Colombia
Case management information system for the Mi Familia program in Colombia
Mi Familia is considered a central axis of the pact for equity. It was designed with families at its center, considering
their co-responsibility in the welfare of their own members and in guaranteeing the rights of children and teenagers.
Indirect registration
Case work
Children and their families
Information system description
A case management information system (CMIS) was developed to support the case management program Mi Familia
(“My Family”).
Mi Familia is an accompaniment program that provides tailored psychological support to promote children
and teenagers’ development and mitigate the risks of growing up in a violent, abusive, or negligent
family environment.
The program focuses on tailored psychological support. Referrals to other services/programs
are complementary. The CMIS was developed as a tool to gather confidential information needed to monitor and
evaluate the progress in the implementation of the Mi Familia program.
Initial challenge
Colombia has a long-standing experience in case management for child protection, but not in prevention.
Before the introduction of the CMIS it took a long time for central authorities to understand how Mi
Familia was being implemented and how to track it.
The program implementers wanted to have timely information to monitor progress
in the field and shorten the time needed to analyze program effectiveness. But they were also interested in
working with less paper and having reliable data so they could better provide on-time technical assistance,
since paperwork had to be collected in regions and processed at the central administration.
Results
Using the CMIS, social workers can now record in-time information about all stages of the case management
process of Mi Familia
which includes an assessment based on psychometric tests, followed by the preparation
of a tailored accompaniment plan that includes psychological support and referrals to relevant programs/services,
home visits, group meetings, and a closing assessment to evaluate results. The number of Mi Familia beneficiary
families was about 190,000 in 2021. It has been implemented by 5,482 psychosocial professionals in charge of
home visits and group meetings, and 746 experts that support the administration of the program.
INTAKE POINT:
Indirect registration
Registration normally takes place in municipalities. While the program is opened for
registration by demand, beneficiaries are normally pre-identified by Mi Familia
(this pre-identification is based on information from ICBF, ECD or other services or
registries in which potential Mi Familia beneficiaries are already participating).
Mi Familia is directed toward three types of families:
beneficiaries of programs of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare
(Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, ICBF) aiming at protecting
children from violence inside the family, or supporting children and
teenagers with past involvement in crimes
beneficiaries of public early childhood development (ECD) services
and social programs directed to children and teenagers
families with children with disability, registered in the National System
for Disability or identified as vulnerable by the Social Registry.
LEVEL OF CASE MANAGEMENT:
Case work
Mi Familia is an accompaniment program that provides tailored psychological support
to promote children and teenagers’ development and mitigate the risks of growing up
in a violent, abusive, or negligent family environment.
It begins with an assessment
(based on psychometric tests), followed by the preparation of a tailored accompaniment
plan that includes psychological support and referrals to relevant program/services,
home visits and group meetings and ends with a closing assessment to evaluate results.
Referrals are a complementary service of the program, which mainly focuses on the
implementation of tailored psychological support.
POPULATION GROUP SERVED:
Children and their families
Mi Familia supports families with children and teenagers. The program’s beneficiaries
tend to be in the lower quintiles of income, but the program is not targeted at poor families.
CMIS EXISTING AND ACTIVE?
No
BENEFICIARIES COVERED BY THE PROGRAM:
(from the start of the program)
(from the start of the program)
190.000 families in 2021
