When a child is in out-of-home care, tracking ongoing requirements is essential to ensuring their safety and stability. However, managing documentation from multiple sources can be challenging. We are excited to announce the release of Child Document Uploads—a new feature designed to streamline the collection of required documentation. This feature introduces a dedicated requirements upload page in the Caregiver Portal, making it easier for caregivers to submit necessary documents while helping agencies stay compliant with out-of-home placement requirements more efficiently.

With this new functionality, it is easy to stay organized:

• Familiar Portal: Caregivers use the same Binti portal they already know for licensing, while agency workers access the existing child requirements page.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Agency workers and caregivers can easily see which requirements have been submitted by the other, ensuring transparency and streamlined collaboration.
• Real-Time Updates: Both agency workers and caregivers can see upcoming and overdue documentation requirements.
• Easy Document Uploads: Caregivers can easily upload essential records, like medical appointments, to support safe and stable placements.

Agencies can determine which child requirements caregivers can submit and which remain the agency’s responsibility, ensuring a flexible approach to documentation management. By centralizing the collection of child requirements, this feature reduces administrative burden and ensures that children receive the care they need.

Learn more about the experience for caregivers in our Help Center. To enable this feature, reach out to your Customer Success Manager. 

Note: If you participated in the pilot program, no action is necessary to continue using this feature.

Sending outreach to relatives is a vital part of the family finding process. It can often feel overwhelming, with the need to gather contact information from various sources, create customized mail merges, and manually document each outreach. We are excited to make this process faster and more efficient with our new Bulk Relative Email Outreach feature.

With Bulk Email Outreach, you can:

• Simplify Email Creation: Built-in merge fields let you customize emails with data already saved in Binti—such as names, addresses, and more—eliminating the need for manual data entry.
• Monitor Engagement: Our intuitive interface tracks email delivery, opens, and bounces, giving you real-time insights and confidence in your outreach efforts.
• Document Outreach Automatically: Emails are saved in contact logs, so you no longer need to spend time manually tracking your communications.

This feature adds complements our previously announced bulk relative notification feature, ensuring relatives are informed more quickly and helping more children stay connected with family.

Learn More in the Binti Help Center

As we kick off the new year, we’re excited to share the latest enhancements to Binti. This month’s updates bring a range of enhancements aimed at improving usability, streamlining workflows, and ensuring data consistency across Binti. Refer to our full release notes for additional detail and screenshots where applicable.

📑 Workflow Enhancements

• Licensing Binti now provides caregivers with fillable PDFs for all Supporting Documents, allowing them to complete forms digitally on their devices. Caregivers can download, fill out, and re-upload the completed forms, eliminating the need to print and streamlining the process. Please note that Supporting Documents requiring a signature will still need to be printed for signature.
  
  
• Licensing When caregivers add a Reference or Other Adult without an email address, a clearer message now instructs them to work directly with the agency, instead of displaying worker-facing language.
  
  
• Licensing If the youngest age a caregiver is approved to care for is higher than the oldest, a clearer error message highlights which field needs correction.
  
  
• Licensing Agency workers can now set the default language for the Caregiver Portal, ensuring a more accessible licensing process. This feature is available for customers with Spanish forms or AI translation enabled.
  
  
• Licensing Automated email notifications like “Applying to Approved” are now automatically logged as case notes, ensuring a comprehensive case history. Contact your Customer Success Manager if you do not yet have automated email notifications set up.
  
  
• Licensing Agencies can now require a Family ID before updating an application’s status, helping maintain data consistency.
  
  
• Family Finding & Engagement When authoring bulk relative notification letters, you are now directed straight to a page with printable letters, eliminating the need for a new tab that could be blocked by pop-up settings.
  
  
• Family Finding & Engagement  Page breaks can now be added to bulk relative notification letters, offering greater flexibility in formatting and outreach.

📊 Reporting & Data Enhancements

• Licensing The Time to Approval Report now displays all sub-agency data by default, with filter options for further refinement.
  
  
• Licensing The Time to Approval CSV Download now includes Application Template, Family ID, and Caregiver Name as columns, improving external data analysis capabilities.
  
  
• Licensing The Days Since Application Signed report is now available for private agencies, offering insights into licensing process timelines.

🔄 Simplifying Household & Applicant Management

Please Note: These features are only available to agencies with Caregiver Documents 2.0. We are actively working to enable them for all of our customers.

• Licensing Easily swap primary and co-applicants or Other Adults and Co-Applicants without contacting support. Roles in the household can be switched with a single click on the Applicant Data page. Binti will automatically generate role-based requirements.
  
  
• Licensing Customer Support can now remove co-applicants from an application, without deleting the user’s historical data. Simply contact Customer Support for assistance.

🔧 Bug Fixes

• Family Finding & Engagement Names with apostrophes now load correctly in Family Finding & Engagement, preventing errors that previously disrupted certain pages.

These updates are part of our commitment to making Binti more efficient and user-friendly. Stay tuned for more improvements, and as always, let us know how we can support your work by providing feedback below this post!

We are thrilled to introduce a new resource to keep you informed about Binti’s latest features and improvements! Our mission is to empower you with information about the innovative tools we are constantly developing to support your work with children and families.

What to Expect

Monthly release updates will keep you up-to-date on how Binti simplifies processes and enhances efficiency. You will stay informed about:

• New features that expand the utility of Binti in your day-to-day work
• Improvements that improve our existing features based on your feedback
• Fixes that ensure a reliable experience with Binti

Stay In-the-Know

We are giving you more ways than ever to keep informed!

	The orange updates tab will appear whenever we have something to share. Once you read everything new, it will disappear.
	Revisit updates anytime by navigating to the account menu in the top right corner and clicking “What’s New at Binti”.
	At the top of the updates panel, subscribe to receive updates via email, Slack, or RSS feed.

Tell Us What You Think!

We want to hear from you. Use the emojis and feedback box beneath each announcement to share your thoughts. Your feedback helps shape the future of Binti!

At Binti, we recognize the critical role of data in driving positive outcomes for children and families. We are excited to announce the release of the Family Finding Efforts Report, designed to provide a comprehensive overview of outreach efforts conducted to connect children and youth with their families, relatives, and kin. 

This report is generated as a fully formatted Excel document, seamlessly compiling data from the Relationships Dashboard including:

• A comprehensive list of identified relatives, fictive kin, and other potential connections.
• A detailed summary of all contact logs, showcasing the communication and outreach made to engage these connections.

With this robust level of detail, agencies can effectively showcase the proactive steps they have taken while providing essential documentation to demonstrate evidence of family finding activities This report is suitable for sharing with courts or other stakeholders, highlighting the agency’s reasonable efforts in family engagement.

Learn more about Binti's Family Finding & Engagement Module 

Sending notification letters to relatives is a vital step in the family finding process. It can often feel overwhelming, with the need to gather contact information from various sources, create customized mail merges, and manually document each outreach. We are excited to make this process faster and more efficient with our new Bulk Relative Notification Letter feature.

With Bulk Relative Notification Letters, you can:

• Simplify Letter Creation: Built-in merge fields let you customize ready-to-print letters with data already saved in Binti—such as names, addresses, and more—eliminating the need for manual data entry.
• Generate Multiple Letters at Once: Our intuitive interface allows you to easily select recipients and create all of your letters with just a few clicks.
• Document Outreach Automatically: Letters are saved in contact logs, so you no longer need to spend time manually tracking your communications.

This feature will streamline the outreach process and ensure more children remain with family.

Learn more about Bulk Relative Notification Letters in our Help Center

Children thrive with family—and Binti's new Potential Kin Online Search, part of our Family Finding & Engagement Module, is transforming how agencies find relatives and kin. This new tool makes it easier than ever for agencies to quickly identify and connect children with family directly from Binti.

Powered by Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions, this advanced feature automates the kin search process by simplifying robust datasets into the most relevant information for child welfare staff, dramatically reducing manual effort. Social workers can now spend less time sorting through reports and more time focusing on what truly matters—building meaningful relationships with families. With its streamlined, user-friendly workflow, the tool ensures that every potential family connection is thoroughly explored, greatly increasing the chances of placing children with loving, familiar relatives.

Learn more about Binti's Family Finding & Engagement Module

Agencies can now add custom dates to track key milestones not tracked by default in Binti. 

These dates appear on the Caregiver Applications dashboard and in CSV downloads, helping meet legal requirements or streamline processes. For instance, tracking the date initial training is completed allows agencies to monitor average completion times.

There is no limit to the number of custom key dates you can track, and they are easily managed on the Edit Application page. If you are interested in using this feature, contact your Customer Success Manager today!

Since the beginning of 2024, we have introduced over 180 feature enhancements to help you work more efficiently and stay connected with the children and families you support. We also launched our latest product, the Family Finding & Engagement module, designed to improve outcomes in locating kin and developing supportive networks for children. Stay up-to-date with our latest enhancements by subscribing to our Release Notes.

Read on to discover our top 10 enhancements so far this year. If you have any questions, feel free to contact to your Customer Success Manager or our Customer Support team.

Licensing

• Targeted Email Campaigns: Reach caregivers more effectively with targeted email campaigns based on Family Tags or specific application templates. This enhancement ensures your communications are highly relevant, saving you time and increasing engagement.

• Insightful Reporting: Gain critical insights with our new Barriers to Licensing and Recruitment Sources reports. These tools streamline your application process, speed up licensing, and optimize recruitment strategies with graphs, data tables, and CSV download options.

• Child Turning 18 Notification: Ensure your licensing files are compliant by receiving timely email notifications when the child of a licensed caregiver turns 18. This ensures you can promptly handle necessary documentation.

• Automatic Status Change Notifications: Keep caregivers informed with custom notifications for status changes such as approvals or denials. This improvement streamlines communication and enhances the caregiver experience. For setup assistance, please contact your Customer Success Manager.
• HEIC to JPEG Conversion: Photos uploaded in HEIC format (iPhone default) are automatically converted to JPEG, ensuring you can view any photo that is uploaded by a caregiver.

Caregiver Management

• Respite Placement Tracking: Placement searches can now be conducted for respite without disrupting the active placement. When closing a respite search, you are redirected to the Add Respite page, streamlining the process and ensuring accurate placement records.

• Provider Not in Binti: A new placement type lets agencies manually enter information for providers not listed in Binti, such as unlicensed kin, simplifying the placement process.

• Multiple Case Workers Assignment: Multiple permanency/case workers can now be assigned to a child, offering greater flexibility and support.

• Improved Ordering of Child Requirements Page: Quickly access the most critical tasks with our updated child Requirements page, now sorted to display the most recently generated requirements at the top.

Family Finding & Engagement

• New Module Launch: Our Family Finding & Engagement Module streamlines family finding workflows, helping you track and identify supportive relationships, and engage key individuals in a child’s life to assist with placement decisions and build strong support networks. With integrated Thomson Reuters CLEAR search capabilities, Binti offers a comprehensive solution for conducting thorough family finding efforts. Connect with your Customer Success Manager to learn more!

We have made significant improvements to our ability to track the background check exemption process!

Now, when creating an exemption in Binti, users will experience a new interface that robustly captures information relevant to the exemptions process. This includes details about the individual requiring an exemption, arrest and conviction records, interview and record request tracking, recommendations, and the final decision.

Alongside this enhanced functionality, we have also released the Background Check Exemptions Report. The report allows administrators to view and export agency-wide data on exemptions, offering valuable insights and supporting informed decision-making.

Learn more in our Help Center