Hints & Tips

Is it still possible to clean up any data entry errors pertaining to the Caseworker Contacts that occurred last year between October 2008 and now?

When creating a Child Welfare Services Report, one of the Specific Services Requested is ‘CPS Alert’. The CPS Alert is used primarily by DCF staff to document when another state notifies Wisconsin that a family involved with Child Protective Services may have moved to Wisconsin . This way, if the family does become involved in CPS in a Wisconsin county, there is information that another state may be looking for that family or have additional information.

1)       The SPS reporting population (using either eWiSACWIS or the spreadsheet) are those clients (children and adults) who are receiving services paid for by the county (either via staff resources or paid services) to address early intervention/prevention (i.e. non-CPS which is captured via eWiSACWIS thru casework documentation) or community based (i.e. not placement which is already captured via eWiSACWIS thru Out-of-Home Placement documentation).  This group, formerly called the Child and Family Target Population in HSRS Core, should match with expenditure data provided by the county for Human Services Revenue Reporting.  While an updated memo should be issued soon, the most recent joint memo on this requirement provides detailed descriptions/definitions of the reporting groups and can be found at the following website:  http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/memos/num_memos/2008/2008-04.pdf

2)       Both the Child Welfare (formerly known as the HSRS CORE “Child and Family”) target population and the JJ target population can be reported either using the eWiSACWIS functionality or can be report via our Division’s annual survey for the Child Welfare and the Division of Juvenile Correction’s annual survey.  For both of these target populations, service reporting related to Child Abuse and Neglect reports, initial assessments and any resulting service plans and to out-of-home care placements would be captured only from eWiSACWIS data that is entered as part of the casework documentation.  These services should not be entered in the eWiSACWIS SPS functionality or the surveys as it would be duplicative.  

I hope this proves at least a little helpful in clarifying who is subject to SPS reporting on our Division’s behalf and how the data is used. Please keep us posted of additional issues or questions so we can continue to better clarify what is needed by the state and from counties. 

The Medical Mental Health pages in eWiSACWIS > Person Management require you to identify a Physician, Mental Health Provider, or a Dentist when entering a health concern for a child. As you search for and find that medical provider, please keep in mind that, like you, the entire state can search for, find, and edit the same medical provider.

If you modify the medical provider's information, it changes everywhere the medical provider is listed. For instance, let's say Dr. Smith has two addresses. Someone may have used Dr. Smith at his 5th Street Clinic. Now, you search for the provider, find him, and (because the child you are helping has Mental Health concerns) update the existing information on this Physician to 106th Street Clinic. This seemingly simple change updates every Permanency Plan, Medical Summary Template, and Person Management screen on everyone's case (who used this Medical Provider) to display the medical provider's 106th Street Clinic.

Unless you are 100% sure that a mistake was made, the best practice in this area is to create a new Medical Provider if the demographic and profession is different. If you don't find the provider, the best practice is to include as much as you can find out about the provider, record it and create a new one.

If the physician and health concern have changed, it is best to insert a new Health Concern, rather than editing the information on the existing Health Concern.

• The child or juvenile is unaccounted for a period of time that cannot reasonably be justified by the child or juvenile’s age, maturity, or emotional capacity which shall not exceed eight hours.
• When efforts to locate the child or juvenile have been unsuccessful. 
• When it is known or suspected that a child juvenile has been taken by force or coercion.
• When the child or juvenile is in the company of an unauthorized person or located in an unauthorized place.
  

The child or juvenile’s placement status must be updated within three business days, excluding holidays and weekends when: 

• The child or juvenile has been missing for 24 hours and
• The child or juvenile returns to out-of-home care.

The Judicial tab has been removed from the Permanency Plan Review or Hearing Results page. Approved pages as of the 3.2 release date will continue to display the Judicial tab. Pending pages as of the 3.2 release will no longer display the Judicial tab from the Permanency Plan Review Or Hearing Results page. Judicial Review Date, Type, and Method should still be recorded on Permanency Plan Review or Hearing Results page within the appropriate timelines. 

Click here for more information on Perm Plan Review or Hearing  documentation timelines.

Multiple Assignments can be created, ended and/or reassigned from the Assignment Maintenance window in real time. Overnight batching is no longer required for entire caseload reassignments. Click on the following link to review the Quick Reference guides for specific information on how to use the Assignment Maintenance window. Quick Reference Guides for Assignment Maintenance

Right clicking in a date field will display a calendar from which you can select a date. The date you select will then prefill into the date field you right clicked in. This is the only right click functionality that is currently present in the eWiSACWIS application.

Releases 1.9 and 2.0  brought about changes to the wildcard (*) search.  eWiSACWIS now allows multiple wildcard searches for all name fields. This will enable a user to enter more than one wildcard in the same name field.  For example, searching on the following criteria "S*t*J*" will find results that begin with S and have a "T" and  "J" in them, like St. Josephs or Saint Johns.

Don't forget, you can also do wildcard searches with numbers.  For example, for person searches, users will be able to enter a Street (number) wildcard 24* and pull up any persons with variations of the last name AND street address that begin with '24.

September

30, 2005

April

22, 2005

Two documents exist on the Knowledge web that hold County contact information for both Intake and Provider Maintenance personnel. These pages are: 

Intake Contacts by County 

Designated County Provider Contacts

Please take a moment to go out and verify that the individuals listed as your County's contacts are accurate. If it is not, please contact the help desk with the correct information

At this time, there has been direction from the Office of Program Evaluation and Planning that Trial Home Visits should not be documented in eWiSACWIS. There is no policy direction or statutory authority to use these appropriately. While there is a Trial Home Visit placement status value and service ending values, the Placement Manual does not address documentation due to policy and legal issues.

At this point, the above scenario would be documented as a placement episode ending in a discharge to Reunification and a new episode would start when the child returns to care. This is consistent with AFCARS.

The child may remain under agency supervision during the time between episodes and the SEU may use this information to manage IV-E status.

Questions have come up regarding how to determine the appropriate school district code to enter. Please refer to the following Ops Memo for information surrounding this topic. 

School District Codes Memo

Supervisors can be set as their own supervisor within the application. This allows for tickler escalation to stop at the supervisor, and it pulls the supervisor's name forward one level off of the Create Worker Assignment Page. Thus, if creating an assignment to one's self, the supervisor no longer has to drill-down through the director to find their worker icon. This avoids many extra steps, decreasing the amount of time it will take to self-assign. One can have another supervisor in the agency maintain their worker record to accomplish the above set up.

Note* This should only be done if there is no business or workflow need for your supervisor (usually the director of the agency) to automatically receive tickler escalations or approvals.

The adoption regions have been consolidated from 5 to 3. Due to this you will now see a change in the values you see in the drop downs. The 3 regions / 4 offices are:

The Western Region (WRO) - Eau Claire is the main office

The Eastern Region (ERO) - Green Bay is the main office

The Southern Region (SRO) - Madison is the main office plus Milwaukee Adoptions 

The following procedure should be used to create a IV-E eligibility icon in a case where it is needed but missing. This work must be done by the ongoing caseworker.

1. End the last placement for the child in question on the last day of the most recent month. (This simplifies the payments for the provider). Use an end reason of "Agency requested change".

Please note: This will create multiple placement lines (different start dates) in your Permanency Plan. If you desire to not have multiple placement lines reflected then you can end your placement for reason of placement made in error. Doing this will close the placement the day it began. In turn, this will generate a series of overpayments and new payments (when the new placement is documented). All of these will need to be cancelled up to the month's cost of care that has not been paid.

2. After the placement ending is approved, create a new placement starting on the next day. This placement should be set up exactly the same as the one that was ended with one exception: On the services tab, click the check box that reads "This placement is the result of a transfer".

Once this placement is fully approved, the new IV-E icon will be created for the child.

If the FEIN or SSN are documented then the cause is usually a missing voucher number in the system.

If you are attempting to document a one-time payment and you are receiving an error that reads: "Either an account number or IV-E FFP record can not be determined for the payment dates and service type entered." Then you need to update the service type. In order to fix this problem, the designated service maintenance person must update the Reporting Category of the service type in question.

Note: The first seven values are not for county use. Reporting Category 8 can be used if a county does not have a financial interface. If the county has a financial interface then a reporting category should be chosen that correspond with other services as specified in the financial interface design.

If a provider does not have the active service types a user is looking follow these steps below: 

1. Contact your county's provider maintenance unit/person. Service types can be added by these individuals. However, if the provider's designated county is not the county of the worker then the person will need to contact that designated county and have their service types added to the provider. A listing of the designated county contacts can be found at Designated County Provider Contacts 
2. The Bureau of Regulation and Licensing currently licenses private agencies such as RCC's, Group Homes and Parent Agencies. If you need an update to one of these types of facilities then contact Jenny Weber. Necessary information is provided to Stephanie who will then update and/or create these private providers in eWiSACWIS. Jenny.Weber@wi.gov
3. For Foster Homes and Treatment Foster Homes licensed by parent agencies Maximus is maintaining the provider records. Contact: Jenny Weber at Jenny.Weber@wi.gov

1. To report the number of children, aged 5 through 17 years of age, living in foster homes, whom are supported with public funds, and
2. To document the number of children in families receiving TANF payments in excess of the poverty level.

• According to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) each foster child count generates approximately $1,500 in funding for the school district and results in schools in Wisconsin receiving approximately $7.6 million in additional funding each school year.

• Please note: For facilities that have there own schools (ex. Ethan Allen) one should use the school district code that denotes the district where the facility is located.

The appropriate school district codes have been pre-populated into eWiSACWIS. They were taken directly from the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction's website. Please use the following hyperlink to navigate a listing of all the school district codes in the State.

If you need to develop a report specific to your county's needs please refer to the following page in  on the WiSACWIS Knowledge Web for information on how to request Ad hoc reports. 

If you are struggling with resolving AFCARS ticklers you can find some very helpful guides at the following Web page: http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/wisacwis/knowledge_web/Helpdesk/afcars_index.htm

Below are listed the edits that can keep a case from closing or not merging: 

• Merge will fail because Reference Person not found! 
• Merge will fail - Reference Person Not Same For Remove Case: <case number> Retain Case: <case number> 
• Merge will fail - Retain Case Not Original Bio Case 
• CPS Report Without Initial Assessment 
• Open Episodes/Placements 
• Open Eligibility Medicaid Certification Info. Not Completed
• Case Plans Pending/Ongoing 
• Adoption Case Plan – Pending/Ongoing 
• Adoption Case Evaluation – Pending 
• Case Plan – Pending/Ongoing 
• Out-of-Home Safety Plan – Pending/Ongoing 
• Permanency Plan – Pending/Ongoing 
• Safety Analysis and Plan – Pending Participants in DCF Custody No Approval for Payment Approval Processing Not Complete Open Trust Accounts
• Participants in DCF Custody
• No Approval for Payment
• Approval Processing Not Complete