Fulton Street Software

Social service is in our DNA

Asara

Asara Makes Audits Great Again

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Audits are a fact of life for agencies. Meaningful data can demonstrate organizational effectiveness, program growth and achievement of goals to funders and regulatory bodies. How do you run Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reports for audits and other purposes? Is it a simple process, or a nightmare involving multiple inputs, pulling data from various sources, and manually tabulating your results?

One of Asara’s newest features is the ability to effortlessly pull a KPI report for any quarter within the current or previous fiscal years. Reports deliver specific high-level performance indicators, such as number of clients served, number of placements, discharges, and other indicators of foster care agency activity.

Reports may also be selected by program and program type (ie, regular or therapeutic).

The report provides users with the flexibility to pull summary or detailed data, which breaks out the numbers behind the trends.

The feature is still in beta testing mode but is available for all existing Asara clients. It can be found in the reporting menu. Click on Management, then select KPI Foster Care Utilization. (If you can’t see it, let us know and we will unlock for you.)

Similarly, Asara makes it simple to compile data for an Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) Resource Audit.

The R29 Report lets the user select a subset of homes and run reports that look at dates in four different ways to answer the multiple ACS questions. For example, a report may combine the re-certification due date, the certification start date, the emergency certification start date, and the status date.

The Res8 provides an even more granular level of detail. It provides a list of homes within a subset and renders a report on what might be missing from each file. For example, Res8 offers a level of detail that is able to show all home members and all of their missing data.

Audits are here to stay. And while it may be an exaggeration to suggest that Asara can make them great, the fact is that with Asara in your toolbox, audits don’t have to be a drain on your staff’s time. Contact us to learn more.

Create Customized Data Collection Forms Like a Pro

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How much easier would your life be if you had an easy-to-use tool that could help you collect outcome data to generate reports for your funders or regulatory agencies, help with internal program development, or create needs assessments to support grant solicitations?

We’ve built that functionality into Asara™, giving users a powerful yet simple tool to create their own data collection forms with no need for coding skills or expert assistance.

Using the Customized Form Data Collection tool, users can create their own custom forms to facilitate the collection of uniform data. Why might you use this tool?

  • Survey foster families
  • Track outcomes for children returned to biological families
  • Track baseline data and outcome data for children through program discharge
  • Collect specific data every time child is placed or transferred
  • Collect relationship data for kinship placements
  • And more

The potential is unlimited. The tool is fully adaptable so that your agency can create data collection tools that are fully customized to your needs.

And the best part? The module is a true DIY tool. Of course, the Fulton Street team is always available to talk you through the process and answer questions. But we’ve created a system that is so intuitive that our clients quickly become do-it-yourselfers.

Want to learn more? Schedule a test drive.

Do What You Do Best…and Work Well with Others for the Rest

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Working among child welfare agencies, we’re gratified to see first-hand how much of a tremendous force for good they are: the great work they do, significant positive impact on families and communities, and many lives touched. Rarely are there challenges with doing the work. Rather, it is the ability to report out on all this important work that can pose challenges.

Workers track notes, visits and interactions in notebooks, spreadsheets, and required billing software. No problem here – it gets the job done. But these multiple data points and systems fail to capture the quantity and impact of their efforts.

Another worker must spend hours, if not days, exporting reports from a variety of systems to remove duplicates and tally the numbers. There is a misconception that this system eliminates duplicate data entry. In reality, the result is that many workers are spending valuable time doing duplicate if not multiple data entry.

A far more efficient system would be to have one place to record all clients and services.

That’s why we created AsaraTM. Asara allows users to track clients and the various services provided. Aware of the need to enter the services in appropriate billing software, we configured Asara to require the bare minimum data for tracking while allowing the platform to report out many services for each client. Overlap among clients and cases is managed.

It is not our goal for Asara to be everything for every service and program. Your child and family services agency supports various needs and provides individualized care requiring specific tracking, billing and monitoring – all of which cannot be found in one-size-fits all software. Instead, Asara is a platform that integrates well with others to accomplish the tasks that meet your unique needs.

This kind of integration is at the heart of what you do every day within communities and with people. We do the same – except with software instead of social services. We work seamlessly with others, freeing you up to focus on more meaningful tasks.

Why use medical software to track foster care child and family services? Instead, Asara lets you use specialized software for foster care, foster homes, adoption, youth development, domestic violence and care management all while tracking the multi-services for these clients and others. Clients transition in and out of services, from preventive, foster care, heath homes, B2H and more. Asara enables you to keep all that data in one place. It tracks each client, all services, all workers and start and end dates.

Every day, you provide the care you can and refer out for specialties. Your software should do the same.

Status Reports: Use Asara to Easily Run Your Own

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It is a familiar scenario to many of us…you need to figure out census and service numbers. For example, you may need to pull a report showing:

  • How many clients received services last fiscal year?
  • Or ‘as of’ a specific date?
  • How many clients had at least one active day in care between July 2017 and June 2018?
  • How many clients did you serve for FY19 first quarter? Quarterly reports due?

Pulling this data is easy using Asara tools. You do not need special skills or IT help! Simply follow these steps. If you run into trouble, give us a call.

Run a Child Status Export for ‘As Of’ Reporting:

Navigate to:

  • Client Menu
  • Child Status Update

Use filter to create your “as of” reporting. Keep in mind:

You need to select a status radio button, enter dates AND select status to filter for

  • Click Filter
    • Results appear on grid
  • Click Export
  • You ran your own query! WOO HOO!

You data will appear in a spreadsheet.

Explanation of Status Selections

“In-Status”

  • Produces a list of clients that HELD the specific status you selected for at least one day during the date range
  • If From Date = To Date, list will contain all clients with the specified status as of that date.

*** Other filter criteria are applied after the list of clients is selected based on In-Status.

  • Example 1: if you enter From Date/To Date = 7/1/2017 and status = active,
    • Receive a list of all clients Active on 7/1/2017
  • Example 2: if you enter from date = 7/1/2017 and end date = 6/30/2018 and status = active
    • Receive a list of all clients who had at least one active day between July 2017 and June 2018
      • If child was active prior to 5/1 and stayed active they will appear
      • If child was in and out of absences they will appear (only once)
        • Note there is current status and last status in the export
        • Filter is current status – last status gives you extra data

“Entered Status”

  • Produces a list of clients that ENTERED the specific status you selected during the date range
  • If From Date = To Date, list will contain all clients with a movement on that date resulting in the status.

***Other filter criteria are applied after the list of clients is selected based on Entered Status.

  • Example 1: if you enter from date = 5/1/2015 and end date = 9/30/2015 and status = active
    • List of clients who entered the status of ‘active during that range’
      • Placed client
      • Client came back from an inactive status during that time period
      • This is used for activity queries
    • Example 2: if you enter From date/To date = 5/1/2015 and status = active
      • You will get a list of any child who became active that day
        • Placed that day
        • Came back from inactive status that day

Introducing Asara

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Fulton Street Software is about to turn the page on our next chapter, relaunching our software brand with a new name for our Options product. We are excited to introduce Asara!

Asara is a Telugu word meaning “shelter, support, and protection,” precisely what our clients provide to the children and families they serve.

Asara is a robust platform that provides a range of new features which meets the multifaceted needs of child and social services agencies. Its dynamic design, brought to life by our talented development team, is a testament to our commitment to continue to create and innovate in response to our clients’ ever-evolving needs.

We launched Asara because the name Options no longer communicates the breadth and depth of our product’s capabilities; some clients – current and prospective – assumed that Options was limited in scope to tracking and billing for foster care.  Earlier this year, we surveyed our board members and some of our core users to gather feedback around this perception and our naming options. Based on the feedback and armed with the knowledge that our team had invested untold hours in the redevelopment our product, we added further functionality and improved integration knowing that the time was right for also creating a refreshed and matching identity.

We hope you will explore our new website, which highlights the Asara product and its broad functionality, as well as the comprehensive support, consulting and training services we provide. As part of our rebranding, we will continue to post timely and relevant information on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so follow us and engage with us on these social media platforms.

Want to learn more? Talk to a member of our team, or take Asara for a test drive. Contact us to find out how Asara can simplify your data collection and management, client tracking, billing and more.