenty years in the field working, as it turned out, in foster care and adoption work as well as juvenile justice and have quite a passion for it. If you ask people today, even when I sit down at the table with technologists and business leaders when I introduce myself, the first thing I say is: “I am a social worker.” After my name, I am a social worker first and, in the field, I am now second. Pryce
I love that, I do the same thing, and people say, “You’re not a social worker,” and I say “Actually, I am.”
Dienger Yes, yes.
00:02:40
Pryce
So, I definitely follow your-your lead on that. And Leah, I know we’re going to get into some questions about the work that you do specifically, but can you talk about technology in general? You say you’ve had personal experience in foster care, you’ve worked in foster care; how is the technology in the field, and is there room to grow?
00:03:06
Dienger
I laugh because “room to grow,” yes, there’s so much room to grow. In fact, I feel as though the public sector at this point needs to take one giant leap, instead of baby steps, towards the technology advances. And, what I base that on is, if we look at our current SACWIS systems, those are your statewide systems. In Florida, it’s FSFN (Florida Safe Families Network) that we’re all familiar with. And FSFN came about with federal legislation in 1993. So, let’s think about that; how much technology has changed from 1993 into- until today. So, what discourages me is looking out into commercial projects and across the country, even in our personal daily lives, of the technology that we put to use. Yet, social workers are charged with the most important tasks of delivering service to our most vulnerable citizens, but they don’t have the equipment and the tools to be able to execute their work effectively and efficiently. So, the opportunity for growth is huge.
00:04:10
Pryce 2
Wow, It’s exciting. So, I was talking to a colleague that I have over at the College of Social
Work, and we were discussing, you know, new people that are graduating and coming into our field. And many of them are young, and they’re excited about child welfare, but our current system isn’t really providing that technology that could keep them. Keep them excited and- and keep them innovative. Whether it’s a smart tablet, whether it’s you know something that they feel like they’re transferring their skills from school to work. I mean, the comment that was made to me was, “We’re putting these highly intelligent, educated people into, you know, somewhat of an archaic system, and they’re not staying.” So, that leads me to, you know, the issue with turnover and retention; and how do you think technology can really impact that?
00:04:59
Dienger
You brought up an excellent point, and what makes it interesting is you use the same term I always use, “archaic.” So, you know, social work is a profession that’s just been admirable, clearly, for decades. And we expect our, you know, the workers that go out to help citizens, we expect them to do this heroic work, but we you know, they’re still working in archaic means. So, to this day, you know, most go to do home visits and caseworkers are using their paper and pencil means of capturing the data that they collect in the home. While I know, and I am, and you know a traditional social worker and I still love my paper and pencil, I know there’s more efficient ways of working. And you brought up a good point; I actually wrote and published recently a white paper on the future of work in social programs. And a huge component to that is the fact that we’re going to lose traction with this next generation of workforce because they are growing up with technology in the palms of their hands from a very early age. And then, even in their school environment, whether it be prior to high school graduation or college, most of them are moving into paperless systems, and they’re carrying around tablets to take notes and storing their data on their laptops. And so, it’s kind of foreign to them and feels as though they’re taking ten steps backwards after paying for an education to go into the workforce that does not have the same capabilities. And so, you know where technology can play a huge component to that would be to- at minimally, you know, equip the next generation of caseworkers with those mobile tools. I always say, “Child welfare is a mobile profession; you have to be out in the field to be able to make that difference.” And if we are expecting workers to be tied to their desktop to complete these administrative and compliance tasks, which are important, and documentation, all of those things are- are important, but if we’re expecting them to do that kind of work and they are also expected to be in the field, they’re going to face sometimes of uncertainty of how to make that balance. Let’s equip them with the right kind of technology in the field to execute their responsibilities.
00:07:16
Pryce 3
Right, and that leads me to another question because when I was in the field, I was a
caseworker, and I remember spending so much time typing up my notes that I had handwritten. And going to a home visit, writing everything down, coming back to my desk and not only trying to, you know, transcribe my handwritten notes, but remember things that I’m trying to you know, bring back to this documentation. What can help with that, as far as the notetaking and the transcribing and- and that specifically, because I know that’s a big part of a case worker’s job.
00:07:50
Dienger
It’s a huge part, and the accuracy of documentation can drive the outcomes of a case, as you know. You forget little pieces of information that may not have seemed important at the time, but piecing all of that together with maybe the longitudinal history of that case, putting that all together, could make a big impact on the decisions that are made. So, yes, that’s exciting. There there’s technology out there being used for other professions; data capture is one example. Where I can go into a home, or you could go into the home, and take the notes just as you are used to doing, and you’re comfortable with, and then returning to your vehicle, maybe in the you know, whether you’re still at that you know in the driveway of that home or you stop and park somewhere. And while that information is fresh in your mind, go ahead and take a picture, a snapshot, of those case notes even though they’re handwritten. There’s technology that can digitize that for you. Certainly, there may be some more- wrong words or you- you want to say, “Hey, I need to add this fact or this point, or I want to clarify this a little more.” Well, right there in the front seat of your vehicle, you can certainly take the option of looking at or reviewing what’s been digitized and add to it from that point. And in one click, have that uploaded to that child’s case file. And so, you’re not going back into the office at the end of the day, and you’re also not grappling with, “Hey went on four visits today, and now all of those details are running together, and I’m having a hard time recalling.” And that’s a huge component to the data collection that I think can vastly be improved.
00:09:46
Pryce
And child welfare deserves that type of technology, you know, just comparing it to the banks and- and different industries. You know, we can hang with the best of them, we can do that, so that’s really exciting. So now I’m really intrigued about the digital. Tell us about what that is; I know you wrote a paper on it recently and would love to hear more about it.
00:10:08
Dienger
4
Sure so, digital worker means a lot of things to a lot of different people and so it’s a terminology that I’m still struggling to maybe change to make it more friendly for a social worker. It would be sort of like a digital, you know, colleague, an assistant. Again, digital
worker means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for the company I work for its, it is software-based labor. It is just like a human; it can carry out the exact duties that a human can do, they work twenty-four hours a day non-stop, they’re never call in sick, they don’t make errors like humans do, and so I say that but let me put some clarifications around that when it comes to social work. Obviously, in a human hands-on related profession, you don’t want to say just a bunch of bots are going to come in and take over and replace jobs and do the work of a caseworker. We are not saying that at all, and part of the job that I love, of my job, is the fact that I can bring that to light. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing. It can be a situation where we look at the people involved in child welfare today, our works in the field. We can look at the processes that they execute, whether you’re a CPI and you take that process from the time that cases- that investigation is assigned to you up until the point that you make a decision and pass it on to case management or you close it. You know, there’s several little processes within that. And then let’s look at the data that’s collected and then the technology that’s available today. So, looking at those four aspects of it, you know, we can really start to glean where a digital worker can help and- and where we need to keep some human tasks being completely human. So, let’s look at those processes, and let’s determine what absolutely needs to be done by a human person. A human person needs to be in those face-to-face visits, a human person needs to be the one executing assessments, a human person needs to be working with that family hands-on; however, a digital coworker can handle all of those administrative and documentation tasks. Such- such as I mentioned, the data capture, or it could be the alert that you know there’s this compliance measure that perhaps is a new- a new caseworker in the field I don’t- I’m not sure of the legislation, and so that digital worker can alert me that perhaps what I’ve just uploaded you know, needs more information to be compliant or needs to be done in a timely manner, so it gives me alerts. So, again looking at those processes and seeing where automation or a digital worker can intelligently execute that workflow for me, bring it back to my attention whenever there’s a question, and then as a human worker, I can weigh in on how I want that handled as opposed to just sort of being hands-free and always wondering if the work got done.
00:12:58
Pryce
When I hear the term “digital worker,” I automatically think about Alexa or something like that. I wanted to kind of clarify when you say digital worker, is it an actual tangible object that these caseworkers may eventually carry with them or is it something attached to their phone? What exactly would it entail?
00:13:20
Dienger
Sure. So, I’m a social worker that loves to think big, and so, what you just referred to is exactly what my vision is. Is to have that assistant like an Alexa ty-type capability to be able to interact with throughout the day, I get in my vehicle in the morning and say “Hey-
5
whatever you name it- Hey, what are my cases for today, what are my priorities or whatwhat are my visits? How do I get there? What’s the most efficient way to get from point A to point B?” And then, you know, even have that interaction where it can say, “Hey, I noticed that you need to pick up some school records, and the school is along the way to your next visit.” Just those small tasks that as social worker’s they may not, well as a general community, folks go, “Well that’s not a very big deal to get directions somewhere or to know that maybe you need you know there’s a stop on your list and incorporated in.” But as social workers, we are often weighed down by the heavy decisions, the big decisions, we’re weighed down by the tasks that we have to execute that are the difficult ones. And so, the time and energy spent on so many little decisions such as “How do I get from point A to point B?” if that can be alleviated, that could help that job position. So, if I could back up just a second, yes, that’s the big vision, this is you know in social work this would be an introduction of new technology, and it would be a huge component, and I believe the opportunities are endless with it. We would have to start small. So really this would, it would not be out the gate looking at an Alexa to help throughout the day. Let’s start with just the mobile device equipped in the field to be able to data capture your handwritten notes and then have that uploaded into the- the child’s case file, or to-you know small tasks. And then in the technology field, artificial intelligence has great capabilities, but it has to be trained. A digital worker would have to be trained on the exact processes that are executed today by our workers, and it would have to be, sort of like the brain of it has to be trained. And so, each time I would execute maybe something small such as capturing my handwritten notes, the worker would come back and say, “Are you satisfied with what I did?” You know. “What did I do right, what did I do wrong?” so to speak. And that interaction is necessary to sort of build that corpus of knowledge so that it ultimately becomes as smart as that Alexa back and forth conversation.
00:15:46
Pryce
Really, really interesting. So, I spent a lot of time traveling around Florida and talking to professionals in this field about what are their biggest challenges, and one of the challenges that I hear quite a bit is about transportation. So, I appreciate you know your conversation around taking that part out of the equation for a caseworker. Another element of transportation is taking kids to where they need to go and keeping up with their appointments, and coordinating between a caseworker, perhaps a therapist, a foster parent, a doctor, a dentist. So, you know, we were brainstorming one day- you know
6
what, maybe I shouldn’t call it brainstorming; we were thinking big and futuristically about what this could look like. And we were thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice…” We always start with that kind of you know thought process. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some type of technology or an app or something like that that all these different people had a foster parent, a caseworker, a doctor, a therapist? And it showed okay, this is the week for this child, and this is where they need to be at this time. And you could even sign up for who’s going to transport.” Because a lot of their challenges were kids weren’t getting to appointments, and foster parents maybe had jobs and had their, you know, their bio kids that they were taking back and forth from school. So, we were just thinking, even that part, you know, being able to wake up one morning and say, “Oh, I have I’m taking Jimmy to, you know, his dental appointment today. It looks like he’s going to therapy on Wednesday with his foster parent, but she can’t take him on Friday, so our transport is going to do that.” So, I’m curious if anything like that might exist with this digital worker.
00:17:23
Dienger
Oh, absolutely, the possibility is there. You can equip a digital worker with the capabilities that in the- to execute the tasks you need them to. Any agency can start small with, “Hey, this is sort of the scope of what we want to experiment with,” so to speak, I say “experiment.” The technology is there, but here’s what we want to tackle first, you know. And then let’s move it and once we’re confident with that, let’s tackle the next. So, you know, that you’re referring to is absolutely a capability that you know, a skill that a digital worker behind the scenes can be executing that. In addition, if you think about it, technology today, there are platforms, social platforms, where people are doing that in their personal lives where they are coordinating or just realtime communication that’s not picking up the phone or trying to get a hold of somebody you know it’s just it’s- it’s more fluid in today’s society. What’s encouraging to me about being a social worker at this at this point in time is that governments are starting to recognize that there are better ways of working and more efficient ways of working, and as you know, because you’ve been in the field for so long, we-were known for our siloed information. So, you may have one family that’s involved in child welfare services, but more often times than not, they’re involved with economic services, they’re involved with perhaps mental health or substance abuse services. And so, in the past, it’s been that they’re all siloed information because we’re so worried about confidentiality. But the good news is, and to your point of colla- more collaboration for the sake of being more efficient and more effective at what we do, the collaboration is beginning to be more prominent as they’re starting to study how can we break down some of those silos, still maintain the confidentiality we need; but those discussions are being had I believe in the
7
state of Florida even today of how can we kind of break down those barriers to communication so that we can look at the whole ecosystem. If I’m a social worker with that one child, lemme see the whole big picture so that I can execute my work more efficiently. There are more people than just me that can transport that child, but we need some platform to be able to coordinate that, and to your point as well, you know, a digital worker can manage and coordinate that on the back end. That could be something that’s part of that code for that particular technology.
00:19:41
Pryce
Sounds like it could be tailored to what the organizations really, need.
Dienger
Yes.
Pryce
So, when I hear you talk, Leah, you sound like such a visionary, and I believe that we need more visionaries in child welfare. And I think for decades we’ve had diligent, compassionate, committed people nationwide, you know, doing the work, but again, in my opinion, there’s been a lack of vision of where is child welfare going and what will it be in twenty, thirty years when we’re retired, you know when we’re finished with our tenure. And when you talk, it’s exciting for me because the work that you’re doing is going to be hugely important for people decades from now. So, that leads me to my question, how far away is this digital worker? You know, is it something that you anticipate happening in the next five years, in the next ten years? What does that process look like?
00:20:37
Dienger
Good question. I think when we’re talking about government, we have to keep in mind that they’re not risk-takers. We have to keep in mind that there are. Definitely, you know layers and layers to get approvals to do things. So, in my experience, that, to me, is the biggest obstacle. The technology is out there, and I am told by the technology professionals in my company, those that I’m working very closely with, to build out what we call “use cases” for digital workers, and social programs I build out here’s where it can help, and I build out that case. So, when I provide it to them, they sort of embrace it with a little bit of bewilderment of like “Why is this not already being done? Why is it not being done now?” and if we have you know clients that want this technology, it can be built out- we’re talking a matter of weeks depending on the level of sophistication we’re looking at. My fear as a visionary is that we’re going to pick up on this a little too late because, as I mentioned to you, even from a risk perspective, we’d want to start small and then scale to it. But it can sometimes take you know it can take months depending on the amount of people weighing in on the technology to train AI, you know, Artificial Intelligence. And so, we’ve got to have a baseline.
8
Child welfare and all health and human services professions, we collect a ton of data. Every person’s life that you touch, you’ve got to know about their ecosystem, and you’re out there often times manually collecting that data. Going door to door, to schools to medical professionals; collecting that data and you’re storing it all into this one great paper file, and we want to be able to leverage that data because often times it’s put in there and then as workers, we get so busy it’s hard to sift through everything especially if it’s a case with years of history. And so, the quality of data is a huge focus of even our federal government now, down through you know for child welfare is let’s collect quality data. And once we have that quality data, let’s go ahead and look at the technology as far as like artificial intelligence you know, let’s go ahead and start mining that data and gaining that insight. For a caseworker to go through a case file, it could take literally days depending on how lengthy it is, and you’re-and the human brain can’t collect all of it, especially when you’re talking if you even have ten cases, that’s a lot of information. However, there is technology available that can sift through those case notes and glean the insights, pick up on keywords, and really provide a really tremendous summary for that caseworker to ingest very quickly when that’s needed
00:23:19
Pryce
You know, honestly, as we talk about the future of child welfare and- and what technology can do, I feel excited about the field, and it makes me say, “I can do that! I can work in that field!” and that’s what we want. We want to make people excited about coming into our profession because I think that for a while now, it hasn’t been an exciting opportunity, it’s been kind of a pit-stop for people, and we do want to make it something that’s worthwhile for them and exciting for them and an opportunity to grow.
00:23:49
Dienger
Absolutely. And if I could add one thing on that I-as you say that. I know often times caseworkers feel alone in the field and- and charged with a ton of responsibility. It’s interesting being on this other side of it, on the technology side, and work with folks that every single day of their lives they’re implementing technology to improve a business process or an- you know, a customer’s experience. And when I come to them from a public sector point of view and share some of our pain points or our challenges in the profession with the tools and I- like I said, they’re horrified, and people want to help, they do. And it’s, and I do see more and more they want to leave the ego at the door because they feel like this is the right thing to do in society. This is the right thing to do is to support these workers that are really charged with such great responsibility.
00:24:40
Pryce
So, when I think about technology, I also am reminded that there are some people who are very intimidated by it. And I am sure you encounter these people even though I know you have people that are very excited about your work.
9
So, I’m curious, for those that are listening that might be saying, “That sounds good, but what about this, and what about that? I’m not really comfortable…” just curious if you could offer up some advice or some information around people that might fear this type of change.
00:25:08
Dienger
Absolutely. So, I would- you know, I think about it in terms of populations within the caseworker population as a whole. You know certainly, you have those that have been a social worker for decades, and they’ve had their way of doing work. And I think we need to honor that, and we need to respect that and whatever is put out there, pay mind to the fact. For example, you know if they’re comfortable using paper and pencil and they’re very skeptical of a computer losing their data that they, you know, their notes that they put in. Then let’s build into that solution the opportunity that you can still do that, but again, we have data capture, and I would say even those that have been in social work forever they probably have mobile devices they use for their personal lives. So, you know that kind of technology would not be a huge jump, to say, “let’s just use some of these modernized tools to help you do the work and support the work in a way you’re comfortable with.” As we look towards modernization of these systems, what I would like to say to that group of folks that have been so frustrated by the technology introduced in the social work profession up to date; like hang tight, because there are voices like my own that when I sit down at a table to help discuss modernization strategies and the specific technologies of, say a large FSFN system, I’m a huge advocate because if any solution comes to my view-my viewpoint and it creates more work for a social worker, I can guarantee you I’m standing up and saying “No, we can’t have this!” I absolutely one hundred percent come to the table and say, “If this is not going to simplify a social worker’s tasks, or you know execution of tasks, then we need to rethink it.” We don’t want to add more technology and cause it to be another stumbling block or another time crunch or another, you know, time suck. So, I think once caseworkers can understand that the technology is for them and not against them, then I think we’ll have a better adoption rate of it.
00:27:05
Pryce
10
Yeah. Well, I am a person who often pushes innovation in different realms. Right now, we’re talking about the frontline and turnover and retention, but I believe in innovation period. You know that really need to push forward in our professional lives, and how we make decisions and things of that nature. And when I get hit with pushback of “I don’t really like that, I’m not really sure,” I often offer up an analogy because I know you have colleagues and partners who are pushing this technology, and maybe it’s discouraging sometimes when they hit a wall, or they’re facing people who aren’t really on board. And I often tell people, “Do you remember when Netflix and Blockbuster had a really big fight?”
Dienger
Yeah, I do.
Pryce
And nobody, nobody remembers that fight because the fight didn’t exist.
Dienger
Oh!
Pryce
All of a sudden, Netflix was here, and then we didn’t see Blockbuster anymore. There was never a fight, there was never pushback; there was something that was created that worked way better, more convenient and more options. So, when I think about people who are in the field trying to bring technology, trying to bring innovation, I encourage them by saying, “When you have your product, evaluate it effective and you have it, and it’s sitting beside the legacy systems, it’s sitting beside the things we’ve always done; anyone is going to pick your system if you can prove that it’s the better more convenient more effective way of life.” So, we don’t have to fight, we don’t have to argue, we don’t have to debate. We have to just have to sit in the lab and work out what this is really going to be. So, I encourage people, don’t get discouraged if you’re out here pushing innovation and technology because you can be the next Netflix.
00:28:52
Dienger
Absolutely! And I would say, you know, let your voice be heard because there are opportunities. I know our way of work at my company is, you know; we bring all the stakeholders to the table. I say all, I don’t mean every single caseworker in the state, but you know if you feel as though you have a voice that you feel would be you know helpful in creating a product. We bring together in what we call Design Thinking Workshops or Design Work. And we bring anywhere from the executive level down- you know the important key stakeholders, legal, compliance, all the way down to CPIs and caseworkers because we want to hear the voice, and I think it’s so important for us to keep our thumb on you know, the pulse of those that are the end-users and I think that’s been missing in years past. As technology’s been developed it that often those end users aren’t at the table, and so then you know what the higher-level thinks is a good idea or the technologist thinks is a good idea, in reality, it’s not. So, you know, look for those opportunities so that your voice can be heard in terms of “Hey, this would be really helpful.”
00:29:56
11
Pryce
Wow, that is great. That is such a great thing that we can end on and wrap up. Thank you so much, Leah, for just again being a visionary and talking with us about where we can expect and anticipate child welfare, where it’s moving. Thank you very much.
Dienger
Absolutely, absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you.
Pryce
00:30:14
12
I want to give a huge thanks to our guests, and we are so appreciative of their commitment to improving our child welfare system. If you want to learn more about this topic or contact these speakers, please visit www.ficw.fsu.edu. Stay safe and well.