Thirty-Nine families in Seneca, Ohio are quite unhappy about a recent slip up by the Seneca County Department of Job and Family Services. A new computer program, which is known as the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System was given to the county by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, in the hopes of making the system easier for workers to use …that apparently was not the case.

A breakdown in communication as to how the system should be used, caused thirty-nine children’s medical cards to be issued with the children’s birth names on the cards, instead of their adoptive names. The county was blissfully unaware of the issue, until it started receiving phone calls from concerned, and angry parents.

A letter explaining the glitch was quickly sent out to the affected families, along with new medical cards brandishing the adoptive names of the children. Luckily for Ohio, none of its other counties had the same issues in switching over to the new system, and it seems as though the entire transition to the new system has gone well, minus the thirty-nine families who received their children’s medical cards with the wrong names on them.

Well at least things have gone well as far as no other counties accidentally giving out children’s birth names. It seems as though another tiny glitch in the system, which has already been implemented in about half of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties, has the potential to lose track of children in the foster care system.

The new system, which came with a hefty $93 million price tag, apparently failed to include the information of foster care providers who did not currently have children in their home at the time that the system was being put into place. Once children are placed into the homes of those foster care providers, county agencies cannot add their cases to the new system, making it pretty darn hard to keep track of the kids.

The state is optimistic that all of the glitches will be worked out soon, and is diligently working on problems as they arise and come to their attention. Officials are reassuring the public that they do, in fact, know where all of their foster children currently are; all of them are simply not yet entered into the computer system. By January all of Ohio should be using the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System, and hopefully by then all of Ohio will know exactly how to use the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System.