The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska’s Social Services Department has made remarkable advances in digitizing its Indian Child Welfare and domestic violence cases and has earned this year’s TIGER Award from Handel Information Technologies.
Each year, Handel bestows the TIGER Award, Technology Innovator for Groundbreaking and Exceptional use of RiteTrack, to the customer who has shown the most innovative implementation of RiteTrack over the past 12 months. The annual TIGER Award comes with $1,000.00 in products and/or services from Handel.
The Tribe’s mission is to “provide quality and culturally appropriate social work services to Ponca members and their families.” The Tribe’s Domestic Violence Program provides crisis and emergency services for victims of sexual assault, stalking, and domestic violence. Any victim, perpetrator, or child involved in a domestic violence, sexual assault, or a stalking situation must be an enrolled member of a federally recognized Tribe within the U.S. and reside within the Ponca Tribal service delivery area to be eligible to access these services through the Tribe. The Tribe also manages Indian Child Welfare cases for Native children on the reservation.
Prior to implementing RiteTrack software the Tribe tracked and managed all their cases on paper only and it was very difficult to organize incidences of abuse. If the subject of a case had a previous record, it could be quite cumbersome and time-consuming to find previous offenses affiliated with the subject. All the reports required for grant funding were also time-consuming and difficult to produce.
The Ponca Tribe is using RiteTrack and they now have one central location for all information that is quickly and easily searchable and accessible. As they enter new information into their system concerning perpetrators or victims, that data is connected to all previous, documented, related data which becomes instantly accessible. Long term benefits will also include extensive historical case tracking, and advanced reporting on many varied aspects of their programs.
Although software implementations can take between 1-2 years to complete, the Tribe’s software solution was ready in only 5 months and it runs on Microsoft Silverlight®. Their system went live approximately 8 months ago and it gives the Tribe the ability to produce statistical reports now which include the information on their grant applications. This ensures the Tribe can produce reliable data quickly that contributes directly to grant/fund reporting.
Handel Information Technology provides cutting-edge solutions to tribal, nonprofit, and government social service agencies using highly advanced technology and relational databases. The company’s premier offering, RiteTrack® is based on Microsoft’s Silverlight® platform and runs on browsers and desktops to provide a universal solution for data and case management.