Cass County highlights early wins as North Dakota case management redesign rolls out
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Summary
Cass County’s human service zone told its advisory board the state’s case management redesign launched in January; local leaders said Cass was near 100% readiness on key work streams, outlined phase‑2 pilots and urged continued focus on ICWA compliance and reducing time children spend in foster care.
Gail, director and chair of the Cass County Human Service Zone Advisory Board, told members the state’s case management redesign went into effect in January and that Cass County staff have already implemented many of the model’s practices.
Carissa Cowley, the zone’s family service manager, said the redesign centers on five work streams—case movement, engagement, supervisors, a safety‑framework practice model and onboarding. “The vision and goals of this is to engage, inspire, and strengthen North Dakota families,” Carissa said, describing efforts to focus quarterly child‑and‑family‑team meetings more on parent engagement and case movement rather than only reporting on children’s status.
Carissa said Cass County’s case management team serves about 250 children annually. Tammy Ressler, a case management supervisor, said supervisors will move to more‑regular scheduled check‑ins and staff will pilot tools and new staffing structures in phase 2. “One of the big ones really being case movement…so how do we move as fast as we can to the lower involvement?” Tammy said.
Board members were told Cass County scored “almost 100%” in readiness across the work streams at launch, a result county leaders attributed to prior local improvements. Carissa said phase 2 launches April 1 with plans for piloting new tools and staffing models and a target for fuller implementation by Oct. 30, 2026. She also said the zone will work to better integrate child protective services partners and address Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) compliance for older youth with post‑termination‑of‑parental‑rights (post‑TPR) cases.
Gail and staff repeatedly praised front‑line workers and supervisors for quickly adopting the new practices. Board members asked about caseloads, supervision frequency and how the quarterly meetings would operate; staff said case managers see children in foster care at least monthly and families remaining at home are seen twice a month under policy guidance.
Next steps include ongoing participation by Cass County staff in state work streams, piloting tools during phase 2 and a planned staff‑facing Q&A session about implementation questions. The board received the presentation and no formal action was taken on the redesign during the meeting.
The advisory board is scheduled to meet again on March 2.
