Accomplishments
Greater Collaboration
SWI continued to expand the collaboration with Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas to better coordinate investigations by law enforcement agencies, Child Protective Services, and Child Care Licensing. Everyone has a single point of contact to make communication easier and to make investigations and interviews more cohesive. SWI expanded the program in FY 2017 to involve 62 child advocacy centers and more than 540 law enforcement agencies.
Modernized Intake System
SWI worked with other agency areas to complete the first major phase in a multi-year upgrade of IMPACT, the application DFPS uses to record case information about the children and adults the agency protects. The project automated manual processes, including law enforcement notifications and the routing of reports of abuse, neglect, or exploitation to the local field offices for investigation.
Improved Online Reporting System
SWI also redesigned and upgraded the Texas Abuse Hotline website to make it easier for the public and professionals to make online reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. The new website allows registered users to save a report to complete later and uses dynamic questioning so users don’t deal with questions that don’t apply to their situations. After the upgrade in December 2016, online reports increased significantly (10.3 percent) compared to the previous fiscal year.