In March 2021, amidst an escalating humanitarian crisis along the U.S. southern border, the Office of Refugee and Resettlement (ORR) sought out organizations that could be immediately deployed to an Emergency Influx Shelter (EIS) in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area to assist in the safe and efficient reunification of Unaccompanied Children with their sponsors. The Providencia Group (TPG) was awarded a sole-source contract, under urgent and compelling acquisition provisions, to provide these reunification case management services in both an on-site and virtual deployment configuration.

TPG rapidly mobilized and deployed existing case management resources while simultaneously recruiting additional experienced personnel to support the reunification mission in the needed deployment configurations. Our robust new-hire training program, coupled with a rapid mobilization and deployment approach, allowed new TPG case managers to immediately start taking cases, regardless of location, ensuring the safe and rapid reunification of unaccompanied children with vetted sponsors.

While on-site in Dallas, TPG case managers and ORR-trained leads delivered immediate impact through the identification of process and workflow efficiencies, prioritization of emergency and aging-out cases, facilitating the seamless flow of information across a multi-contractor operational environment, as well as deploying a data collection, analysis, and reporting system that allowed the rapid response to case data reporting and information management requests. This combination of people, process and technology synchronization helped ensure the achievement of the common goal of safely reunifying unaccompanied children with securely vetted sponsors.

Throughout the Dallas deployment, TPG case managers leveraged the aforementioned internal data collection, analysis and reporting system, a system we call “Vesta”. The data analytics, reporting and dashboarding capability available within Vesta allowed case managers and QA/QC personnel to identify bottlenecks, track case progress, and ensure consistent progress towards reunification goals. Vesta also allowed TPG to provide ORR leadership with the real-time case data needed to manage shelter operations and set strategic case management goals and priorities.

TPG collaborated closely with ORR, other federal volunteers and various other service providers to meet the target shelter demobilization date, ultimately reunifying over 1,600 Unaccompanied Children with their vetted sponsors as well as achieving optimal discharge rates.