After five weeks of training, the Hamilton County Probation Department has become the 15th agency to begin using the Odyssey Supervision software. Hamilton County supervises over 4,000 adult and juvenile probation cases and operates a certified Court Alcohol and Drug Program (Court Assisted Rehabilitative Efforts – C.A.R.E.). The probation department also supervises those individuals participating in the county’s newly created Drug Court program. The key components of Odyssey Supervision allow the Hamilton County Probation Department to manage individual caseloads for their active juvenile referrals, pending pre-dispositional and pre-sentence investigation reports, and also their adult and juvenile probation cases. Due to the large number of probation staff in Hamilton County, JTAC worked with several small training groups of 12 to 15 participants and established a more individualized training approach. The smaller group settings also allowed the probation staff to focus on specific processes for their unique operations (i.e. adult and juvenile intake units, adult pre-sentence investigation unit, supervision teams, and the C.A.R.E. unit.)
Over the next few months, the probation staff will work to transfer their existing cases from their legacy case management system into Odyssey Supervision. Since May 9th, all new cases processed through the probation intake units have been created within Supervision. During this process, probation users are able to pull case and financial data directly from the court and clerk side of Odyssey.
Although the probation staff are still getting used to the new software, the transition to Odyssey Supervision has truly been a joint effort between the Hamilton County Probation Department, all Hamilton County judges and court staff, and the Hamilton County Clerk’s office. Thanks go out to the Director of Probation Services, Madonna Wagoner, and her entire staff along with Judge William Hughes and Clerk Peggy Beaver for their assistance and collaboration in making this deployment successful.
The JTAC Supervision team will be deploying Odyssey Supervision to the Parke County Probation Department in July. Plans are also underway to begin a Supervision pilot program with Allen County Community Corrections later this year.
