CEO Letter

Happy New Decade!

I’m going to share my predictions for the year ahead as it impacts the agencies we serve.

1. Influence will matter.  Agencies will be working harder to build their influence on the world around them, and not just accept the crumbs after the cake is divided.  Associations will be more active in lobbying efforts, agencies will recruit influential board members, and agencies will work together to present the case for children and families in crisis. 
2. The ability to “solve” problems, not just “do good” will matter.  Child and Family Services agencies have been able to talk and find funding for the good work they do with their services.  But there has been a sea change away from rewarding good work, and towards finding  solutions for entire populations.  State and county governments and foundations are increasingly looking for more comprehensive solutions for entire population groups.  More and more states will look at privatizing systems of care, and looking for “super” agencies to manage at risk populations.
3. The first wave of cost savings were realized last year.  These were the savings that can be realized without fundamental organizational change:  Closing marginal programs, salary and hiring freezes, spending freezes.  This year we will see a push for a second wave of savings that involve significant organizational change: Radical restructuring of programs, and partnering and merging with other agencies.
4. The commercial real estate downturn is going to present major opportunities to agencies to improve their facility quality and cost.
5. Outsourcing will increase.  Obvious candidates include HR, Benefits, IT, and adding a contingent workforce to cover cyclical and non critical functions.
6. Alignment with the behavioral healthcare world will increase.  The silos within health and human services will further crumble this year.  Child and Family Services Agencies will find themselves more closely aligned and overlapping with mental health care and MR/DD providers.
7. Agencies will need to be “nimble” as the pace of change increases, and the next “unprecedented crisis” means that federal and state governments change funding and regulation with less notice.  This nimbleness will be most clearly needed to close and open new programs and services.  A well-trained and skilled core workforce and the support of your case management and billing software company will be critical assets.
8. There will be a rise of “professional” fundraising.  Right now, only about 25% of KaleidaCare non-profit customers have full-time, dedicated professionals managing their fundraising.  I expect this proportion to increase significantly. 
9. Loyalties will be redefined out of need.  Agencies will start to break beyond denominational, congregational, and traditionally competitive boundaries.  Traditional “sacred cows” in the form of programs or even people will need to be challenged to allow agencies to have the resources and capacity for change necessary to thrive in a very tough environment.
10. We are going to be seeing a more dramatic changing of the guard this year.  There will be an influx of talented senior executives at the senior level from outside the industry, and the promotion of younger executives with more business training.

Whatever the future brings for you and your agency, KaleidaCare is fully committed to support you with an ever improving product and great support.  We are constantly looking at ways to improve our own organization, service, and product.  Our alignment with child and family services means that we are in tune with the struggles and opportunities that you face.  Our resolution in 2010 is to continually earn the right to be your mission critical partner in the services you provide.

Best wishes for 2010,
  Alistair Deakin,
  President & CEO

KaleidaCare’s Newest Customers

Assemblies of God Family Services Agency (Hot Springs, AR) joined the KaleidaCare team to help manage their many programs and cut down on paper.  AG Family Services Agency (AGFSA) oversees Hillcrest Children's Home, Highlands Maternity Home, Highlands Eating Disorder Recovery and AGFSA Adoptions.  Their free-of-charge ministry serves a diverse population of young children, youth, young women and families facing an unplanned pregnancy or bulimia.

Niles Home for Children (Kansas City, MO) provides residential treatment, day treatment and education services to children ages 7 through 17 in eastern Kansas and across Missouri.  After celebrating their 125 year anniversary, Niles Home has grown to serve over 150 children annually.

Recent Developments

Service Billing Enhancements

Following the 2009 Home Tracking and Significant Report Enhancements Release, KaleidaCare has released a number of enhancements to our Revenue Maximization (Service Billing) Module.

Transaction date functionality has been added to the Generate Billing, Accounts Receivable, and Month-End Close Tools to increase reporting capabilities.

A number of enhancements have been added to the Accounts Receivable Tool:

• New Filter Options:
• Current Payer
• Location
• Billing Provider
• Rendering Provider
• Worker
• Ability to view a Snapshot of historical Accounts Receivable Data
• An AR Collections Report has been added to the report listings.  This report pulls current balance, any transactions/payments, and a record of all the notes of contacts that have been made.

The Authorization Warning Report has also had the following report filtering options added:

• Primary Payer Only Option
• Ability to Exclude Inactive/Expired Authorizations
• Client Filter, including “In a Program”
• Worker
• Report Sorts by Last Name

New Bill Hold Functionality has been added to allow an agency to hold a bill for a set number of days after the service date before it is billed.

EPSDT, Family Planning, and Emergency Care Indicator Fields have been added to the Service and Procedure Code Tool.

Oklahoma Contractual Service Billing Functionality has been added.

Those agencies using the Electronic Billing Module can now send Re-Bills electronically.

This release also included Additional Bill Validation and streamlining of the Coding Review Process.

Additional Enhancements

Occupancy Rate Reporting is now available on the Clients Served Report.  The report can be run by using the Primary Grouping of “Facility with Statistics” and displays the facility capacity, number of bed nights, and occupancy rate for the time period specified.  A daily report is also available to see the number of clients placed on a daily basis.

Current Status has been added as a data point to all the Client Status Reports.  This will be particularly helpful for users to analyze which referrals were subsequently placed or deferred.

New Copy Menu Functionality allows System Administrators to copy an existing menu to more efficiently create new similar menus.

Program Assignments can now be made by Non-System Administrator Users.

Regional Trainings Recap

KaleidaCare held our Regional Trainings in Fort Worth, Texas and Chattanooga, Tennessee in October.  Forty-one users from various agencies participated in these trainings that covered recent report enhancements, a review of common tools, and using Excel to increase reporting capabilities.

KaleidaCare offers a number of training opportunities from web trainings to onsite trainings that can be customized to your needs.  For more information and pricing, please contact your Account Manager.

National User Group Planned for September

KaleidaCare will hold our Annual National User Group in Austin, Texas in September this year.  “Our Development Team is focused on our next generation product this year.  We moved the User Group to the fall to allow more time for the development of the product” said Chip Bolyard, Director of Account Management.  Additional information, including specific dates will be released soon.  “This will be one User Group that you don’t want to miss,” added Bolyard.

Online User Group Continues

KaleidaCare’s Online User Group continues to meet on a regular basis.  The Online User Group provides an avenue for users to keep updated on product enhancements and company plans and provides a valuable opportunity for KaleidaCare Staff to hear directly from users.  Users also use this meeting to share ideas and ask questions of each other and KaleidaCare.

Georgia User Group

Lutheran Services of Georgia hosted the most recent Georgia User Group on December 3rd.  Eighteen people from ten agencies participated in this quarter’s meeting. Thanks to LSG for hosting!

Account Manager Trish Murphy highlighted some of the system enhancements released during the past quarter, and then demonstrated some upcoming enhancements.  The group discussed the State’s plans to require agencies to enter data directly into the SACWIS system, GA SHINES, in the near future.  Understandably, agencies would like to be able to enter data in KaleidaCare and have it transfer electronically to SHINES.  KaleidaCare is open to exploring this possibility.  The first step is to determine if GA will allow vendors to submit electronic data to the system.  MAAC has agreed to approach the State on behalf of all the KaleidaCare agencies in GA about this project.

Agencies using the Service Billing module discussed how they have been handling the State requirement to have certain information such as the client’s name, date and page number on the 2nd page of their notes.  The Bridge reported they ordered stamps with these prompts on them so the workers can just fill in the blanks on the printed reports, and they have found this to be helpful.  CHRIS Kids is not printing their notes out at all and this has worked for them.  Specific Service Billing Enhancements were also reviewed.

Trish will send out a survey to the Georgia agencies in January to get input on a number of questions for the 2010 meetings.  One question will be whether to continue the current meeting schedule on the 2nd Thursday of each quarter at 2:00 pm, or if there is a desire to change this.  Other questions will include gathering suggestions for topics for the upcoming meetings.  Agencies are encouraged to give their input and ideas.

The next meeting will be in March, but the date and location have not been determined yet.  An invitation and directions will be sent out in advance.

Heather Rowles, the Executive Director of MAAC and Trish Murphy are the co-chairs of the Georgia User Group.  For more information about these meetings, please contact Heather at (404) 880-9323 or hrowles@maac4kids.org or Trish at (404) 580-1142 or tmurphy@kaleidacare.com.

Customer Spotlight

Hillside, Inc., a private not-for-profit agency, is a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility in Atlanta, Georgia treating children and adolescents ages 7-21 with a wide range of severe emotional and behavioral problems.  They also have a Foster Care program and several Community Based Programs.  In July 2006, Hillside integrated Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) into every aspect of its residential program from therapy sessions to activity therapy to its on-site school.  Hillside’s DBT program includes weekly individual therapy sessions, family therapy either on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, two DBT skills learning group sessions per week, two DBT skills building group sessions per week, and a weekly DBT skills group for the youth’s family members.

In an effort to monitor the youth’s progress during their stay, Hillside has utilized KaleidaCare to track both behavioral data and clinical data since their Implementation in the summer of 2007.  Hillside tracks each youth’s daily behavior and enters this data in Progress Logs on a daily basis.  They also track the youth’s scores from the Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS) to assess effectiveness at changing functional impairments.  Hillside worked with KaleidaCare to develop a customized Data Export that pulls together specific data from various parts of the system.  Hillside uses this data to assess the youth’s progress over time in treatment and for evaluation/research projects related to the DBT program.

As a result Hillside has been able to document an improvement in CAFAS scores at discharge, indicating the youth’s level of impairment due to emotional and behavioral problems decreased markedly over the course of treatment.  Their analysis also indicates that youth who participated in the program since the implementation of DBT have had significant treatment gains in a shorter period of time than Hillside had seen prior to the use of DBT.

Destination Dad

A powerful program for incarcerated fathers and their children

Nearly 1.1 million parents are incarcerated with an estimated 2.3 million children and the numbers only seem to be growing (Mumola, 2000). The most recent statistics report that 93% of these inmates are fathers.  Without question the impact on a child of having an incarcerated parent is profound. There are many direct effects associated with paternal incarceration, but two factors stand out above all else: parent-child separation and enduring traumatic stress. Both of these can affect each stage of child development (Santana, 2009).  Typically, a child faced with the social stigma of having a parent incarcerated will often also encounter embarrassment and shame, which may in turn further inhibit the ability of the child to adequately adjust to the anxieties resulting from the separation through incarceration.  Fortunately, there are many agencies and organizations across the United States that are working diligently to develop and implement programs to mitigate this negative impact.

FFTA Member and KaleidaCare customer Christian Heritage located in Lincoln, Nebraska has one such program:  Destination…Dad.  This program is made possible by many volunteers and a clear and well-defined vision and plan developed by Christian Heritage co-CEOs Gregg and Lisa Nicklas.

Operated without state or federal funding, Destination…Dad offers three main components to fathers who are incarcerated and their children.

Learning:  Volunteers use a proven curriculum called InsideOut Dad™ developed by the National Fatherhood Initiative.  This curriculum includes 12 weekly  sessions  that cover topics ranging from parenting skills, discipline, to the father’s own  physical and mental health.  Volunteers lead the sessions along with prison personnel, working with the fathers to improve their own self-image and to become better equipped to father their children.  In many cases, this process helps fathers to deal with their own pasts and to learn that they can create a different future for their children.

Connecting:  Correctional facilities are often located in remote areas and are far from where children and caregivers live, making visitation extremely difficult.  However, research has consistently shown that visiting can calm children’s fears about their parent’s welfare as well as their concerns about the parent’s feelings for them.  Christian Heritage’s program understands the difficulties of providing visitation and uses the Messages Project model to help connect fathers with their children.  Through the Messages Project, volunteers visit fathers in prison and videotape them reading a book to their children.  The DVDs are mailed to the children’s caregivers, allowing a very personal connection to be made between the children and their dads.  Day Visits are also coordinated by volunteers when possible to allow children to have face-to-face time with their fathers.

Living:  Nearly all incarcerated fathers will eventually be released from prison.  Destination…Dad trains volunteers to be part of a Reunification Team.  A Team Leader meets with a father 2 months prior to his release and then continues to work with him upon release to obtain employment, reconnect with his family, and provide additional support as needed. By continuing to support and encourage, this post-release aspect of the Destination…Dad program helps to increases the positive effect of the skills the father learned while in prison and strengthens his relationship with his children.

Christian Heritage is currently working with 6 correctional facilities in Nebraska and hopes to increase their ability to reach out to and support incarcerated fathers and their children.    Since the program’s inception, over 200 dads have successfully completed InsideOut Dad training.  With the help of 34 active volunteers, the children of 92 dads have received books and a DVD of their dads reading and talking to them through the Messages Project.   By tracking their work in KaleidaCare Solutions, Christian Heritage is able to measure an inmate’s progress through the program, to track how many DVDs are sent out to children, and to track volunteer hours.  For more information or to donate to this program, visit http://www.chchildrenshomes.com/fatherhood/.

Resources:

Working papers prepared for the "From Prison to Home" Conference (January 30-31, 2002) 8 Effects of Parental Incarceration on Young Children R. Parke and K.A. Clarke-Stewart

Mumola, C. J. (2000). Incarcerated parents and their children. NCJ 182335. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Santana, Jose. “Children of Incarcerated Parents: The Negative Developmental Impact.” A Sentence of Their Own. Web 3 Dec. 2009. <http://www.asentenceoftheirown.com/ >.