FEATURE STORY KIDS ANNIVERSARY - JULY 2015

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Jami Ledoux: In 1995 the Department of Human Services designed and implemented a statewide, automated, child welfare information system known as KIDS which became America's first compliant application. KIDS better allows DHS Child Welfare staff and contractors to improve the safety, permanence and well-being of those involved in the Child Welfare System. 
The KIDS team consists of eight units including the Pinnacle Plan, Federal Reports, State Reports, Report Solutions, Business Process and Solutions, Helpdesk, Testing and the technical developers from the Office of Management Enterprise Services.
KIDS is utilized for federal reporting such as the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System to better help Oklahoma protect our most vulnerable resource. KIDS application continues to meet the changing needs related to case management for the people of Oklahoma.
"Therefore, I, Mary Fallin, Governor, hereby declare June 25, 2015 as KIDS 20th Anniversary Commemoration Day."

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Ed Lake
Director, 
DHS

Director Lake: Having been around in public human services a long time myself, I can really appreciate what it takes to develop a system and what it takes to develop a really good system. I think that was captured in one of the comments about the way you get there is to involve the people that are going to be using the system. No disrespect to computer programmers, but if you let the computer people design your system, you'll have a system that works for computer people, but not necessarily for the users. So, I think that was the key that they did a great job of involving line staff in the development of this system, the fact that it has been a productive and a vibrant system for 20 years tells you that it was designed well.

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Marvin Smith
Current Programs Administrator,
KIDS

Marvin Smith: It was the very first SACWIS system to be federally compliant. It was also one of the few projects at that point in time, in '95 that came in on time and under budget. It won awards and things of that nature. I was proud of this system just as a worker, as a Child Welfare staff person.

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Sen. George Miller
Former Director,
DHS

George Miller: Of all the programs that I administered, and I administered about 25 different programs, the one that caused the most heartache, the most problems, the most sleepless nights, the most concern was Child Welfare--child well-being, abuse, neglect, and all that sort of thing. At that particular time, we had a number of children's institutions that had been in place since virtually statehood. All of a sudden, the policy changed and the kids were supposed to be kept in the least restrictive environment that they possibly could, and we also had a policy that if you were a foster parent, you were not eligible to adopt.
So, we had a lot of problems, but we didn't have the problems that you have today because the number of children we have in state custody today is three and half to four times as many as were in state custody when I left here. It takes an awful lot of information, a whole lot of experienced workers, which are almost  impossible to find. 

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Mary Grissom
Former Programs Administrator,
KIDS

Mary Grissom: Well, I first started in Child Welfare in the early '70s. We did things with mimeographs and that kind of stuff. Everything was handwritten. One of the things I do remember is writing what we then had called Reports to the D.A. and having to sit them in the secretary's chair or desk to have them typed. That might take an hour, and it might take 6 weeks. So, that was pretty frustrating.
That's one of the things that KIDS really changed--making that better. The other thing is--data was hard to get. It was really hard to find history. We had card files. I was from Tulsa County, so we had huge sets of card files with all the histories of the families, and that kind of thing. And, they didn't always make it there; so, you couldn't find things. That, of course, is a huge change that KIDS came about. 

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Lynda Arnold
Former Director,
Child Welfare Services

Lynda Arnold: Twenty years ago some people didn't even have computers so, that was a big change. It was also just a total cultural change within the organization in the way we did business. We were trailblazers because we were the first ones.

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Dicy Perry
Originating Programs Assistant Administrator,
KIDS

Dicy Perry: At that particular time, it was amazing. I have never been in another state where the stakeholders came together to develop the system, never. We had the steering committee that met every week. I would be remiss without stating that our vendor, Deloitte (even though we had 10 o' clock at night fights) did more than beyond what they were supposed to do.

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Bill Hindman
Former Deputy Director,
Child Welfare Services
and Programs Administrator, KIDS

Bill Hindman:I was brought in from the field in 1995 before we ever had a contractor. I was brought in to review the RFP and help select a contractor, and then I was the implementation and roll-out person for the KIDS. So, we had to set up all of the local area networks, the wide area networks, buy computers for the whole state, buy routers, train employees how to type--everything to get ready for even the KIDS application to have a place to go. We created the infrastructure for it, and then planned on how we were going to roll it out to the counties, whether it was a big bang or whether it was on a county-by-county basis and how the counties would work in that interim period, and then, how to support the counties once we started going live. 

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Jami Ledoux
Interim Director,
Child Welfare Services

Jami Ledoux: It's an honor to be here with really what I consider to be Child Welfare royalty. I wanted to take just a minute to just really take the time to honor the history of KIDS, and also take time to honor where we are now and the staff that are currently part of this KIDS program. I feel like you guys are really behind the scenes what keeps us moving and grooving in the direction that we need to go. It's one of those systems, one of those operations that goes on behind the scenes that you really don't truly appreciate until it's not there, or something goes wrong. Because we really couldn't do this work without everything that you guys do every single day.

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Carol Clabo
Former Programs Administrator,
KIDS

Carol Clabo: What we decided was, we had to have the helpdesk that was Child Welfare Supervisors who knew what the field was trying to do, not just technically what the computer did. So, that was our emphasis, and it was training. And, obviously we dealt with the problems with the application, but we spent immense amounts of time just talking people through things, helping them learn how to use it, going out into the field and training, and telling people how to use this new thing because it was very new. People were not used to having a computer on their desk.

Marvin Smith: You know, I walk into my office and you know, I think Bill sat here, Mary sat here, Carol sat here, and they thought about this stuff. They had to deal with this stuff. I mean, I think about you guys, and just dedication because we all know what it takes. And, sometimes there is this thing. Jami, actually you even said it. We kind of do things and no one really notices until something goes wrong, or until they need something. So, we don't do it for glory. We absolutely do it for the kids and for our families.

Lynda Arnold: We had to do keyboarding. People didn't even know how to type. I mean, that's how far we have come. 

Bill Hindman: It was scary in a lot of ways because the millions of dollars that the state and the federal government were putting into it, and you know, those of us having been brought in and not having a computer background were being asked to create a system when we don't really have a historical understanding of what a program like this could do. So, it took us some work to get there, but I worked at the national level representing the agency from the onset. We rolled the application out in less than a year, which everyone said, "It's impossible. It can't be done." Some states had been working on an application 10 or 12 years and still didn't have a completed application. I think there was one state who rolled-out one program to their state, but no one had a comprehensive application. We just knew that we needed it to have a better understanding of Child Welfare practice, and if we wanted to be able to analyze, you know, how long kids were in foster care, where kids were in foster care, what kind of kids we had in foster care, we had to have the data. It was amazing.
We rolled it out through all the issues we had to work through and make it better. And, I was just telling Marvin, we need to make sure everyone understands that the application that staff is using today is not the application that we rolled-out because many states made the decision: "We will only do enhancements to application once a year, or once every two years." We made the decision early on, that would never meet the needs of our staff. So, I don't know how often they're doing releases now. It might be quarterly, but like I said, we did two or three releases a week in the beginning to meet the needs of staff and of program. 
But, very quickly after we rolled-out, other states wanted our application.

George Miller: I was very fortunate, and I had some very, very experienced, highly trained people on my staff. I did not try to dictate to them, you know, what we needed. I let them dictate that. I'm sure there were several federal minimums that had to be met because the feds basically were funding it. I would just simply check with them every once and awhile to see how they were getting along and see whether they were having any problems or anything. We had an excellent group of professionals who had come in as consultants. They were so pleased with the outcome of this program that they nominated us for a competition that was put on by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. I did get a medal put around my neck at the Smithsonian Institution because of the development of this plan which I did not keep. I gave it to the people that developed it. 

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Larry Harmon
Former Director of Data Services,
DHS

Larry Harmon: For a long time, many years after that there was conversations about what made it possible, and as Dicy has said, the support from the executive level, all the different levels within the department. The thing that Bill and I were talking about that I remember the most was the weeks and weeks and months that the people from the field came in and defined for us what the system had to be. We would not have had this had it not been for that.

Bill Hindman: We made new versions of KIDS sometimes two or three times a week. If there was a bug, something that was keeping them from being able to enter their work easily, then we worked at night to fix it, and then, rolled-out a new version of the application. 

Jamie Ledoux: I cannot say enough about the people that do this work. As I mentioned before, one of the things that amazes me about this team is that they represent Quality Service to a "t" what my expectations would be in terms of Quality Service. They don't necessarily serve the public, they don't have a lot of interaction with the public. Their customers, so to speak, are the internal, the people within the agency, such as myself, the Director, the Programs staff who need reports to be able to monitor their programs and make sure that the outcomes are where they need to be, the field staff who need these reports to monitor and track performance within individual units within individual counties. Somebody once commented to me, "Well, they respond to you because you're the Division Director Of course, they respond to you." My response to that is--because every time I pick up the phone and call them, they're right there to give me exactly what I need. My response to that is--the entire time I've been in Child Welfare Services, which is 15 years from being a frontline worker, I can't remember a time where I picked up the phone to call someone in KIDS and ask for something that it didn't exemplify what I consider to be good, quality customer service to me, no matter what level of the agency I'm in. And, that to me shows the quality of people that we have in this program in the division, and also it shows you the history of that team. As Marvin Smith mentioned, this was set in place before these staff even came aboard as far as the expectations of how they do their work. So, we really can attribute to the people that came before them as far as setting those standards for high quality.

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