Executive Overview
Child welfare professionals face extraordinary challenges. They must make urgent, high-stakes decisions that profoundly affect the lives of vulnerable children and families—often with incomplete, outdated, or fragmented information. Despite extensive investments in case management systems, most child welfare agencies still operate within a patchwork of siloed data systems maintained by separate organizations such as healthcare providers, schools, courts, and law enforcement agencies. These disjointed systems impair visibility, delay interventions, and compromise the quality of care that children receive.
Smart data fabrics offer a new path forward by connecting disparate systems, harmonizing data, and allowing information to flow freely across organizations. With a smart data fabric, caseworkers gain a holistic view of a child’s environment and history that spans agencies and systems. By transforming raw data into actionable insights, this modern data architecture helps child welfare professionals make timely, fully-informed decisions.
This white paper introduces the smart data fabric concept and explains how it helps break down interoperability barriers and improve child welfare decision-making and coordination. You’ll learn how InterSystems IRIS® data platform provides the fundamental capabilities needed to implement a smart data fabric that lays the foundation for a more responsive, efficient, and data-driven child welfare system.
Smart data fabrics empower agencies to better protect children and strengthen family well-being by allowing them to:
- Improve child safety and welfare
- Support prevention and family strengthening
- Enable awareness for trauma-informed care
- Facilitate youth transitions and aftercare
- Improve community-based partnerships
- Enhance outcome measurement and continuous quality improvement
- Incorporate youth and family voice in system design and decision-making
- Promote equity and reduce disparities
The smart data fabric approach helps agencies become more responsive and transparent, delivering a child welfare system that satisfies the expectations of children and their families, case workers, funders and oversight bodies.
Download the White Paper to learn about:
- Siloed Data Systems Put Children and Families at Risk
- Smart Data Fabrics Let Caseworkers Make Faster, Better Decisions
- Integrated Service Models Strengthen Family-Centered Support
- Smart Data Fabrics Optimize Data Quality, Accessibility, and Usefulness
- InterSystems Helps Child Welfare Agencies Increase Data Insights
- InterSystems IRIS Benefits for Child Welfare Agencies