Key Insights for a Successful AI Rollout at your Child Welfare Agency
A recent publication from Microsoft provides key insights that can help us formulate an approach to AI adoption and integration. Below is an analysis of these insights and a suggestion of how child welfare agencies can use them to inform a rollout of AI across their operations.
Automation of Routine Tasks
Permanency case workers, behavioral health specialists, recruitment staff, and other professionals within child welfare depend heavily on gathering and reporting data. They spend a large amount of time on routine tasks such as data entry, documentation, case tracking, and meetings. AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) can alleviate some of these administrative pressures by automating procedural tasks that record and interpret spoken or written text from various sources. These technologies can also reduce the drudgery of repetitive work, which can reduce burnout and turnover, and allow workers to spend more focused time engaging directly with children and families.
Informed Decision-Making and Predictive Analytics
AI can be used to analyze large datasets, which can help to identify trends and patterns for better decision-making. These models can ingest case records, logs, and a variety of other data to show the likelihood of child maltreatment, which placements are better than others, where to focus family recruitment efforts, and other uses. This type of decision-making guidance can lead to better outcomes for children and families wherever historical patterns can be helpful while also helping to reduce “productivity disruptors” for workers, which might include unnecessary meetings.
A Thoughtful Rollout Plan in 3 Steps
The article suggests that, despite reservations about how the use of AI will impact organizations, many staff are optimistic overall and see it as a benefit to delivering better care. So how can we think about incorporating these types of solutions into our child welfare agencies? Below is one model that uses the insights in this article:
1. Access the needs of your organization: Gain a current understanding of the types of tasks your departments are performing on a regular basis. Understand how they view their work so you can begin to discern which activities can be automated and which require human attention or ingenuity. Research the technologies that are available and identify how they are changing and evolving so that you can predict how they will work in the future. Be thorough in your research and gain a detailed understanding of how they can be applied. This approach will allow you to communicate with your staff in a way that advances the goals of what each department is trying to accomplish.
2. Invest in training and education: The more your staff understand about how applied AI works, the more you can use your staff to “crowdsource” potential solutions. This includes training your staff to use more specific tools so they can experiment responsibly, but it also includes providing access to a general education about AI tools and concepts. Encourage your staff to share what they learn by providing a forum to do so. Increasing your staff’s overall ‘AI aptitude’ will help create a techno-positive culture that is based on a foundation of knowledge and awareness instead of fear and suspicion. Your staff will begin to see how their roles will evolve with the use of AI technologies and will be willing to share what they learn.
3. Choose the right tools and continuously monitor them: Select AI solutions that align with your agency’s goals and the areas where they can have the most impact, and start experimenting responsibly. Cancel or adjust the usage of tools that don’t deliver outcomes, but also be patient enough to allow time for staff to explore these tools. Be diligent about helping your staff measure productively objectively but also consider more subjective measures, which could include regular check-ins or surveys. This will help to create a picture of what works and what doesn’t so you know where to continue investing your technology transformation efforts.
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Writer William Gibson once remarked that “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” This observation highlights the nature of new technologies, whose impact is determined by the actions we take to discern and deliver the benefits of these new technologies. One organization may embrace and adopt while another hesitates and languishes. The uniqueness of any organization demands that each comes up with its own rollout plan. We can, however, collectively approach the types of problems that are common to child welfare organizations, thereby advancing an overall confidence in the path forward into the future.