Mecklenburg County, NC
Business Challenge:
The Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services (located in Charlotte, NC) needed a comprehensive training program for more than 1,200 social services case workers and employees throughout North Carolina's Mecklenburg County. The county has a population of 773,000, which is approximately 10% of the population of North Carolina. Mecklenburg's Department of Social Services (DSS) is responsible for the administration of many programs, including Work First Family Assistance, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Employment Services, Services for Older Adults and people with disabilities, Adult and Children Protective Services, Foster Care, and Adoption services, and several other critical programs. The County bore responsibility for administering vital social services for a metropolitan county of nearly three quarters of a million citizens. However, the County had no existing formalized training system in which to educate case workers and county staff in the most effective and efficient process of administering these programs. All courses needed to be developed from scratch, and needed to be delivered via a computer-based, interactive learning management system staff could easily access and understand. The County needed a profusion of customized course content and an advanced digital authoring and delivery tool to ultimately solve its challenge.
The Solution:
Mecklenburg County chose Intelladon Corporation, the nationally recognized pacesetter and developer of highly interactive and user-friendly learning management systems, to produce all training content and performance support necessary to launch a new and massive training system for Mecklenberg County. Intelladon ultimately developed and deployed Mecklenburg's Integrated Social Services Information (ISSI) system; a comprehensive training program for more than 1,200 social services case workers and employees throughout the county. Intelladon and its content development subsidiary Intellalearn created this immense training solution for the county's social services staff from scratch. With no formal existing curriculum in place, Intellalearn counselors interviewed subject matter experts, integrated existing materials and established content specs and educational benchmarks. Instructional designers transcribed and restructured the cumulative content into a complete, simplified, consistent and unified series of 25 courses. Intelladon's team of training architects, multi-media designers and programming engineers integrated each course into its award-winning Advanced Learning Platform (ALP) for an interactive and user-friendly Web-based delivery. The Intelladon and Intellalearn teams completed the entire project in 16 weeks (from the initial interviews required to develop content, to the final Web-based delivery of all 25 courses).
Return on Investment:
Intelladon and its courseware development and performance support subsidiary, Intellalearn designed, developed, and implemented a total of 25 custom technology-based training courses-creating a sophisticated case management system and massive training program; which is hailed by Mecklenburg County officials as a new model for hundreds of other counties to follow. The system is specifically designed to enhance government efficiency, improve case-work processing for thousands of North Carolina social services recipients, and ultimately saved taxpayer dollars. Government estimates suggest the ISSI will pay for itself in roughly three years and save the County of Mecklenburg $9,992,774 over the lifetime of the system. North Carolina state officials are currently reviewing the ISSI, and considering adopting the platform for use in the other 99 counties within the state. |
