How software can digitally transform child adoption

Each new iteration of technology development creates renewed hope to be a vehicle for good and empower those in need. But it’s not the technology type that enables such work but its application. Dallas-based charity Both Ends Believing (BEB) is just such an example. Through the right intentions and business technology leadership, BEB has placed 7,565 orphans with families since it began in 2010.

BEB’s aim is to transform care for vulnerable children in regions with high orphan populations such as Africa and Latin America. The charity was founded by Craig Juntunen, a former quarterback in the Canadian Football League who turned tech entrepreneur after personally experiencing the challenges of adoption. BEB isn’t a traditional charity; it’s also a digital organization using technology to deal with the complexities and inefficiencies of adoption.

Today, the charity works in nations such as Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia, as well as the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay. “We’re in 13 countries with 13 production environments,” says president Mark Schwartz. “Part of the problem is children in institutional care around the world have no records, or, if they do, they’re paper-based and located where the child is.” Research for a book and movie by Juntunen found that the average adoption time for children in these regions is 33 months, leading to costs of around $28,000. “We learned we had to digitize the records,” he adds. “Our partners in federal governments need to understand the educational and medical history before they can begin trying to get them to a family.”

The desired outcome in 5 steps

That lesson led to the development of Children First Software. The free software allows orphanages to create records on birth, family, health, special needs, and education, as well as fingerprints and DNA. These essential records trigger a five-step process to match the child with the right family. The first stage is the creation of a digital record and stage two is determining if the child can be reunified with their biological family or whether foster care, domestic, or international adoption are the best options. This is carried out using the definitions of the Hague Convention, which was drawn up by the world’s nations in the last century. If adoption is in the child’s best interests, the third stage qualifies prospective families, and within Children First Software is a matching system that government bodies can use to match children with such families. This fourth stage removes the need to sift through files and instead matches a child to a family who meets their needs. Finally, the fifth element is the ability to monitor the child once they’ve been placed with a family. To date, 30,319 children have been entered into the system.

Schwartz says each of these modules was developed with close user involvement to ensure the technology continues to reflect the needs of its users. BEB has a global implementation team of 35 that works to help end-users in whichever country to become familiar with the technology and get the most from it. “We don’t just dump off an application,” he says. “You have to see it all the way through.”

In Zambia, the implementation team travels four to six times a month to children’s homes to spend one to three days training the orphanage staff on Children First Software. At times, the implementation team has been known to walk long distances to some homes as floods or the terrain prevents vehicle access.

The implementation team also deals with any fears that can create barriers to adoption. Schwartz says child adoption requires significant levels of social work, and is at pains to stress that the technology doesn’t replace the hearts-and-minds effort of social work. “We’re not about that,” he adds.

Children First Software also has the ability to work offline, which is essential in regions where infrastructure can be unreliable. All data collected by the platform is hosted on the AWS cloud, but Schwartz says convincing end-user organizations to trust the cloud had its challenges. But once initial fears are addressed, BEB finds its users quickly realize the benefits of being data-led. “In Uganda, they’re using our technology to verify their census information,” Schwartz says.

Finding the right partnership

The first iteration of Children First Software was developed by Plano, Texas-headquartered technology firm Tyler Technologies, which has a strong heritage in public sector technology development and deployment. When Juntunen realized digitization was necessary, he contacted Microsoft, which then introduced him to Tyler Technologies, which had already developed a similar technology for the government of Guatemala. Schwartz became president of BEB in 2017 to spearhead the development of Children First Software, with Tyler Technologies initially acting as the technology partner, which then introduced Schwartz to low code and the application development platform from OutSystems.

“Low code provides all the technology utility we’d normally have to hire for, so right out of the gate, I realized this is the technology we needed,” Schwartz says. “Leveraging that smaller group of engineers was a perfect fit.” And to this day, BEB has just four engineers on its staff. The charity began working with OutSystems five years ago, and the first deployment of the platform in low code took just nine months to develop.

Looking ahead, Schwartz, like all business technology leaders, is considering the role AI will have for his organization. As a result, he’s working with a Dallas-based startup to assess if AI could look at scanned records and automate the creation of records for orphans. He also believes there’s a role for automation in feedback and help services on the Children First Software platform.

The outcome: children in families

The proof in any technology change project is in the usage. “There are orphanages where you see catholic nuns walking around with iPads using our software, and that would’ve never been done before,” says Schwartz. “There are now 510 organizations using the Children First Software platform, including Zambia Without Orphans, which has deployed and trained seven orphanages to use the platform.

With the thousands of children placed with families globally through BEB, an example the charity shares is in Uganda, where five siblings, who were victims of child abandonment, were placed in separate orphanages as a result of age limitation rules. The application allowed agencies to identify the children were related and they’ve been working to reunite the family with an uncle.

“There’s a nun responsible for taking children to court so a judge can hear their case for adoption,” Schwartz says, providing detail about how this works on the ground. “She takes five to six children at a time. If one child is sick and can’t go to court, then the case is delayed. Now with the application, the judge can rely on the files and make a decision in open court without the child even being present. To develop, implement, and see how the technology is making a difference is pretty wonderful.”