Policy & Practice | Summer 2026

I don’t have to write. So I was actually focused on what she was saying, and instead of writing, I could comfort her, giving her a hug while she was crying.” For Family Safety Practitioner Brahema Molubah, it showed up with a family recently arrived from Ethiopia: “I was able to say: my family migrated here too, from Liberia. I was 12, and I remember how hard that adjustment was. If I’d been sitting there typing my notes the whole time, that thought would never have crossed my mind.” Workers were candid that the old conditions of their role were pushing them to their limits. “I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to hang in there,” Conner said. Molubah put it more directly: “I’m probably going to stay in this role a bit longer than I might have otherwise. I’m getting married soon and thinking about starting a family, so having more flexibility matters a lot more now.” WhereThis Goes Next Fairfax’s pilot is still expanding, and the lesson for the broader field is less about the technology itself and

calls and capture intake details around the clock, handling the kind of front door volume that otherwise falls on already stretched staff. In places like Fairfax, and potentially far beyond it, the same logic applies across all three: Give human services teams back the time to get on with the important work, changing lives.

more about transforming how workers approach their practice and what they do with the time it gives back. As Berkley put it: “It doesn’t change the heart of what we do. You’re still a social worker. What it changes is the amount of time spent on documentation. It means you can actually be present in the moment with your client.” Notes is only one piece of what Beam has built. Another part of their suite of tools, Interpret, offers live, two-way translation in all major languages at the click of a button. Talk is a custom voice agent that can resolve inbound

Alex Stephany is the Founder & CEO of Beam.

Michael A. Becketts, PhD , is Director of Family Services, Fairfax County.

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