Kentucky turns to tech to improve treatment court outcomes
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The state’s Department of Specialty Courts is implementing a cloud-enabled, web-based system to more efficiently share court data and records in a bid to help case managers better engage with clients’ recovery.
In Kentucky, officials are looking to expand the availability and capabilities of treatment courts to address issues community members face like substance use abuse, mental health crises and other setbacks. One official says technology will be key for public servants to better serve recovering individuals and to leverage data to support their outcomes.
There are drug treatment courts in all 120 counties of Kentucky and veteran treatment courts in eight counties, according to Audrey Collins, executive officer of the Kentucky Department of Specialty Courts. By the end of the year, officials hope to have 15 mental health courts across the state.
Tasked with managing each case within those court programs is the department’s staff of about 200 people who need to collect and report a host of facts about their clients, such as their attendance record to rehabilitative classes or appointments, completion of goals under their case plans or progress toward paying off obligations, Collins said.
The department has been leveraging an in-house system, and while it offers data storage and analysis capabilities, “we needed a tool that not only captures that amazing data that we need, but also allows us to do it in an efficient way,” she explained.
The in-house tool, for instance, required staff to enter data manually, which was time-consuming and created the risk of errors or typos in court-related documents. Those kinds of problems burdened staff’s ability to effectively engage with treatment court participants, impeding people’s progress toward recovery and rehabilitation, she said.
To deliver “quality case management services,” Collins said the Department of Specialty Courts is turning to a web-based solution from Versaterm to automate and streamline case management processes. The agency started implementing the tool in 2023, and it is slated to go live in the next few days.
More efficient data management is key to providing accurate reporting on a person’s progress toward recovery to court officials. More broadly, that data management shows lawmakers that the department’s diversion programs can generate successful and sustainable outcomes that warrant continued funding, Collins said.
The Versaterm solution will enable more efficient data integrations and document sharing across other agencies to reduce staff’s time to physically go to various locations to collect information like drug test results, Collins said. The cloud-enabled service, for instance, can connect court coordinators, treatment providers, case managers, court administrators, judges and law enforcement to share data and reports.
Users can also leverage the tool to aggregate case management records to generate customized court reports, which Collins said will be helpful for staff who receive court requests for specific information on individuals.
Insights from those data can also help program administrators better design court programs that meet their needs more effectively, further setting case managers and their clients up for sustained success with evidence-based treatment.
“It's really frustrating for a person who's very vulnerable, who's under a lot of stress or maybe not really comfortable in a justice setting to sit in front of someone who's more focused on entering their data than they are the person,” Collins said. “So in order for us to provide quality care, the process of getting that data entered into the system needs to be as efficient as possible … because they're going to have better results if they feel that they can trust us [and] that they feel that we are there to support them.”