Vernon County is a county in the state of WI with a population of approx 30,000. The Vernon County department of human services serves this population from their offices in the county seat of Viroqua, WI
Children and Family Services provide services to children and their families that are encountering significant difficulties in their daily living. These difficulties can be evidenced by child delinquency, abuse, neglect, or need for special services that the parent or guardian cannot provide. The focus of services is to assist the family to become self-sufficient in providing an environment that will provide safety and healthy growth opportunities for its children.
The challenges for case workers within the division has been:
1. Chasing down law enforcement officers to gather needed information on either USB flash drives or DVDs. Sometimes a case worker might not know which officer was working the case and was spending time trying to figure out who to contact in Law Enforcement.
2. Standing in each other’s offices to watch the received videos since only one copy of the DVD would be sent over.
3. Information would be shared over the phone or some files would even be faxed in. This made it difficult to track the files associated with a case all in one place.
4. The audio and video files were shipped by the agencies and the users had to wait for them media to arrive before they could work on those cases.
iCrimeFighter has been working with the Vernon County Sheriffs’ Office for over three years helping them collect, store, and securely share digital evidence. It was a user at the Sheriffs’ Office who had the idea to connect Law Enforcement with Children and Family Services.
After assessing the situation, accounts were opened under the name At-Scene for the case workers.
After implementing At-Scene for Vernon County HHS,
The case workers in the family and children’s services division in Vernon County can now receive files from Law Enforcement and are able to view and download them with an internet browser.
The files are available immediately and eliminates the wait for the media to arrive physically at their offices.
They have saved the costs for printing, faxes, shipping, media and so on.
All the audio and video can be streamed at their desktops without having to crowd around each other’s offices.
The case files are all in one place in At-Scene Cloud.
Advantages for supervisors at Vernon County is now they can see what cases are coming and files are being uploaded and shared. After implementing At-Scene, the director is now more generally aware of the caseload thanks to all the cases being on the At-Scene cloud.
Watch below in this video with representatives from both agencies talking about how At-Scene and iCrimeFighter improved their operations.
About At-Scene:
At-Scene is an encrypted, Cloud-based file collection, storage and sharing software that enables collaboration among county government agencies and their stakeholders, including other agencies, the private sector and the public. More information about At-Scene is available at www.at-scene.com