Doing More for the Communities of Florida
Currently, Florida is ranked sixth in the nation for confirmed cases of human trafficking. Florida’s tropical Atlantic coastline means it is also regularly impacted by major disasters, such as hurricane Irma in 2017.
As part of its mission to “empower individuals, deliver social services and collaborate with others in building just and compassionate communities,” the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach has dedicated programs to help the victims of human trafficking and natural disasters, alongside additional programs.
Operating in five different Florida counties, with offices in four, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach provides a wide range of services to the most vulnerable in their community. Founded in 1984, Catholic Charities served over 33,000 clients in 2020 across 17 programs, with over 200 service providers, 53 parishes, 19 schools, 9 offices, and the main headquarters.
The Challenge
Addressing sensitive needs while managing a large and complex network is challenging and requires a high level of both collaboration and communication between programs and people. Managing these networks requires strict attention to detail, as the programs must maintain compliance with the reporting requirements of government, legal, and national Catholic Charities agencies.
As new and better ways of helping those in need become clear, the programs must be able to expand and grow to improve the services they offer. Historically, each program managed their own data independently. Some were using Access databases while others were simply using spreadsheets. This meant that any collaboration between programs had to be done manually, with Catholic Charities working with each program individually to assess their program and data. Recognizing that this system was burdening them and obstructing their efforts, Catholic Charities adopted ClientTrack to manage their data and facilitate collaboration between programs.
Building Just and Compassionate Communities
Hunger, Homelessness, and Outreach
Over the past year, Catholic Charities has made a strategic effort to grow emergency services that assist individual and families in attaining economic stability and self-sufficiency. Through ClientTrack, they can track support services offered to clients and manage referrals. Additionally, Catholic Charities’ outreach includes rent and utility assistance, SNAP and Medicaid eligibility screenings, benefit enrollment, and food and transportation assistance. These resources are crucial to helping a wide range of individuals and families, and Catholic Charities intends to continue developing more direct services for the community and those in need.
Anti-Human Trafficking Services
In 2017, Catholic Charities partnered with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to develop the Enhanced Collaborative Palm Beach County Human Trafficking Task Force. While the Anti-Human Trafficking program (AHT) requires strict privacy regulations, ClientTrack allows AHT to customize their specific program needs while also controlling what data is and is not shared with other programs. Catholic Charities created a report that allows AHT providers to easily generate a list of their clients who are also enrolled in other programs, allowing them to seamlessly facilitate coordination. As a result, AHT clients can get help more quickly without having to face a complicated bureaucratic process.
Doing More for the Community
Catholic Charities’ programs extend even further into the communities they serve. Beyond the critical services they provide to the victims of human trafficking and those in need of disaster relief, Catholic Charities administers programs from counseling services to immigration services to homeless outreach, and much more.
Transitional and Supportive Housing
Prenatal Care
Aging Services
Conclusion
Catholic Charities engages in an immense philanthropic undertaking, running programs that serve those who are most in
need and who are often neglected. In all their work, however, there always hangs the administrative burden of keeping records, maintaining private and sensitive data, and reporting their work to the appropriate overseeing agencies. Their old data system made their processes even more difficult, with work hours locked up in resolving duplicated, low quality, and erroneously input data.
Through ClientTrack, Catholic Charities successfully consolidated each unique program’s data into one single database. All data is updated in real time, which makes reporting quick and easy. Relieving this massive administrative burden has freed up critical resources and empowered them to focus on their true mission: helping people. Since integrating ClientTrack, their programs have more than doubled the number of clients they serve. Most importantly, Catholic Charities can focus on getting help for residents of Palm Beach and the surrounding areas.
