The FAMCare Blog

Throughout 2019, we endeavored weekly to tell the social worker's story in a way that chronicled the impact of your dedicated efforts on the welfare of the American family.

The Salvation Army’s soldiers ringing their bells in front of stores and on street corners all across America and, indeed, the entire western world, are as much a part of our traditional Christmas tableaux as the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, the front door wreath, and snowy country scenes enlivened with horse drawn sleighs and seasonal music celebrating family love. The Salvation Army has simply always been a part of this Christmas scene. 

Today, the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) announced awards of more than $212 million to support juvenile justice. The awards will enhance state and local juvenile justice systems; provide gang prevention and intervention services; support mentoring and reentry services for youth and families; and help states comply with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. OJJDP and the Office for Victims of Crime awarded grants to more than 150 states, local jurisdictions, research and academic institutions, and public and private organizations nationwide.

Dear Client,

Global Vision Technologies (GVT) will be conducting an upgrade to Visions Server - the platform behind the FAMCare and/or ClinicalPURSUIT systems on Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - between the hours of 6pm and 3am EDT.

Social work is hard work. It’s stressful and it often seems like you can never get ahead. There is always so much more you can do, if you only had the time, energy and budget to do it. The holidays can be even more stressful, as many clients deal with tough times during the holidays.

Louise, a crusty journey-woman social worker had three pairs of glasses hanging from tiny chains around her neck and a sharpened yellow number two pencil plunged into her beehive hairdo. How unlikely that this woman would teach us how to use humor in social work.

The Headline

After years of writing about the mass incarceration of Americans, it gives us great pleasure to share this headline with everyone in the social services community.

One way for a software solution to help you be HIPAA compliant is to offer you HIPAA encryption as part of the package. But is that something you need to be HIPAA compliant? Technically, no, it’s not mandatory.

The rules state you should use encryption if it would be needed to safeguard electronic Protected Health Information (PHI). But, they do say if you don’t use encryption, you need to have an alternative to encryption that will safeguard as well as encrypting would. Or you need to have documentation with justifiable cause, as to why have taken a different tact with regard to safeguarding PHI.