SEMINOLE, Fla., Sept. 25, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mark Livings is an adoptive father of two boys. As he and his wife were going through the process of adoption it became clear that the stress from the voluminous paperwork, background checks, and deadlines would become a way of life as they navigated their way to becoming parents. Mark has spent his career developing software and processes that save corporations time and money. He looked into why this industry was still reliant on pen, ink, file folders, and post it notes. He found that overall the adoption industry was poorly underserved by technology. Caseworkers were spending the majority of their time directing the flow of documents and managing timelines rather than therapeutically supporting their clients. Offices were inundated with filing cabinets dedicated to the warehousing all of the paperwork generated by each case. Meetings and deadlines were managed through notes stuck to calendars, walls, and desks. Mark saw an opportunity to make a difference. After three years of development, testing, trials, and revisions, CAIRS Solutions suite of software was born.
After hearing about the introduction of this new software suite, Gift of Life, an adoption agency in Pinellas Park Florida, signed up for a demo and immediately found that CAIRS vastly improved three key areas for their agency; matching speed, case management efficiency, and post adoption services. GOL partnered with CAIRS for a launch of their full suite of services.
ParentFinder.com allows their agency to connect adopting families with birth families in an environment that mimics social media sites. It is completely secure, and offers many ways for the waiting families to tell their story to birth families from optimizing each family's profile to improving internet search ability, adding e-books full of photos, video profiles, Google ad words, and more. The second part of CAIRS suite, MyAdoptionPortal.com, has automated GOL's case management tasks, forms, and communications. This allows case workers to spend more time counseling and guiding each family which has improved the adoption experience. The third piece of the software suite, ChildConnect, has helped the GOL staff to better manage photo and letter contracts associated with open adoptions. Before letters, notes, and photos would come in the mail to the GOL office. That mail would have to be opened, logged, stored, repackaged, addressed and mailed. Now it's all online in a secure environment that families access 24/7. Keepsakes are printed and mailed to the families by CAIRS. This solution saved GOL space, time, and resources.
By embracing CAIRS technology, Gift of Life has been able to reduce the wait time from approval to match with Birth Moms by 80%. This means in most cases waiting families can become parents in less time than it takes to conceive and give birth. This increase in efficiency has also led to a 23% increase in placements from January 2012 through July 2012 versus the same period in 2011. "The ability to help waiting parents realize their dream of becoming a family quicker is exciting to us," says Lee Scharrer, executive Director of Gift of Life.
Helping ease the stress for adoptive families and their chosen agency is exactly what Livings had in mind when he envisioned CAIRS nearly 4 years ago. "We are very excited to bring this product to market which is already demonstrating positive results for each of the agencies we have implemented," said Livings.
Families seeking professional support as they consider adoption should contact Gift of Life at www.giftoflifeadoptions.com/general-inquiry
Agencies wanting to schedule a demo with CAIRS Solutions should go to www.cairsolutions.com/contacts
About CAIRS Solutions.com
CAIRS Solutions is a leading provider of adoption and foster care management software and cloud computing solutions to family support organizations. CAIRS offers a suite of advanced technology solutions focused around the entire life cycle of adoption and foster care management. Services are centered on the design, implementation and support of adoption agency and attorney processes, including online forms for parents, parent-child matching, electronic profiles, and post-adoption pictures and letters to birth parents. Customers include large and small organizations supported by transaction pricing. Due to its focus, expertise and experience implementing and supporting advanced technology solutions for adoption related services, CAIRS believes it is well positioned to deliver superior solutions and services to its customers. Additional information about CAIRS can be found on line at www.cairsolutions.com. Additional information about its products can be found at parentfinder.com, childconnect.com and MyAdoptPortal.com
The CAIRS Solutions LLC logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=14829
About Gift of Life Adoptions
Gift of Life Adoptions is a private adoption agency designed to help create families through adoption. Gift of Life Adoptions is located in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and provides complete adoption services to adoptive parents and birth parents. The agency offers compassionate and caring assistance to both birth parents who are considering placement of their child for adoption and prospective adoptive couples who wish to grow their families through the adoption process. Birth parents, as well as adoptive parents, create their own adoption plan. Gift of Life Adoptions offers open, semi-open and closed adoptions, based upon the level of openness that both sides request. www.giftoflifeadoptions.com/about