CRC program shifts to case management

CRC student Judith is visited at school by CRC Case Manager Deborah

Now that every CRC child is living with their forever family, the focus for the CRC staff has shifted to one of case management. Global research and best practice indicates that it’s not enough to place a formerly institutionalized child into a family - continued support is critical for children and families to thrive. 

As a part of the transition last year to family-based care, 9 staff members were given specific caseloads of children to manage. The CRC case management team includes, Imourana Bockarie, Emmanuel Lamin, Henry Kebbie, Victor Kanu, Deborah Kanneh, Amie Nallo, Joseph Junisa, Rosa Saffa, and Princess Kawa.  The team is currently hard at work developing and implementing a case management program. Already, case managers are conducting monthly site visits with nearly all of the children in the CRC Program alternating between home and school. This means that the CRC is currently meeting the global standard of monthly site visits with the children served by the program.  The CRC is hoping to continue to build the capacity of their case management program by increasing their staff over the next three years, so that it can meet the global standard of caseloads of 25 students per case manager, as funding becomes available.

Joseph Lamin, who helped install and train the Mercy staff on their brand new Electronic Medical Information System, has trained the CRC staff on a similar, computer-based system that will allow case managers to create individual case files on each child in their caseload, and store them on a server.  This will include protocols to protect the confidentiality of each child and family.

In July, a small team of social workers and case managers from the US will travel to Bo to participate in a Case Management Learning Collaborative with the CRC staff.  They’ll work collaboratively to continue to refine the case management protocols and processes, and share best practices in case management as colleagues.

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