Policy & Practice | Fall 2025

Data-Empowered Staff At DCFS, we have set a goal to

related to the child for potential place ment options and ongoing support until permanency was determined. With the child in care for multiple years, there had been several case workers assigned at various times, so there was a very large volume of notes. With Augintel, the caseworker quickly located an aunt, uncle, and another extended family member who had been mentioned in the notes more than two years earlier. These family members didn't know the child was in care and were immediately willing to complete the necessary steps to provide a home and support. As of today, the child is living with their aunt and uncle, and the extended family member helps the child with school, activities, and provides additional support. AI empow ered the caseworker to deliver on DCFS’s commitment to that child. Building on DCFS’s significant accom plishments in reducing caseloads and increasing staff capacity, AI is making a significant impact in supporting the way caseworkers work, helping them reduce hours spent on paperwork, and reconnect with the purpose and passion that brought them to this job in the first place. Recently, a caseworker

shared with me the impact of Augintel’s NLP technology on her work. Instead of manually searching through files to complete her paperwork, she was able to devote that time to sitting down with a family to understand their goals and challenges and build a stronger rela tionship. She said, “This work is what I came to DCFS to do!” Research shows that the more time a caseworker can devote to truly understand a case and to develop a relationship with the youth and family, the more likely that youth will find a permanent home where they can grow and thrive. I call this a virtuous cycle—the more time we have to engage, connect, and communicate, the better we can do! DCFS has seen AI enhance this virtuous cycle by creating more space and time for the human-powered part of our work and by providing us with better information to assess how we’re doing—data we simply couldn’t access in the past. As we look to use AI to help us achieve our mission, we feel that we are only limited by our imagination. Heidi E. Mueller is the Director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

become the best child welfare agency in the country. A big part of achieving that goal is empowering our workers with the information they need to do what they do best—casework. Supporting the KIND Act is a great example. Earlier this year, Governor Pritzker signed the KIND (Kinship in Demand) Act into law, bringing additional focus and resources to placing children with relatives when reunification with parents isn’t possible, while ensuring those relatives receive the appropriate financial support. Identifying family members and fictive kin who may be able to provide a loving home for a child is at the heart of achieving this goal. Using AI, we are able to instantaneously search thousands of pages of case notes to identify possible family contacts that would otherwise require hundreds of hours of manual searching. That means faster, more accurate family finding, which helps us ensure more of our youth have a family home to live in. One caseworker tells this story: A 14-year-old youth had been in care for several years, and the caseworker needed to locate individuals who are

APHSA’s blog, The Catalyst , encourages the exchange of creative ideas and promising initiatives to strengthen the human services sector and accelerate our collective impact. Featuring content from members, partners, and staff, our blog posts focus on what it takes to build well-being from the ground up. Organized around areas of impact as well as a variety of special series, our goal is to spark new ideas and accelerate the spread of promising approaches that help realize our shared vision for thriving communities built on human potential.

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Fall 2025 Policy & Practice