DSCC Families, It’s Time to Share Your Input!

Our annual family survey is an easy way to share your feedback and make a direct impact.

Our participant families are important to us, and your feedback matters.

On Feb. 15, all Division of Specialized Care for Children (DSCC) participants will receive our annual family survey.

This survey asks how well our team members support your family and meet your needs. It also asks about:

• Your contact preferences
• How and when you’d like to meet with our team
• How well our staff communicates with you

You will receive this survey either by email or mail, based on your preferences. If you respond, you will have a chance to win a $50 Visa gift card.*

Your responses will help us strengthen your services. They also guide updates to our DSCC policies and procedures that affect your family.

Our surveys are optional, but we strongly encourage you to share your experiences. We want to ensure we’re doing all we can to help you meet your family’s needs and achieve your goals.

* Please note: Foreign national nonresident aliens are not eligible for the gift card participation prize.

How Your Feedback Makes a Difference

Listening to our participant families is a priority. Your ideas and concerns have helped strengthen our services and guide improvement projects.

Here’s an overview of how the 2023 survey input and overall family feedback made a difference at DSCC:

• Our authorizations are now easier to fill out and keep up to date. We updated the form authorizing us to share information with multiple providers, meaning only one signature on one form.
  
• Our online resource library is now searchable. Families shared their need for more resources. In response, we updated our online Resource Directory and Events page to add search features. This improvement should help all Illinois families of children and youth with special healthcare needs find and share resources more easily.

• We resumed face-to-face visits. Our care coordination teams resumed face-to-face visits with families following the end of the public health emergency on May 11, 2023. Meeting in person should further improve our connection and engagement with families.

• We created a new Family Portal. In October 2023, DSCC introduced a new Family Portal to better connect families with their care teams. The portal gives participant families one place to communicate with their care coordination teams, sign documents and access information.

• We created “All About Me” Pages to help others get to know your child. DSCC developed “All About Me” Pages so families can highlight their child’s strengths, medical needs and more. Families can personalize the templates to best fit their child’s personality. You can share these templates with medical providers, schools, other caregivers and so on. These pages should make it easier to share what works best for your child, what they like and dislike, and their medical needs. These templates are available on our website’s “All About Me” Pages section.

• We’ve partnered to improve nursing availability throughout the state. Nursing agencies that work with DSCC can now receive a license to work across the state. We partnered with the Illinois Department of Public Health to make this change. The new license process offers more opportunities for nursing coverage for families of children and adults with complex medical needs. DSCC is also developing NurseNet. This interactive website will allow families looking for nursing to connect with nursing agencies.

Please be on the lookout for our annual survey on Feb. 15.

If you have questions or need more information, please contact your Care Coordinator.

We appreciate your partnership and look forward to hearing from you!