June 1994 — Features

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CARAS: A School-Based, Case Management System for At-Risk Students

The current version of the software aims to provide school-based case managers and their teams with more timely and accurate information on at-risk students and their families, as well as aid in evaluation and reporting. CARAS is also designed to help school district personnel get the most out of their available resources. What is unique about CARAS is that it is not simply a computer program, but a case management process, entailing all aspects of a case management program, from school- and districtwide screening for at-risk students to case closure. Why Computer Assisted? Most computer programs to assist at-risk students were developed for classroom use by either students or teachers, on the assumption that this is how students could be helped the most. The software was designed to increase students' reading or math levels, or other comparable skills, in an effort to help them "keep up" with peers. Such programs are valuable tools, but they typically focus solely on academic aspects of the at-risk problem. Other attempts to harness computing power to aid at-risk students involve adapting human-services software, originally used for billing and other client data-management purposes. We term these "macro" systems because they are usually designed to handle large numbers of students (often in the thousands) and are made principally for data reduction or aggregation, rather than assisting with decisions regarding the service needs of individuals (a "micro" system).
Large systems often lack the flexibility and/or elements needed by human service workers in their day-to-day case management activities. Such activities include service planning, data and information storage (with easy retrieval), and instant reporting capabilities (often needed for team meetings and staffings). These are activities for which CARAS is ideally suited. With the growing interest in school-based case management for at-risk students, case managers need better assistance in their efforts.