Multi-disciplinary teams in social work often operate (or are supposed to operate) using this general model:
- Assess the needs of the child and/or family
- Develop a plan of care for the child and/or family
- Assign tasks to team members
- Deliver the services
- Assess if the services are meeting their needs
- Repeat
The strengths and needs of the child and family are assessed and determine the plan. In that plan, the team outlines what services need to be accomplished, by who, and by when. Once those services are delivered, the team assesses their effectiveness and makes changes to the plan as needed. Then the process repeats.
This loop can normally happen on a regular cadence, but it may move faster due to the sudden onset of an internal crisis (like an increased suicide risk) or an external crisis (like the COVID-19 pandemic).
Some parts of this loop happen with the whole team and others happen in a one-to-one interaction with a team member and the child/family being served. For example, assessing the needs and developing the plan of care should be done in an inclusive team setting and should be driven by the family. The delivery of services such as psychotherapy should be done in a more confidential, one-to-one setting.
Information collected in a team setting often lives on paper and cannot be easily accessed by a service provider. Information collected by a service provider in a one-to-one setting often lives in their CMS or EHR system and does not always get added to the collective knowledge of the team.
We built Caretivity (formerly CareTeams.app) so that teams can follow the general multi-disciplinary care model while avoiding these information-sharing pitfalls.
With Caretivity, you can:
- Easily communicate with team messaging to assess the needs of the child and/or family
- Develop the plan of care right in the app using goals
- Set and assign milestones to track the services delivered and tasks associated with achieving each goal
- Request/add updates to milestones to provide the team with the necessary information to assess progress
With Caretivity, multi-disciplinary teams can communicate and collaborate on client cases. Just by using the app, these teams can plan, deliver, assess, and record the important information they need to replicate their success.
