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How CAMBA Modernized Social Program Reporting
CAMBA has a proud legacy of identifying and serving social needs in all five boroughs of New York City. Over the years, the organization has evolved and expanded its reach, developing human service programs to serve vulnerable populations. Because of the complexity of delivering overlapping-yet-disparate services with distinct reporting requirements, it’s important for CAMBA to maintain data in a central system, made possible with ClientTrack by CaseWorthy.
CAMBA is one of the largest human service providers in New York City, with a history of serving vulnerable populations of diverse backgrounds and needs. Because it’s such a large organization, a unified process to data management was crucial to bridge across multiple programs within the organization, as well as align metrics and processes across the organization while maintaining the diversity of data types and data collection and reporting needed by each program.
Background and Impact
Then
Formerly known as Church Avenue Merchants Block Association, CAMBA started out in 1977 as a business improvement district (BID) in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Originally focused on reducing crime, beautifying the neighborhood, and improving city services, CAMBA leaders realized the importance of serving Brooklyn immigrants and other residents beyond the original mission. This expansion would mean providing HIV/AIDS support, legal services for people living in poverty, school dropout prevention services, and summer camps for school children. By 1997, CAMBA expanded its reach to mental health services, child welfare programs, and homelessness prevention and services. In 2005, CAMBA launched CAMBA Housing Ventures to develop supportive affordable housing.
Now
CAMBA now manages 180+ programs throughout 100+ locations, with 1,800+ team members, which run the gamut of health and human services in the following six areas:
- Housing stability,
- Education and youth development,
- Family and community support,
- Healthcare,
- Economic development, and
- Legal services.
If the sheer scale of CAMBA’s operation isn’t impressive enough, consider its impact on the communities (see below).
It is not surprising that such a large organization with such varied needs across many program types would face challenges with data management. That’s where data management comes in.
| CAMBA's 2023 Impact (Abridged) | |
|---|---|
| Housing Stability and Homelessness Prevention | 96% of all client households remain stably housed with Homelessness Prevention Services; 100% of clients sustained housing for at least one year with permanent supportive housing; 354 families residing in CAMBA homeless shelters were placed in permanent housing |
| Education and Youth Development | 100% of high school seniors involved in Learning to Work and CAMBA College Bound graduated on time; $1.5 million was earned collectively by Learning to Work students in 2023 internships; 59% of adult education clients moved to a higher level in the National Reporting System for Adult Education |
| Family and Community Support | 99% of children clients were connected to primary care physicians; 100% of families prevented placing a child in foster care via preventive foster care program |
| Health Programs | 100% of Navigayte Brooklyn 2.0 clients were linked to medical providers for HIV care; 12K+ clients were provided emergency food pantry assistance |
| Legal Services | 12K+ individuals were helped with citizenship applications, foreclosure prevention, debt expungement, and eviction prevention; $215K of debt was expunged for clients by the Consumer Law unit; 97% of eviction-prevention clients did not experience eviction, with help from Anti-Eviction Services |
| Economic Development | 60% of small businesses increased sales after receiving technical business assistance; $22.84 average hourly wage was earned by clients connected to employment; 1,370 services were provided to refugees and asylees |
| Total Clients Served | Over 73,000 |
Challenges and Needs
CAMBA has a storied reputation in its community, and that reputation has been hard won.
Data Collection and Reporting
Before the foundation of the DARE team, each program had its own way of collecting and storing information, which made the process of standardizing data from all programs a heavy lift.
The DARE team worked to align many metrics within CAMBA. For example, with service program leadership, they created a set of universal demographics for all CAMBA programs, and aligned intake assessments and assessment for all 50 permanent supportive housing programs. After implementing in ClientTrack, reporting on these metrics—including for CAMBA’s annual dashboards—became much easier and more streamlined. DARE emphasizes, “There are best practices in how to collect data. … that’s why we standardize our process for all programs.”
In another instance, CAMBA’s Health Link program was entering data into a system that didn’t have the ability to extract data the way CAMBA does now. Reports had to be migrated manually into the legacy system, which ClientTrack solved through nightly data migration. This made it easier for care coordinators to keep track of questions and discussions, instead of sharing information via email and multiple spreadsheets.
When data is not easily accessible by everyone with pertinent need ...
... reporting is delayed, especially when staff members with access are unavailable.
When data collection is not systematized ...
... redundancies are created, wasting valuable time.
When data collection is not uniform ...
... outcomes measurements of the same service type might be inaccurate; reporting is very challenging.
Question
How many programs are you supporting in ClientTrack?
Answer
We just added 47 [out of 50] housing programs into ClientTrack. That’s a huge milestone for us. Learning to Work and HealthLink were configured in the system first. We also have a lot of single programs, including CAMBA College Bound, PS 198 (an after-school program), Moving Mothers’ Health Forward, and in the next few months we’ll add maybe 3 or 4. We’re getting requests all the time from CAMBA staff, saying, “I need this program in the system!”
A Strategic Partnership
The DARE team researched new data and case management solutions for about a year and considered several systems, including ClientTrack. After ClientTrack was selected via a rigorous bid process, and implemented in March 2020, it has become the go-to data solution for CAMBA’s multiple programs, including the entire housing program portfolio. To understand CAMBA’s success with ClientTrack implementation and buy-in, you have to understand the DARE philosophy.
Best Practice: The Client–Partner Philosophy
“We feel like [other CAMBA staff] are our clients, and we are consultants to them. We advise them, give them the tools they need, and we train them. It’s really a customer-service approach,” explains Yael Bat-Chava, Senior Vice President for Program Evaluation and Strategy. DARE staff works with program staff at all levels, from line staff to executives and everyone in between, and get buy-in from these staff to implement new processes and ways of using data.
“We’ve been pretty successful at changing the culture around data,” Yael reiterates. “Before, many case managers were hesitant to use the database …Now, we train case managers how to do data entry, and we are training supervisors how to train their staff and how to use data for supervision. In addition, leadership teams rely on us for reports.”
To make it easier for their colleagues, database administrators have configured the ClientTrack environment to be as easy as possible for end users. “People just like it; they didn’t like the previous system,” Wasif explains. “It’s easier in terms of training, too. We used to have someone who had to constantly train others to use the legacy system because it was so counterintuitive. Now we don’t have to do as much training because colleagues and supervisors can help new users on established best practices. Now we just train people on new set-ups.”
Since implementing ClientTrack, programs integrated into the system have seen great improvements to the processes, outcomes, and culture of data management.
Before ClientTrack, care coordination supervisors in one program had less visibility into services provided. Now, care coordinators can communicate directly with supervisors via ClientTrack, which improves asynchronous communication and billing.
Wasif expands on the concept of software functionality: “As part of implementing ClientTrack for our food pantry, we are looking at barcode functionality to track people coming in. That’s one reason we liked ClientTrack when looking for a new system—it has the capability to track data in so many different ways.” One of CAMBA’s first requirements when looking at new systems was the ability to track non-client data elements, like the units of a housing program or a workforce-development program that needs to track employer data.
Functionality can have a lot of downstream consequences for improved data collection, which may improve service delivery. Wasif reminds us: “In the previous system, for example, we were limited to the number of conditions we could indicate clients were experiencing at the time of intake, maybe three at most. But if a client had more than three conditions, case managers had no ability to add new rows on the fly during intake and assessments. Now, they can add all their medications, action steps, and conditions as needed.”
When data environments are easy to use ...
... buy-in is easier to attain, and training is less intensive.
When manual processes are successfully automated ...
... data accuracy improves and time is saved.
When assessment and intake are unified in one application ...
... system integration (and therefore data sharing) with other programs becomes more possible and more likely.
When communication is centralized in one application ...
... emails and spreadsheets on service delivery and billing become unnecessary; communication improves.
When data can be ingested and tracked from multiple sources ...
... data that affects clients can be used to inform service deliver.
Question
CAMBA provides a lot of services, so there are probably clients who qualify for multiple programs at the time of intake. Is there more coordination between programs now?
Answer
Here’s an example: We have a program in which we receive referrals from a local hospital of patients who have indicated a need for one or more of the three needs (i.e., food, housing, and transportation). Case managers in the program then screen the clients more deeply and refer them to one or more CAMBA programs, which can provide them with the services they need. This program—called CAMBA Care Connection—tracks client characteristics, needs and referrals in ClientTrack. We (DARE) and program leadership are envisioning this program as a pilot for a larger centralized intake for CAMBA as a whole, assisted by the tools that ClientTrack provides
Conclusion
Static solutions aren’t flexible and don’t empower organizations to adapt to the needs of the modern case management environment. For example, ClientTrack allows designated administrators to create entirely new assessments, workflows, forms, queries, procedures and policies, and rules and conditions, so they can tailor their service environment to the level of granularity that other competitors just can’t match.
ClientTrack implementation will continue for many of CAMBA’s programs for the foreseeable future, Yael says: “Not all our programs are using ClientTrack yet. We look forward to integrating more and more programs into ClientTrack, including various health programs, workforce development programs, and others. As more and more programs use the same system, referring clients among CAMBA programs could be done through the system.”
As CAMBA’s reach expands into all of New York City, it’s clear that a scalable, intuitive data-management environment will only serve to its advantage as a health and human service organization. And when service delivery improves, it only stands to reason that one population will benefit the most: vulnerable clients.
