Case Management Workflow: From Report to Closure

Whatever an office calls its stages, a case in a school or college moves through the same sequence: a report arrives, someone decides whether it is a case, one person owns it, the work gets done, a decision is made, and what is owed afterward is finished before the case closes. This post follows that sequence in order and marks where cases can stall.

Search for case management workflow and much of what comes back was written for health care, social work or legal services. In health care, the Case Management Society of America defines case management as a collaborative process of assessment, planning, coordination and advocacy for an individual’s and family’s health needs. A school or college office handles a different kind of case. It starts with a report about something that happened, involves several people who each stand in a different relation to it, and ends with a decision and a record that someone may ask to see later.

In Most of This Work Was Never in a System we counted the offices in one district that receive a report and open a case. There are far more of them than anyone buys software for, and underneath, the work has the same shape every time. This post follows that shape in the order a case moves.

Intake: a report arrives

Reports come in through whatever door is nearest: a web form, an email to the office, a phone call, a conversation in a hallway, a referral from another department. The first job of a workflow is to get every one of them into the same place and ask the same questions each time, so that a report taken by phone looks like one submitted online. The record needs who reported it, or that the reporter chose to stay anonymous, who or what it concerns, when and where it happened, what happened in the reporter’s own words, any attachments, and how it arrived.

The report is the raw material and is not yet a case. A common failure at this step is that the report stays where it landed, in one person’s inbox or on a note on a desk, and nobody else knows it exists.

Review: someone decides whether it is a case

Every report needs a person to look at it before it becomes anything else. Is it for this office? Is it a repeat of something already open? Does it belong in another department? Does anyone need to act today? Some reports become cases, some are referred elsewhere, and some are recorded and closed with a reason because they describe something no office can act on.

The reports that never become cases still need a record: the report itself, who reviewed it, when, and what they decided. A report that was reviewed and set aside is different from one nobody opened, and only a record can show which it was.

Opening the case and naming one owner

Opening a case gives it a number, a type and an owner. The number matters more than it looks, because every note, file, email and task refers to it and it is how someone finds the case a year later. Keeping the report’s number on the case lets the trail run in both directions, from the case back to the report that started it.

The owner is one person, even when several people work the case. Shared ownership is one way a case ends up with nobody checking it. The people involved are added at this point with their roles: the person who reported, the person it concerns, witnesses, and anyone supporting either of them. When those names link to people already in the system, a name that appears in more than one case shows up on its own instead of depending on whoever happens to remember it.

The work itself: tasks, events and evidence

Most of a case is small steps that have to happen in order. Someone has to be told, someone has to be interviewed, and a document has to be requested and then read. It helps to keep two kinds of record for this. A task is something owed, with an owner and a due date. An event is something that happened, such as an interview, a meeting or a call, with the date, the participants and the notes from it.

Keeping them apart answers two different questions. Tasks show what is still waiting, and events show what has already taken place and in what order. Evidence goes on the case too, in folders when the case is large, and letters and emails sent about the case are logged against it instead of sitting in someone’s sent folder.

Stages and the clock

A stage says where the case is in the process. Offices name them differently, with intake, review, investigation, decision, appeal and closed among the common ones, and the names matter less than one test each stage should pass. It should change who has to act next or what can happen next. A stage called “letter sent” describes a task. A stage called “with the decision-maker” or “waiting on the reporter” changes who is expected to act, so it belongs. A short list of stages is also easier to keep current than a long one.

The clock runs alongside the stages. A case can carry a due date for the whole matter, and a stage can carry its own time limit. The office’s own procedures set those dates. The system’s job is to show them wherever the case appears, surface the overdue ones without anyone building a report, and record who changed a date and when.

The decision, and what is owed afterward

A decision has its own record: who made it, when, what was decided and why. In a spreadsheet the decision is a cell that says “resolved.” In a case it is something the outcome, the notices and the follow-up can all point back to.

A decision also creates work. People have to be notified, a meeting may have to happen, a support may have to start, a check-in may be due in two weeks, or the matter may be referred to another office. This is the part that is easiest to drop. When these steps live in someone’s calendar, the case looks finished while the follow-up quietly does not happen. Entered as tasks on the case, each with an owner and a date, they keep the case open until they are done and give anyone who reviews it later a way to see that they were.

Closing, and what happens when a case comes back

Closing records a reason: resolved, referred to another office, withdrawn, or not a case. A system can also check that what the office said it needed is in place before it lets the case close, such as the decision, the notices and the follow-up tasks.

A closed case stays searchable, because cases come back. A new report about the same person arrives, a decision is appealed, someone asks for a record, or a new staff member inherits the caseload and has questions. When a case is reopened it should pick up with its full history intact, not start as a new file with a pointer to the old one.

One case from start to finish

Here is the whole sequence applied to one example. It is an illustration, not a real case.

A teacher emails the counseling office about a ninth grader who has missed nine days of school this month and has stopped turning in work.

1. The counseling secretary enters the email on the intake form, adds the student, the teacher and the dates, and attaches the message. It receives a report number.
2. The counselor reviews it the same day, finds that an attendance record is already open, and decides this is a new case that should link to it. The report is opened as a case with its own number, and the report number stays on it.
3. The counselor is named owner. The teacher, the student and a parent are added with their roles, and the attendance office is added to the team.
4. Two tasks are created: call the family within two school days, and meet with the student within the week. When the call happens it is logged as an event, with the date and the notes.
5. The case moves from Review to Support plan, because the next action now sits with the counselor and the family.
6. After the meeting the counselor records the decision: weekly check-ins for six weeks and a referral to the school social worker, with the reasons.
7. Each check-in and the referral follow-up becomes a task with a date. The case stays open until the last one is done.
8. After the sixth check-in the case closes as resolved. Three months later the same teacher files a new report about the student. The counselor reopens the original case, and everything from before is already on it.

What the record shows later

Because each step was written down as it happened, the history comes from the work itself and is not a separate project afterward. It answers the questions that otherwise take a week of searching inboxes. When was this reported, and who first saw it? Who has owned it? What was done, and when? What is still owed?

Across cases, the same record shows how many are open at each stage, how long cases sit in a stage, who has the most overdue work, and which people or places keep appearing. What is Education Case Management? covers the longer definition of what a case system is for.

Key takeaways

• A report is not a case until someone has reviewed it, and the reports that never become cases still need a record.
• A case has one owner, even when several people work it.
• Tasks are what is owed and events are what happened. Keeping them apart shows both what is waiting and what already took place.
• A stage earns its place when it changes who has to act next.
• A decision starts more work. Follow-up entered as tasks on the case keeps it open until the work is done, and closing records a reason.
• For the shape of this work across a whole district, see Most of This Work Was Never in a System.

Sources

1. Case Management Society of America, What is a Case Manager?

How Casearoo handles this: case management for any department.