Case Study:

Family Advocate Case Flow Tool and Service Excellence

Project

Project won CPSI competition of 2007 as Public Sector Innovator of the Year

Port Elizabeth

Port Elizabeth Family Advocate Office

Background• The Family Advocate Office is a component of the Department of Justice and

Constitutional Development• This presentation will tell you about the Port Elizabeth branch, which has a staff

component of 20 people.

What do we do at the Family Advocate?The Office of the Family Advocate works daily with families involved in courtcases.These cases are about family law issues like custody and visitation disputes and mainlyabout parents who cannot agree with which parent their children should live after a divorce.

How do we help the families?• A team meets with the parents and children and helps them to reach an agreement

on custody and visitation and other arrangements concerning the children• If the parents are unable to come to an agreement, the Family Advocate team

(advocate and social worker) investigate the circumstances of the family.• Once all the information is available, the team compiles a report for the court , to

recommend what arrangements would be in the best interests of the children during and after the divorce

• These cases have the potential to drag on for months

• It is a very traumatic time for the parents and children as there is a lot of acrimony and tension within the family. The parents are fighting over the house, possessions, money and the children, who are often caught in the middle of the fights.

• The longer the case drags on, the longer the fight is drawn out.

• Therefore it is in the best interests of the children that the matter be settled as soon as possible - the turn around time of these cases must be short.

• The Port Elizabeth Family Advocate experienced problems managing our cases effectively as well as with the turn around times of these cases.

• We believed that if we were able to shorten our turn around times and simultaneously improve our customer service, it would minimize the conflict in the family and reduce the trauma to the children

Custody recommendations for 2007/08 Financial Year

Third 2.0%

Joint 2.5%

Dad 33.1%

Mom 62.4%

5,936 children involved (Average 4 children per case)

1556 cases finalized

CHALLENGES TO THE FAMILY ADVOCATE IN THE EASTERN CAPE

• The Eastern Cape extends over 169 580 square kilometres which constitutes 13.9% of the total surface of the country. It is a vast area with poor infrastructure insofar as roads are concerned. This has an impact on the Family Advocate when travelling to take services to the people.

• The province has a population of 6.43 million, representing 14.4% of the country’s total population. We are the 3rd biggest province in the country

• We only have 3 Family Advocate Offices for a population of 6.43 million – a total of 11 advocates, thus 1 advocate for every 580,000 people

• Workload of the Family Advocate: Highest number of cases in Port Elizabeth office, followed by Buffalo City (East London) and then Mthatha

In summary:We have a high case load, with limited resources at our disposal and had to

find ways to work smarter

Port Elizabeth

Buffalo City

Mthatha

White blocks: Current permanent Family Advocate offices in Eastern Cape viz large area to service

Problem

Part 1 – System problem:• None of the Family Advocate Offices in the country had a case flow tool and

all of them experienced problems in tracking the movement of the cases in the office and monitoring the turn around times effectively

All the offices used a manual system to• Record the details of the cases• Keep track of the movement of the files in the office• Monitor the cycle times

The system was ineffective and valuable time was wasted searching for files

Record keeping was flawed and there was no scientific way to measureand monitor the turn around times

Part 2 – Human factor

• We wanted to develop and strengthen our peoples’ service delivery to the public to achieve a real Batho Pele and Ubuntu spirit within our office

• We were however unsure which behaviours to change and which to strengthen, as we had no independent true feedback on our services

• We realized that without true, objective feedback we would be unable to access the voice of our customers – the families visiting our offices

Summary of our problems:1. Turnaround times of cases (how to monitor and shorten it)2. No electronic case flow management tool to keep track of the cases3. No proper feedback to address service delivery and customer

satisfaction issues – in other words to fix the RIGHT things

Project Team

Project Leader:Adv René Claassen (middle)

Assisted by:Telana Koen (left)Felicia Arosi (right)

Method / Intervention / Solution

The team got together and devised the following plan:

The team decided on a “two prong” approach to solve the problem, namely:

1. Develop an electronic case flow management tool to fix the system problem

2. Sensitize and capacitate all staff on the need for service excellence and monitor our service through independent feedback, to ensure we listen to the voice of our customers – human factor

Method / Intervention / Solution

Part 1: System Problem:Develop a Case Flow Management Tool:• We set our own target to finalise 80% of all our cases within 12 weeks (3

months)• The National target was: Finalise 50% of all cases within 24 weeks or 6

months• We then set about developing a case flow tool on a spreadsheet on the

Excel programme.

The ToolAfter numerous attempts, changes etc, we had a Tool which could do the following:It captured all the relevant information of each case namely: Case number, date on which file was opened, names of parties, date on which parties were interviewed, name of person where the file is currently at, results of case, names of team who interviewed the family, time period from date of interview with family until the date on which the report was finalised, cycle time for each case calculated in weeks AND very important: Average cycle time for all the cases investigated within a given period

Method / Intervention / Solution

Innovativeness of The Tool

• The system had a built-in “early warning alert”• All cases older than 10 weeks are highlighted and a message in red

appears next to the case, reading “CAUTION”• Managers can then easily identify which cases must be given special

attention, in order to finalise them urgently.• All staff members can view the spreadsheet on the network in the office

and can then prioritize their own cases, even before management needs to intervene.

• The information on the tool is updated electronically continuously during the day for example the movement of the files.

• Files are easily accessed and one doesn’t waste time looking for files• Supervisors are more effective in case flow management and can prioritize

old cases

Method / Intervention / Solution

Part 2: Improve Service Delivery:Most Important: Inform Port Elizabeth staff about the project plan and get buy in

Method / Intervention / Solution

Part 2 – Human Element (continue): Improve Service Delivery:• Then we formed a partnership with PERCCI (PE Chambers of

Commerce and Industry) and joined the Service Excellence programme in the Nelson Mandela Metro.

• The focus of this drive: Improve levels of service in the Metro for 2010 World Cup

• All staff members were trained by the NMMU Business school on Service Excellence

• Thereafter our services were monitored by PERCCI intermittently.• The monitoring included “mystery shopping”. People were sent

incognito to our office or they phoned in, pretending to be a customer, while evaluating the service they received from our staff.

• Written feedback is provided quarterly, assisting us to improve on our weaknesses and build on our strengths

• In the office we continued to raise awareness about the importance of Batho Pele and service excellence

Example of

Mystery

Shopping

Report

Results achieved• The case flow tool helped us to resolve the system problems and for the

first time we were able to have full control over our case flow and be warned timeously about cases which had the potential to exceed the agreed time frames for finalisation

• The improved monitoring and management led to Port Elizabeth Office achieving an average cycle time (time it takes for a case to be finalised ) of: 10.61 weeks! Thanks to the team work by the whole office of the Port Elizabeth Family Advocate

• This is opposed to the national target of 24 weeks!

• In terms of addressing service delivery, we were the only section of Department of Justice in Port Elizabeth that formed part of the Service Excellence programme.

• At the end of April 08 we scored 92% for our service. We were then also rated, at the end of April, as one of the top 3 companies in Port Elizabeth

• Our service status has just been increased from a Gold status, to Platinum status

Results achieved

Comments from one of our stakeholders: Legal Aid Board:

“The success of this project has had a ripple effect in that it alsoassists the civil unit and children’s unit of the PE Justice Centre in improving the turnaround time for finalising pending cases where the Office of the Family Advocate is involved. Court cases are not unnecessarily delayed because of a delay with the Family Advocate’s investigations. The Office of the Family Advocate Eastern Cape has displayed tremendous initiative in piloting this project, commitment to public service as well as to service excellence and we trust that theirefforts will receive the recognition that they so richly deserve.”

Extract from letter from Ms L Franklin, PE Justice Centre Executive

We also won the Centre of Public Sector Innovation competition of 2007, namely: Public Sector Innovator of the Year 2007

Lessons learnt

1. When you measure performance, you get improved results from the team

2. Be careful what you measure and reward, because whatever is rewarded gets done.

3. Praise: One cannot praise too much and it assists in reinforcingpositive behaviour

4. Do not be afraid to experiment and try again and again. Until you get it right!

5. Transparency: The tool with the information is accessible to all staff members and there is transparency on performers and non-performers. This leads to self-management and improvement of service

6. Replicability: The project has been replicated in the Mthatha and East London offices and is also in the process of being rolled out nationally.

Conclusion

Batho Pele:

• We have introduced a project that reduced turn around times of our cases AND managed to change people’s attitude and commitment to service delivery

• The technology helped us to improve the system, but the system alone did not bring about the results. We only achieved success because our whole team embraced the project and made it their own.

• Thank you to all the Port Elizabeth Family Advocate staff members!

Celebrations and thanks to the Team!!!!

Celebrations and thanks to the team!!

Thank youEnkosi