The Kansas Department for Children and Families released a request for proposals to obtain competitive responses from vendors to provide a foster care placement management system for youth in the custody of the secretary for out-of-home placement. The goal of this system was to provide recommendations for the best possible placement for a child removed from their parent/caregiver and, in addition, manage, track and analyze foster care placements.
The system was required to store data and information for the placement of children and youth brought into custody, as well as placement of data and information concerning every foster home, group home, residential center, relative placement and non-relative kinship placement associated with the State of Kansas Child Welfare System.
The placement management system required integrating with other State of Kansas data systems utilized in the child welfare system, including DCF FACTS (state SACWIS system) and SCRIPTS (financial application), as well as CLARIS (licensing and compliance software system).
During the implementation process, Five Points worked with members of the program office, Office of Information Technology Services, other state agencies and the State’s contracted child welfare agencies to understand business requirements, procedures and policies. This provided the information to ensure a proper system configuration and custom development needed for the CareMatch platform. Five Points was also responsible for assembling system documentation and facilitating a statewide training schedule for over 900 DCF and contracted staff.