The Human Face Of Information Technology

By Tim Wacker, technology writer, NBN Communications

For a child experiencing psychological trauma due to family breakdown, the wheels of social services bureaucracies cannot move fast enough. Quite literally, a child in immediate need cannot wait — whether for the comforts of peanut butter or pizza, or a secure place to call home. This is the primary concern of KVC Health Systems, a private, nonprofit behavioral healthcare and child welfare headquartered in the greater Kansas City area.

Over its 45-year history, KVC has grown from a single home founded by volunteers to help at-risk boys to a comprehensive organization employing more than 1,300 committed employees based at 33 locations across four Midwestern states. By providing in-home family support, foster care, adoption, behavioral healthcare, youth substance abuse treatment, and psychiatric hospitals, KVC touches the lives of nearly 60,000 children and families each year.

It is a formidable mission to fulfill. Social care is delivered face-to-face, as KVC emphasizes in their organizational motto and passion: people matter. Yet in a system that must integrate and coordinate families, schools, courts, healthcare services, and state and county agencies, a child’s needs can easily slip through the cracks. To insure that doesn’t happen, KVC felt the need to streamline an information processing system by going digital and mobile. Starting with an in-house system of scanning and storing paper documents, KVC’s IT team quickly recognized the need for a more comprehensive systems-oriented solution.