A leader in serving the nation's foster care children, SAFY celebrates significant improvement in tracking service outcomes and increasing efficiencies in quality improvement processes through the use of the KaleidaCare Solutions product.

Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth (SAFY), headquartered in Delphos, Ohio, serves over 1000 foster children on any given day in 950 treatment foster homes. Located in seven states-Ohio, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nevada, Texas--the organization has a total of 22 sites. Originally, SAFY was founded in 1984 to serve youth who were at high risk for institutionalization with an alternative community-based placement known as treatment foster homes. Over the years, the organization has continued to expand its service array for difficult to place, troubled youth and their families. Services now include in-home treatment, mental retardation/developmentally-delayed services, special medical needs services, mental health services, teen parent programs, adoption services, and a shelter for runaway and homeless youth.

SAFY is committed to continuous quality improvement in its service delivery. As the organization added services and expanded to other states, it required a flexible, customizable, user-friendly, and easily accessible technology solution to meet the numerous individual state and contract regulations and demands. KaleidaCare Solutions, a web-based software application, has proven to be a highly-effective solution for the organization. The staff members, including direct care, administrative, specialists, supervisors, financial, quality improvement, licensing, and training personnel use the data to improve services, communication, and performance accountability. Dru Whitaker, SAFY's CEO states, "KaleidaCare Solutions has been a huge asset to the organization for sharing vital client and foster home information to those who need it in a timely manner. The system is assisting us to provide quality services."

Since the basic client information, diagnostic assessments, treatment plans, case notes, incident logs, medications, health care logs, and other service data is easily accessible to staff at any time from a centralized database, case managers and supervisors can access information from other settings to deal with an immediate or crisis situation. Case managers are able to complete case notes and other reporting requirements from other sites which increased the timeliness and accuracy of data collection. The quality improvement processes are more efficient and effective as timely information from any of the 22 sites is accessed from one centralized database.

Barb Odenweller, SAFY's Director of Training and KaleidaCare Solutions System Administrator reports, "Solutions has been very valuable to SAFY because we can customize the documentation tools to meet the individualized requirements of each state. The customer service provided by the KaleidaCare staff has made the transition to Solutions a painless and successful process. The KaleidaCare staff is very supportive and timely with appropriate responses to questions from the SAFY staff."

For more information about the Specialized Alternatives For Families And Youth, visit their website: www.safy.org or contact Barb Odenweller, Director of Training, at 800-532-7239.

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