Case Study
Two custom systems. 1,500 children served. Triple the work done in the same hours.
Heartland for Children runs child welfare services for three Florida counties. Their software was on the verge of collapse. We built them two web-based systems from scratch, and they came back for the second because the first went so well.
Who they are
The only community-based care agency for three counties.
Heartland for Children has been the lead community-based care agency for Polk, Highlands, and Hardee counties since 2003. Under contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families, they're responsible for prevention and diversion, foster care, adoption, independent living, and a full range of services for children and families involved in the child welfare system.
They currently serve over 1,500 children: children removed from their homes, children in foster care, children aging out of the system into independent living, and children still with their families receiving in-home services. The complexity of their work is significant. Dozens of program types. Three-county geography. Strict compliance reporting to DCF, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Services tracked across county and state lines.
They also run Rudolph Roundup, a 21-year signature event that matches foster children's holiday wish lists with donors. At its peak, it serves every child in the foster care system across three counties.
The problem
Software standing on one leg.
When Heartland came to us, they were running two critical systems on Microsoft Access, a platform Microsoft no longer actively supports. The databases were old. The code was old. The system was causing glitches and carrying a real risk of data loss. They had no way out except to rebuild.
For Rudolph Roundup, the Access database could only accommodate one user at a time. It would lock. It had run out of room. Matching donors to children, the whole point of the event, was done manually by hand. Staff were doing the work the software couldn't.
The OCS/ICPC tracking system (out-of-county services and interstate placement of children) was worse. DCF requires 30-day status updates for every service. Heartland had no automated notifications. Nothing told anyone when 30 days was up. Whether a service had been assigned to a caseworker in another county, nobody could say with certainty at any given moment.
"It was almost like you were busy putting out fires because you really couldn't track: well, we have a service out, was someone assigned, were they not assigned yet?"
The reporting situation was equally bad. DCF compliance reporting (weekly, monthly, quarterly) was taking multiple spreadsheets crosswalked manually against each other. Staff didn't have time to run all the reports they needed. Some compliance tracking simply didn't get done because there weren't enough hours in the day.
What we built
Two systems. Both purpose-built for their exact workflows.
Rudolph Roundup
Annual signature event: matching foster children's holiday wish lists with donors across three counties.
- Every foster child's wish list captured in the system
- Full donor database with giving history
- Automated donor-to-child matching
- Real-time dashboard: bags filled, bags remaining, pickup status
- Multi-user access, no more locking or single-user bottlenecks
- Scales as the program grows, donor base and child count have both increased each year
OCS / ICPC Tracking
Out-of-county services and interstate compact of placement of children, tracking every service across county and state lines.
- Every service assigned to a caseworker, tracked in real time
- Automated 30-day status notifications (adjustable per case)
- Home study tracking across counties and states
- Notes and last-status records for every placement
- Dashboard across 20+ service categories: no report required to see the numbers
- Weekly and monthly DCF compliance reports run in minutes, not days
The results
What changed once both systems went live.
Rudolph Roundup runs on a fraction of the staff hours
The program has grown every year for four to five years straight: more donors, more children, more young adults in independent living. Without the system, it would take triple the man hours to run the same event. With it, staff know exactly where they stand at any moment: how many bags are filled, how many are left, whether they'll hit the deadline before Christmas.
Open services backlog reduced
Once OCS/ICPC was live, the team went back and audited every service that had been tracked in the old system. They found and closed 15% of services that were no longer actually open, things that had slipped through the cracks of the manual process. The real caseload became visible for the first time.
Home studies completed in half the time
The OCS/ICPC system tracks home studies happening in other counties and states. Because staff now have automatic notifications and can see exactly where every home study is in the process, and adjust timelines proactively, permanency has accelerated. Children are getting home studies done in roughly half the time it took before.
Reporting went from impossible to weekly
Before, running DCF compliance reports required manually crosswalking multiple spreadsheets. Some required reports simply didn't get run because there weren't enough hours. After: weekly reports. Monthly reports. At-a-glance dashboard numbers without running anything at all. The data accuracy is verifiable every month.
"If we did not have the system to support Rudolph Roundup, it would take us triple the man hours to run this project. Over the last four to five years, the program has continued to grow significantly, and this system has been able to meet our full array of needs."
How we worked together
We built it with them, not for them.
Heartland's programs are complex and unique. A cookie-cutter system wouldn't have fit. The only way to get the right outcome was to build it collaboratively, with the people who actually use it involved at every stage.
Started with the problem, not the spec
We didn't hand them a requirements document to fill out. We talked through what was breaking, what they needed, and what they'd tried before. The first system we built, Rudolph Roundup, taught us how they worked. The second was easier because of the trust built on the first.
Weekly check-ins throughout
Every week, we met, even weeks where there wasn't much to cover. That cadence meant nothing drifted. Questions got answered. Changes in direction were caught early. The team could test between sessions and know there was a standing time to bring feedback.
Flexibility as the design evolved
As they tested, they learned what they actually wanted. Some things changed mid-build. That was fine. We pivoted. Changing your mind during the process isn't a problem. It's how you end up with something that actually fits. Nothing that needed to be tweaked was off the table.
No formal training needed
By the time Rudolph Roundup went live, Heartland's team already knew how to run it. They'd been building and testing it for weeks. There was no training day because they'd been learning the whole time. The go-live was smooth. A few minor tweaks in the days after, nothing that delayed the event.
"I would highly recommend Mosier Data. They're going to listen to your needs and your wants. They're also going to tailor it to the things that will make your daily work easier. And they will pivot. They will pivot based on your needs."
The second project
They came back because the first one worked.
After Rudolph Roundup launched, Heartland approached us about their OCS/ICPC tracking system, a more complex, ongoing operational system with DCF compliance requirements attached. They already knew how we worked. They'd seen the collaboration, the communication, the willingness to pivot.
The second project came from confidence earned on the first. That's how most of our longer client relationships start.
"Because of how well the first database went, how easy it was to work with Mosier, we knew then all the possibilities that we could do with this other very complex process."
— Nikki Orlebeke, Heartland for ChildrenRunning complex operations on software that's barely holding together?
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