Alright, community. Tell me what you think about this one! My idea is . And I don't mean client states (active / inactive / archived / deceased) or even hidden / visible. This would be an entirely new thing.

The type of client file that currently exists we are going to call "Regular." This works great for a normal adult recipient of services. So no changes for the vast majority of clients.

So for the second client type, " " or you could call it Child or Minor, it doesn't really matter. When you have a child in a homeless family, you are not going to be offering services to them directly, and a lot of the information about the dependent should be inherited from the family head.

I'm proposing that when you create a Client file that is a Dependent, the file itself behaves differently from a Regular file. You would eliminate a lot of the options in the Client Information and Client Management menus, and instead display inherited information. For example, the Dependent's housing history should probably, by default, be the Family Head's housing history. Dependents wouldn't have any income, so if you wanted to look up the Dependent's income, you'd look at their parents. Dependents wouldn’t be included in Coordinated Access.

The purpose for this would be for easier use for users who deal with families often. If dependents behave less like individual clients, and more like characteristics of a family, it'll be easier to understand things like when we're serving families as opposed to singles.

Then you would have a third client type, " " We have the Declined - Anonymous consent type and sometimes this leads to a bit of confusion. You can have a client declared to be anonymous but still record their birth certificate, do SPDATs and VATs, and Case Management, none of which makes any sense if the client is really Anonymous. So if you have an Anonymous client type, you really shouldn't be able to add anything identifying to it, which means those sections of the client file should be hidden or non-existent. In other words, most of the options in Client Information and Client Management should be gone.

The purpose for this would be to help protect privacy and confidentiality for clients who are uncomfortable with data sharing, and remind staff of the importance of obtaining informed consent.

Finally, you should have the ability to convert a client from Dependent to Regular or Anonymous to Regular.