Feature Roadmap

Adds phone number validation to improve data quality in this key field.

Allows agencies to mark families as confidential to hide/restrict sensitive family data when needed.

Many applicants realize on their own that they are not ready to continue the foster application process (life changes coming up, or simply that they applied too early). Case workers don’t know this and continue to contact them, in a time consuming and often fruitless effort. If an agency wants to allow it, this feature now empowers users to be able to take action on their own applications.

Documents that expire and may need action, such as a drivers licence, can now be marked with their expiry date. Reminders are then sent to the applicants to renew these documents as required.

Enables case workers to enter an explanation when an application is behind schedule. If an applying family is not approved within 90 days of an emergency placement, Binti will prompt workers to enter delay reason codes, which can then be analyzed in reports for greater accountability and practice improvements.

Previously, changing an application’s status was combined with all other edit application tasks, making it complicated and easy to make mistakes. Now, edit application status has its own dedicated page; case workers can now complete this task and view all history of status changes in one place.

Updates the way we recognize requirements as being “fulfilled” to reduce repetition for applicants and enable more flexibility. For example, once a driver’s licence is uploaded by an applicant, it will automatically be recognized on other applications, renewals and new application tracks (e.g., between relative vs. community vs. foster vs. adoption). This enables applicants to switch between different application types more easily. This release will include an updated end-user view for Documents and the ability for agencies to transfer a family between application templates.

Launches a new page for workers to update household composition, including the ability to convert a co-applicant to an “other adult in the home”. This launch will include permissions granularity on who specifically can execute this task (agency workers).

Updates the `language` field in Binti so that it does not assume English is the primary language. Also updates the `application type` field so that is does not assume applicant type is “community family”. Primary language is now mandatory to approve an application, because this data is critical for matching children with families.

Enables applicant(s) to download their license document in the Family Portal, and will notify applicant(s) when they are approved.

Enables a licensing worker to assign a specific form or set of forms to an applicant. These ad-hoc forms can be used to complete paperwork for changes in address, corrective action plans, etc.

Reduce load times on the Binti applications dashboard to improve overall usability.

Builds tagging functionality that allows agencies to tag families into custom groups. Agencies will be able to use these tags to filter dashboards and reports. Examples of custom family assignments / views include categorization by specific offices, regions, or programs.

Creates the ability for agency workers to see what an applicant sees, to assist with troubleshooting, walkthrough, or training needs.

Updates the way background checks are tracked and displayed in Binti to improve overall usability.

Continue reducing load times on the Binti applications dashboard to improve overall usability.

Allows agencies to customize Licensing emails for families.

Placement Periods now require that every field is filled out, and require that dates of placement do not overlap with any other placements for the same child. This helps to ensure that placements data is accurate and reliable.

Adds the ability to mark children as “Not in agency care” so that they will no longer appear on the “Awaiting Placement” tab.

Licensing workers now have a better workflow for recording placements with applicants prior to their approval. All of these placements will appear in the Placements module as well, so all workers have visiblity into these placements.

Adds more robust options for Gender and added a new field for Sex Assigned at Birth for children.

Private agencies can now make placements with specific placement types that used to only be available for public agencies. Types include Congregate Care, Placements with Relatives, and more.

At the bottom of the Child Data page, there is now a table that shows all changes to the child’s data, including the date the change was made, and the name of the worker who made the change.

Agency admins are now able to delete historical Placement Periods. This has been especially helpful as a number of agencies are working on cleaning their data and removing duplicate placements.

Enables workers to send SMS messages to families, and get responses from those families on their own phone. All conversations will be tracked automatically in Call Logs.

Enables workers to send customized emails to families, and get responses from those families on their own email. All conversations will be tracked automatically in Call Logs.

Workers can visit a new Contact Information page where they can add and manage multiple phone numbers.

Automatically records SMS messages and email communications with families. Streamline the documentation of effort put into placement searches.

Allows families to express their own preferences for placements in Binti, and allow workers to review and override the child preferences that families enter. Our goal is to get excellent and up-to-date preference data into Binti, so that workers can make informed decisions during the search process.

When a worker attempts to close an application that still has an open placement, this feature gives the worker a convenient link to the Placement they need to close.

Introduces a new home page for workers that highlights active placement searches, children who have been in congregate care for an extended period, and placement preference data that needs to be reviewed.

Adds new features to help assist in searching for a good permanent home for a child, including: ability to run multiple simultaneous searches for a child (adoptions search, placement search, and respite search), more robust preferences for families interested in adoptions, and better matching criteria for children whose permanency plan is adoption.

Enables partner agencies to make referrals, share information about children, and work together to find great placements.

Instead of simply showing “Availability” to workers, this feature introduces more granular household composition data collection, including bedrooms, other adults in the home, and other children in the home.

In the family portal, show families how their preferences match up to the real demographics of children in need of care. This feature can be used to suggest they expand their preferences, as applicable.

Adds a report to show the rate at which children are removed and placed again after their initial placement. This helps highlight specific children who have experienced multiple disruptions, and families with frequent disruptions.

Created an easily accessible page in Binti that records and tracks all the required documents overdue or due in the next two months for a child. Caseworkers and supervisors can view these documents, fill online or upload, and sign directly online.

Required documents can now be configured by the child’s age, level of care, or program. Required documents are created on a set schedule based on different trigger dates such as date child joined agency, date of placement, discharge date, and date joined program. Requirement documents can be one-time or recurring.

Adds the option to pre-populate answers for online fillable required documents from our robust data model as well as previous documents for that child. This will help workers save time for answers that have not changed (e.g., names of medications etc.).

Enables supervisors and social workers to compare answers from a previous version of a required document (e.g., how visits went this week with the bio family) to ensure consistency across documents.

Enables required documentation for siblings to be filled out simultaneously saving social worker from entering duplicate information.

Introduces ability for caseworkers to add one-off events & documentation needed on an ad-hoc basis (e.g., a child had to go to the ER for food poisoning).

Creates a child profile in Binti that is shared across the worker and foster families (and in the future, biological families and youth). The child profile has key information about the child including medical history, allergies, and education information. This ensures families have a record of the child before/during care.

Enables the ability for caseworkers to add services – both one-time and recurring – for children and foster parents/applicants. Services are configured for each agency specifically.

In addition, there is an aggregate report of all services across an agency including information about cost, frequency, and usage of said services.

Delivers a comprehensive billing report that reflects both the amount paid to foster parents as well as the amount billed to the county. This is based on an agency specific rate table and the placement data in Binti. Rate tables can contain rates that vary by a child’s level of care, age, referring agency, and respite. 

Adds additional features to the payments report, including creating a new line in the report when rates change mid-report period, allowing rates to be configured by program, and adding various report filtering & sorting.

Updates the child required documentation page to be easier to navigate, organize key information, and use overall. Includes adding UI enhancements, tabbing, filtering, sorting, searchability, and a waive required documentation button.

Delivers workflow enhancements to our aggregate service report that give a breakdown of which children are in therapeutic care, alongside their diagnosis codes, levels of care, authorization codes and MCO provider information.

Creates a workflow to log when a significant injury or incident happens to a child while in care. This will include the ability to track critical incidents per child as well as see aggregate information across the agency.

Tracks key information needed for children post adoption decree. This includes key dates, funding information, and forms completion records unlocking adoption-specific workflows.

Creates a report that gives the overview health of an agency and performance on metrics such as children in care, intake & discharge and other key metrics to be determined.

Enhances Binti’s foster parent portal to allow foster parents to fill out, upload documentation and other key information directly.

Creates a report that gives a monthly summary of which requirements are overdue, missing, or upcoming, broken down by case worker or supervisor.

Provides ethnicities as a data point in the API.

Adds the following fields to downloadable reports: Ethnicities, Status Reason, Status Explanation, Capacity, Youngest Age Approved, Highest Age Approved, Respite, Medically Trained, Open to Community, Updated At, and Co-Applicant Ethnicity.

Creates an integration between agency systems and Binti to view, create, and edit voluntary or involuntary holds through the API.

Allows for the creation of roles with configurable view and edit permissions by application status (e.g., X role can edit all applications vs. Y role can only edit applications where status is `approved`).

Allows for the creation of roles with configurable view and edit permissions by document type (e.g., X role can view all documents, including sensitive documents vs. Y role can only view non-sensitive documents).

Provides agency data created during form captures in tracks through the API.

Adds additional fields to the import process to support a larger set of agency data for launches.

Provides Training information through the API to empower data analytics.

Makes it easier to integrate with the Binti API by providing an API endpoint that lists the identifiers of all records which have changed over a specified amount of time.

Provides Case Note information entered by case workers in Binti through the API for data reporting and analytics.

Adds persistent filters that will automatically pre-sort dashboards to a worker’s desired settings.

Adds persistent filters that will automatically pre-sort dashboards to a worker’s desired settings.

Adds data fields and performance improvements to the API.

Introduces functionality to make it easy to export your agency data.

Allows agencies to create and manage their own bulk email campaigns to send emails to groups of applicants.