It’s time the social safety net has procedural and data standards

Corporate standards have been established in nearly every sizable American industry.

How things are done. What questions are asked. Best practices for information intake and data management. There are standards everywhere you look…except in social care.

Nonprofits don’t operate on a common set of standards or intake protocols – every one of them asks for different information when people come for help. This can work fine in individual cases, but it leaves interrelated social safety nets without a reliable source of system-level information.

In other words, nobody can stand back from the social care system and say who’s being served, their background, whether they were referred to other agencies and whether that treatment worked. The data is simply too disparate or inconsistent for that.

This is the kind of thing that keeps the wellconnected team up at night. Why? Because creating system-level data is the first step in assessing how that system is working and whether changes are needed. Social care is the vanguard of support for the most vulnerable members of our community, so we think it is imperative that nonprofit systems generate better data.

This is a crucial step in establishing diverse and equitable social safety nets.

wellconnected and its allco platform are designed for standardization of the intake and referral process, which is a key step in creating transparency and collaboration in social care. Our customizable case management and referral tools are designed to break down silos, connect agencies to one another and have them speaking the same language. This is a foundational aptitude of other industries such as healthcare, we’re simply bringing best practices to an industry that functions in a very similar way.

Where does this start? We think it’s time for funders to step up and say there’s a better way to manage intake and referrals. County governments, foundations and other large nonprofits are the connective tissue in social care, and they are beginning to realize that standardization is the means toward accomplishing their long term goals. We applaud this change and can’t wait to play a support role as it takes hold.