Doing more with a stretched frontline team

The challenge

Documentation competing with frontline work

Wayne County’s Children & Youth Services Intake Team handles work where showing up for families  matters, but the burden of documentation was taking significant time away from that work. Before Beam, some case notes could take as long as three hours to complete, and more than half of pilot users mentioned working after hours or on weekends to keep up.

The pressure was particularly acute because the team was operating well below its intended staffing capacity. Wayne County needed a way to reduce the administrative burden on the people already doing the work, without compromising the quality of the record.

The approach

Over eight weeks, the Intake Team used it across 310 recordings and 66 hours of frontline work, from conversations with families to supervision and team meetings.

Wayne County didn’t limit Beam to one type of note. Two workflows stood out. Case notes and 10-day supervision became the team’s most-used templates, accounting for 70% of usage. And staff found ways to fit Beam into the reality of fieldwork too, including dictating notes between visits while the details were still fresh.

The note doesn’t have to follow you back to the office

For Wayne County’s Intake Team, documentation often came after the work itself. A home visit would end, the caseworker would move on to the next family, and the notes would still be waiting.

Beam changed when that work could happen. Caseworkers began dictating notes between visits, while conversations were still fresh.

“It helps a lot in the field,” one worker explained. “It helps to be able to dictate notes while in the car on the way back to the office while the information is still fresh in my mind.”

By the end of the pilot, seven of nine respondents said a typical case note took around 10 minutes to draft, compared with reports of up to three hours before Beam.

And the benefit showed up in actual interactions with families. As another caseworker put it:

“Being present is essential for what we do, and I feel much more present now in my day to day work.”

Better notes, not just faster ones

Saving time didn’t mean sacrificing the record. Seven of nine post-pilot respondents said their notes were better organized and more detailed, while Beam-generated notes received an average usefulness rating of 4.7 out of 5.

One team member said, "Beam makes my notes more cohesive and easily corrects mistakes when I type information in.”

What’s next

The pilot identified case notes and 10-day supervision as the clearest opportunities to make Beam part of everyday Intake practice. Wayne County is also rebuilding its Intake capacity, creating an opportunity to introduce the same workflows to new caseworkers as they join the team.

The county has also identified potential applications beyond Intake, including foster care and placement, kinship services, family preservation and services for older adults.

A smarter way to manage county documentation 

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