Review Cases, Programs, and Benefits

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain how the case object works.
  
• Describe the purpose of the program and benefit objects.
  

Cases

Tishon understands how Case Management stores information about constituents and the different ways that constituents can communicate problems and request help. Now, let’s talk about solutions!

After intake and screening, create a case to store all of the data related to a specific problem or situation, including the people involved, the problems they experience, and the measures you put in place to resolve the problems.

In Public Sector Solutions, you use cases to follow up on an application or referral, or respond to a concern about a constituent registered in a public complaint. You can create a case from any of these intake objects. From a case, you can view all related participants, complaints, referrals, applications, care plans, and programs in a single record.

Let’s go back to our erratic driving public complaint example. After the intake officer records and screens the public complaint from the neighbor, the case manager creates a case from the complaint and assigns a caseworker to investigate the circumstances of the situation. The caseworker, Connor, travels to Steve’s house and asks him questions about his physical and mental well-being and living situation. Steve tells Connor that his eyesight has worsened lately and he’s recovering from knee surgery. These health issues have made it difficult to drive to the grocery store and pharmacy. Connor records this information in the case record.

Through this investigation, Connor recognizes that Steve qualifies for a home health aide, a free bus pass, and other benefits that reduce his need for car travel. Connor then sets up a care plan, allocates goals and tasks, enrolls Steve in programs, and assigns benefits.

This diagram shows how the case objects relate to the participant and intake objects. The case object connects to complaint cases, case episodes, case proceedings, case proceeding results, referrals, case participants, and individual applications.

So cases originate from complaints, referrals, and applications, and store information about the involved participants. Cases also track the solutions you put in place to provide assistance.

We won’t cover the case proceeding, case episode, and case proceeding result objects in this module. To learn more about these objects, see the Justice and Investigative Case Management in Public Sector Solutions Help article.

This table lists the case objects, their relationships with other objects, and a few examples of their use.

Tishon is thrilled to learn that caseworkers can view and manage all aspects of their cases from a single record. This comprehensive view will make their work easier and more efficient. Now she turns her attention to programs and benefits, which provide constituents with targeted assistance.

Programs and Benefits

Programs and benefits are critical tools for preventing and alleviating hardship. Through these forms of assistance, governments deliver necessities, such as early childhood development, healthcare, housing, and food security to constituents who need help. In Case Management, you set up all of the programs and benefits that your organization and partner service providers offer. You can then enroll eligible participants into programs and assign benefits as part of the constituent’s care plan, or create referrals to request enrollment from outside organizations.

Program

Governments provide access to programs to help meet the basic needs of individuals, households, and communities. Governments may directly administer programs, or rely on outside organizations to provide certain services. Examples include healthcare assistance, food security, refugee settlement, housing services, and state-funded mental health and drug-prevention programs.

Each program record contains one or more benefits that the constituent receives by completing the program.

For example, the Cosville Senior Care Program record contains five benefits related to the health and well-being of senior constituents, and Steve Marshall has been enrolled in this program. The program enrollment object tracks the connection between participants and the programs in which they’re enrolled.

Benefit

Benefits are forms of aid, such as training, counseling, food services, housing assistance, and unemployment insurance, that governments issue to individuals or groups of constituents to help them reach goals and improve their quality of life. Caseworkers determine the right combination of benefits and the amount of those benefits that the constituent is eligible to receive. In Public Sector Solutions, you can include benefits in programs, care plans, and care plan templates.

Here’s a record for a Temporary Home Care Assistance benefit that Cosville offers to senior constituents.

You can group benefits using a benefit type, such as Senior Care, which can be used across several programs. As you find out later in this module, each benefit can correspond to a care plan or a care plan goal that the participant must achieve to receive the benefit.

Track the connection between a participant and a particular benefit using the benefit assignment object. Benefit assignments define how much of a benefit the constituent receives, such as the number of job training sessions.

Some benefits, such as training and counseling, require scheduled sessions. To facilitate scheduling and enrollment, Case Management includes the following objects.

• Use the benefit session object to store the date, time, and recurrence of each meeting or class, and track each participant’s enrollment and attendance.
  
• Use the benefit schedule object to organize a group of related benefit sessions into a timetable.
  
• Use the recurrence schedule object to set the frequency and repeatability of an action plan associated with the benefit.
  

Here’s a diagram that shows the program and benefit objects and their relationships with other objects.

Programs can contain several benefits. Participants are connected to programs through the program enrollment and referral objects, and are connected to individual benefits through the benefit assignment object. You learn how these objects relate to care plans in the next unit.

This table lists program and benefit objects, their relationships with other objects, and examples of their use.

Cosville caseworkers have long desired a comprehensive view of all the available programs and benefits that they can assign to constituents, so Tishon is quite excited about the Case Management solution.

However, caseworkers must also allocate programs and benefits, and assign goals and tasks to constituents. So, in the next unit, you learn how to organize these components into a comprehensive care plan.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Programs, Goals, and Benefits in Public Sector Solutions
• Salesforce Help: Justice and Investigative Case Management in Public Sector Solutions