Reducing Administrative Burden in Child Welfare: How Defiance/Paulding JFS Uses Grove and AI

With Grove support (formerly Case Aide Services) from Northwoods, Defiance/Paulding JFS is reducing administrative burden, improving documentation timeliness, and increasing time for family engagement.

Note. Case Aide Services is now Grove: same trusted service, broader operational support.

Summary

Defiance/Paulding Consolidated Job and Family Services (DPCJFS) supports children and families across northwest Ohio. Like many agencies, staff must balance complex decision-making with growing administrative demands.

To help caseworkers spend more time supporting children and families, Defiance/Paulding JFS implemented Grove in January 2024—a program that provides hands-on administrative and operational support from licensed professionals experienced in child welfare.

Today, Grove team members assist Defiance/Paulding JFS with records requests, documentation, referral coordination, and court preparation. Using AI-powered tools, they can quickly process large volumes of case information- helping caseworkers access key details faster and spend more time working directly with families.

Case Aides [Grove team members] take on hours of administrative work, allowing our team to focus on higher-level casework and supporting families.”

— HILLARY CONLEY, Children Services Supervisor and Adult Protective Services Supervisor, Defiance/Paulding Consolidated Job and Family Services

How Defiance/Paulding JFS Uses Grove and AI

Defiance/Paulding County JFS is reducing administrative burden, improving documentation timeliness, and increasing time for family engagement.

Challenges

Before implementing Grove, caseworkers at Defiance/Paulding JFS faced growing administrative workloads that competed with time spent supporting families.

According to Hillary Conley, Children Services Supervisor and Adult Protective Services Supervisor, staff were often juggling multiple operational demands at once.

Caseworkers struggled with:

Keeping documentation organized and entered on time
Managing provider communication and referrals
Sending records requests and tracking documentation
Finding time for follow-up calls and coordination

“Organization, remembering tasks that needed to be completed, and entering documentation in a timely way were ongoing challenges,” said Conley. “We were also seeing delays in sending records requests and getting information back.”

Although essential, administrative tasks could take hours away from assessments, case planning, and client engagement.

In many cases, reviewing a single file required sorting through hundreds of pages of provider reports, assessments, and court documents.

Solution

To help address these challenges, Defiance/Paulding JFS implemented Grove. This gave caseworkers access to experienced professionals who provide hands-on support for administrative and documentation tasks.

With Grove, knowledgeable team members assist with several time-consuming processes, including:

Case notes, documentation, and state system updates
Records requests and document organization
Referral coordination and provider communication
Case summaries and discovery preparation for court
Documentation gathering for ICPC placements

This support allows agencies to expand operational capacity without needing to hire additional staff.

At Defiance/Paulding JFS, Grove support quickly became integrated into the team’s workflow.

“I find that when Case Aides [Grove team members] sit in our monthly supervision meetings, it prompts us to identify tasks they can take on,” said Conley. “It helps ensure staff don’t have to add one more thing to their to-do list.”

Many of these tasks can take several hours for staff to complete. Having Grove experts handle them allows caseworkers to spend more time in the field working directly with families.

When Case Aides [Grove team members] join our supervision meetings, it helps us quickly identify tasks they can take on — so staff aren’t adding one more thing to their plate.”

— HILLARY CONLEY, Children Services Supervisor and Adult Protective Services Supervisor, Defiance/Paulding Consolidated Job and Family Services

AI-Powered Case Insights

Grove at Defiance/Paulding JFS is further strengthened by AI-powered tools built into Traverse. It’s a cloud-based software platform that organizes case documentation and helps staff quickly locate critical information within digital case files.

Traverse serves as a centralized system where caseworkers and the Grove team can securely store, access, and search case records, including provider reports, medical documentation, and court filings.

Within Traverse, Grove team members can use AI tools such as Talk to Your Case, which allows them to ask questions across an entire case file and quickly surface relevant information.
Using AI, Grove can:

Search across hundreds of case documents instantly
Identify key information such as diagnoses, medications, or service history
Generate summaries that help caseworkers prepare for reviews or court

“It takes away the pain of digging through cases that may have tens to hundreds of different documents,” said Grove Team Member Mayzie Davitt. “The system can provide an answer in seconds, with references we can verify.”

For tasks such as transcription and case summaries, AI has significantly reduced turnaround time. In some cases, Grove teams report cutting the time required to complete reviews nearly in half.

“Before AI tools, we sometimes had to read through hundreds or even thousands of pages, which could take a day or more,” said Davitt. “Now we can get the information we need in minutes. That saves hours of searching so we can focus on completing tasks for the caseworkers.”

AI also helps reduce back-and-forth communication between Grove team members and caseworkers.

“AI gathers information in a timely manner and helps avoid the need for repeated questions to caseworkers,” said Grove Team Member Dorette Banyog Sampsel. “That allows them to focus on their face-to-face work with families.”

Results

Since implementing Grove, Defiance/Paulding JFS has improved operational efficiency, documentation timeliness, and turnaround times for records requests and provider information.

By assisting with administrative processes that once took hours of staff time, Grove teams help prevent documentation backlogs and allow caseworkers to focus more on assessments, case planning, and decision-making.

The results include:

Faster documentation and records processing
Reduced administrative backlog for caseworkers
More time for field work and family engagement
Increased operational efficiency across the agency

“Case Aides [Grove team members] strengthen our operations by completing tasks that staff would normally spend several hours on,” said Conley. “That allows our team to produce an increase in high-level casework.”

Across Ohio, Grove has supported 296 caseworkers and supervisors and completed more than 20,000 administrative tasks, helping agencies reduce administrative burden. Concurrently, agencies improve key performance metrics, such as investigation timeliness and safety assessment completion.

With AI, we can search entire case files and get the information we need in minutes instead of hours, so we can return completed work to caseworkers much faster.”

— MAYZIE DAVITT, Grove, Northwoods

Northwoods Solutions: Powered by Amazon Web Services

Our SaaS solution, Traverse, uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Bedrock to:

Generate summaries of content items
Extract events from content
Identify and categorize people identified in content
Answer agency policy questions based solely on customer-supplied policies and procedures

AI-Powered Insights, Delivered Securely

Together, these features allow Grove team members to quickly and easily digest a case file from hundreds or thousands of pages of content, an activity that previously could have taken hours or days to complete.

Supervisors using Grove support can view data on tickets created using AWS Bedrock’s AI through reports such as the Ticket Utilization Report. Supervisors can be granted access to Traverse’s reporting module through the Traverse web app.

All information in Traverse, including information from a system of record, is hosted in a secure AWS cloud.

“Our AWS partnership makes us stand out as leaders from the start—bringing innovation and excellence to every customer conversation!” said Alan Minton, VP of Business Development.

When Grove teams use Traverse, they benefit from the Anthropic AI model through AWS Bedrock to generate descriptive analytics that inform caseworkers.

At Northwoods, we plan to continue using new AWS services as we work to enhance our application. “AWS helps us quickly launch innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of Human Services,” says Minton.

As an AWS Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network and a member of the Public Sector Partner Program, Northwoods chose AWS early in the development process for Traverse.

Built on HIPAA- and FedRAMP-Compliant Infrastructure

Traverse runs on a range of HIPAA- and FedRAMP-compliant AWS services, including:

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for on-demand compute
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for data storage
AWS Lambda for serverless compute
AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF), which protects against common web exploits that may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources

The highly available solution is provisioned to give your agency a logically isolated environment on AWS.

Give Your Team Their Time Back

Grove and Traverse gave Defiance/Paulding JFS’s caseworkers hours back for the work only they can do.

Get in touch with Northwoods if your team is facing similar demands. We‘d love to talk about what that could look like for your agency.

Jackson County Overcoming Burnout and Turnover with Dedicated Caseworker Support

With Case Aide Services by Northwoods, Jackson County JFS is supporting workers, promoting psychological safety, reducing burnout, and ensuring employee retention.

Summary

Like most agencies, staff at Jackson County Job and Family Services (JFS) were struggling to keep up with the demands of child welfare work as cases increase in both complexity and number. This contributed to increasing levels of staff burnout and turnover.

The agency partnered with Northwoods to provide Case Aide Services to workers in their investigation, adoption, and ongoing units, as well as the Ohio START program. Case Aide Services are a type of managed services, where our trusted team takes on workers’ most time-consuming tasks so they can focus on families.

Key results include:

Promoting worker and supervisor well-being.
Reducing the need for overtime.
Minimizing turnover and improve retention.
Focusing on families without sacrificing administrative work.
Improving key performance metrics to earn incentive funding.
Improving caseworker performance with the right partner.

We have been fortunate enough to see staff stay and continue working. As a result, staff are becoming better trained, developing their critical thinking skills, and becoming the ideal caseworkers that we need to have out in the field working with families and children.”

– TAMMY OSBORNE-SMITH, Director, Jackson County Job and Family Services

Overcoming Burnout and Turnover with Dedicated Caseworker Supporton

Jackson County JFS is supporting workers, promoting psychological safety, reducing burnout, and ensuring employee retention.

Challenges

Like most agencies, staff at Jackson County JFS were struggling to keep up with the demands of child welfare work as cases increase in both complexity and number.

“We have seen huge turnover in child welfare for the last several years and it all goes back to that feeling that there is simply more to be done than what is possible,” said Loree Walker, protective services program administrator.

Challenging cases contributing to burnout.
Loree noted several factors that have increased the mental and emotional burden on workers, including more cases involving substance use disorder, more families needing mental and behavioral health services, and placement visits being further away and straining workers’ already limited time.

“The caseloads are heavier. Every CPS worker needs more hands, more eyes, more ears, more time to complete all the requirements of this job and to do it well—to make sure that safety and well-being of children is kept as the focus,” she said.

“There is more crisis to cope with,” Loree added. “There is a need to urgently and quickly respond to families’ needs, and all this leads to increased pressure, overwhelming stress, and burnout.”

Balancing people work and paperwork.
Another key factor contributing to burnout and turnover was staff needing more help with their day-to-day work. They struggled to find balance between spending time with families with administrative tasks like data entry, making requests for information, getting records from providers, and completing referral forms.

“When I would have my supervision with my supervisor and I would make a to-do list, the to-do list felt very overwhelming and long and it would be stressful,” said Haley Grimm, social service worker/intake investigator.

“It often comes down to paperwork versus people work,” Loree said. “We know that both are needed, and both are important, but a caseworker needs to be out with families—engaging them, ensuring safety of children, building on their strengths, checking on safety plans.”

Case Aide Services has definitely helped with my stress level and my well-being. I don’t have as many things that I have to do. It’s not as overwhelming.”

– HALEY GRIMM, Social Service Worker/Intake Investigator, Jackson County Job & Family Services

Solution

“Day-to-day paperwork is critical and it’s essential to child protection case work,” said Tammy Osborne-Smith, director. “But it’s important for caseworkers to develop their skills to be in there with a family to make sure that they are assessing risk and focusing on transformational services that are going to help provide that family with the resources they need to overcome their barriers.”

This is why Jackson County JFS partnered with Northwoods to provide Case Aide Services to workers in their investigation, adoption, and ongoing units, as well as the Ohio START program.

“Case Aide Services provide staff with the ability to reallocate their time and dedicate themselves to focusing on child safety and well-being,” Tammy said. “Staff are actually able to shift their focus, provide services and support, and share resources with families and children versus working hours on end on data entry and obtaining documentation.”

Case Aide Services are a type of managed services, where our trusted team with child welfare experience has become an extension of Jackson County JFS staff. The agency’s Case Aide team takes on workers’ most time-consuming tasks so they can focus on families.

Here’s how it works:
1. Submit a request: Caseworkers can call, text, or submit a ticket through a portal to request help. 
2. Set a deadline: Our team prioritizes tasks based on when workers need them completed. 
3. View progress: All activities and communication are tracked through a portal so both workers and agency leadership can see the status of requests. 
4. View completed tasks: Workers get an email letting them know when each task is completed.

Workers not only benefit from knowing that tasks have been completed, but also have the capacity to take further action if the task indicates that it’s needed (for example, reading and digesting the information in a report that the Case Aide team collected).

Workers also benefit from using Traverse®, Northwoods’ document management software, to store and share case information with their Case Aide team and to integrate with Ohio’s Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS).

“The Case Aides can help with the releases of information, the getting of records, the referral forms, and putting documentation and details into Traverse and SACWIS to make sure that I’m doing my job more successfully, I have the records for my investigation, and I have anything I need to help the family,” Haley said. “We can spend more time talking with families, being out and in the field, and going on home visits. We have more time to do that because we don’t have to spend as much time on the paperwork.”

Services

Core Case Aide Services include:

Records Request
Supervision Support
Referral Support
Court Support
Client Visit Support
Community Resource Request
Placement Packets
Case Research
Document Organization
Staff Transition Support

Loree says having a team dedicated to organizing and prioritizing these administrative tasks allows workers to focus on what their priorities are. “That is the work that they do in the homes with families. That’s where they need to be, and that’s when we start seeing better outcomes for families,” she said.
Kristina Carlisle, social services supervisor, shared examples of how three of the core services have benefited her team so far:

Records Requests
A Case Aide team member can call external providers (think hospitals, schools, or counseling centers) to request medical records, behavioral health records, or education records, such as attendance reports or individualized education plans.

“There have been more records come into this agency since the time we’ve had Case Aide Services than I would say probably in the last five years or so,” Kristina said. “It’s been a great asset to our caseworkers, and it’s been a great asset to all of the leadership within Child Protective Services because there’s just so much more information that we’re getting on our families and the process has been very easy.”

Supervision (Case Conference) Support
Someone from the Case Aide team participates in scheduled case review sessions with Kristina and her staff to help identify to-do items, create tickets, and complete the related tasks. Because the Case Aide is tracking the to-do list, Kristina can focus her attention on the worker’s questions and concerns about the case.

“Whenever we have a review of the case, the Case Aide will volunteer to take on some tasks that they are able to do as far as reviewing the case, putting together discovery for court purposes, or even asking questions and going over the case with the staff,” Kristina said. “If we’re discussing a case and I say that we need medical records, then it is done right then and there. This has been very helpful.”

Court Support
The Case Aide team can help staff prepare for court hearings, remind them of key dates and legal deadlines, and compile documentation and records for the agency’s legal team.

“I know the Case Aide has familiarized themselves with the case before, met with my staff members, asked them questions, and talked about court testimony with them,” Kristina said. “Our Case Aide has met with our attorney and knows what the expectations are when they go to court, and the attorney has provided questions that the Case Aide would then go over with the staff member just so they can prepare answers.”

Results

Loree says Case Aide Services give Jackson County JFS workers the support they need to be successful. “It’s really not a luxury. It’s more of a necessity now to have that additional support to do this work,” she said. “The peace of mind of knowing that they had help has just been such an added value. It’s irreplaceable.”

“One of the biggest things that we’ve been working on is climate and culture,” Tammy said. “Creating a psychologically safe environment, supporting staff, reducing burnout, and ensuring employee retention is always a high priority. And through Case Aide Services, we’ve been able to support staff in new ways.”

Promoting worker and supervisor well-being.
Workers feel safe and seen by having a trusted professional to talk to who knows their work, has navigated similar situations, and can help them manage their ever-growing to-do list. “Case Aid Services has definitely helped with my stress level and my well-being overall. I don’t have as many things that I have to do. It’s not as overwhelming,” Haley said.

She credits Northwoods Case Aide Specialist Molly, with whom Haley routinely works, for making her work more manageable. “Molly has been there at every case conference and been able to take half of my workload. She is able to help out with so many things that I used to do on my own. Molly has been there for me when I’ve been overwhelmed and stressed with work, calling her and asking for help, and she’s told me ways that she can help me in creative ways that I wouldn’t think of,” Haley said.

Kristina said being able to ask the Case Aide team to provide administrative support is equally impactful for supervisors who often need to fill in to help staff. “I have several people that I’m supervising and don’t always have the amount of individual time that I would like to have to spend with each individual staff member,” Kristina said. “If I have a worker that is stressed out or has a lot to do, I may ask the Case Aide to check in with them. If I have somebody that’s removed three children or has multiple court hearings in the week, I may say that it’d be really nice if you could see if there’s anything you can do to assist. The Case Aide provides support to the workers in that way, which as a result helps me not have so much on my plate.”

Reducing the need for overtime, helping minimize turnover and improve retention.
Tammy said that staff have been able to reduce the amount of overtime they’re working, a lot of which was previously dedicated to data entry or making repeat phone calls to service providers to complete referrals and obtain records and documentation.
“Any time you can reduce overtime leads to a reduction in staff burnout. And when you reduce staff burnout, that contributes to and supports staff retention,” she said. “We have been fortunate enough to see staff stay and continue working. As a result, staff are becoming better trained, developing their critical thinking skills, and becoming the ideal caseworkers that we need to have out in the field working with families and children.”

Focusing on families without sacrificing administrative work.
Workers can rely on the Case Aide team to consistently complete administrative tasks accurately and on time when they’re on the road or have more pressing priorities or emergencies. “The caseworkers have more time to engage families because they are not worried about the administrative tasks that they’re not getting done when they’re not at the agency,” Kristina said.
She said it’s especially helpful that Case Aide team members are available throughout the day to consistently communicate with providers to quickly collect records and complete referrals. “The Case Aides are able to make calls and follow up on that information when a lot of times those are things that get lost with caseworkers because they’re out visiting people, trying to determine appropriate services, and maintain the safety of children.”

Improving key performance metrics and earning incentive funding.
With additional support from Case Aides, workers are now able to document their home visits faster, which helped them improve two key performance metrics: home visits completed and assessments/investigations completed on time.

Jackson County JFS improved the average percent of Composite Visits Met from 48.3% in Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2022 to 86% in FFY 2023—a 38% improvement. As a result, the agency earned a one-time most improved financial Best Practice Incentive Award from the Office of Families and Children to support a positive workplace culture and worker well-being.

“When it comes to retaining staff, the fact that we got this incentive gives everybody the sense that we can reach our goals. The agency is in a better place when we’re high performing. Everybody wants to work someplace where they can be successful and feel good about what they’re doing,” Kristy said.

Improving caseworker performance with the right partner.
Tammy said Northwoods has demonstrated a commitment to serving clients for years and this collaborative partnership has been no exception. “The team at Northwoods has listened to our challenges, they’ve continued to develop improvements focusing on supporting the caseworkers, and those caseworkers are the ones that are out providing those critical services to families and children. Their profound understanding of this important work has been crucial in changing and improving the caseworker performance through Case Aide Services,” she said.

“Northwoods was able to be intuitive and to really problem solve and develop solutions to meet our unique needs here,” Loree added. “It became very apparent that their success was driven by our success. They want to help our workers to feel better about the jobs they’re doing and support them in this important work.”

It’s been a great asset to our caseworkers, and it’s been a great asset to all of the leadership within Child Protective Services because there’s just so much more information that we’re getting on our families and the process has been very east.

– KRISTINA CARLISLE, Social Services Supervisor, Jackson County Job and Family Services

Summary

Key results include:

Promoting worker and supervisor well-being.
Reducing the need for overtime.
Minimizing turnover and improve retention.
Focusing on families without sacrificing administrative work.
Improving key performance metrics to earn incentive funding.
Improving caseworker performance with the right partner.

– TAMMY OSBORNE-SMITH, Director, Jackson County Job and Family Services

Overcoming Burnout and Turnover with Dedicated Caseworker Supporton

Jackson County JFS is supporting workers, promoting psychological safety, reducing burnout, and ensuring employee retention.

Challenges

Like most agencies, staff at Jackson County JFS were struggling to keep up with the demands of child welfare work as cases increase in both complexity and number.

Case Aide Services has definitely helped with my stress level and my well-being. I don’t have as many things that I have to do. It’s not as overwhelming.”

– HALEY GRIMM, Social Service Worker/Intake Investigator, Jackson County Job & Family Services

Solution

This is why Jackson County JFS partnered with Northwoods to provide Case Aide Services to workers in their investigation, adoption, and ongoing units, as well as the Ohio START program.

Services

Core Case Aide Services include:

Records Request
Supervision Support
Referral Support
Court Support
Client Visit Support
Community Resource Request
Placement Packets
Case Research
Document Organization
Staff Transition Support

Court Support
The Case Aide team can help staff prepare for court hearings, remind them of key dates and legal deadlines, and compile documentation and records for the agency’s legal team.

Results

– KRISTINA CARLISLE, Social Services Supervisor, Jackson County Job and Family Services

Let’s Get Started

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