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	Fostering a More Supportive Society

In this section... FOSTERING A MORE SUPPORTIVE SOCIETY Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods How Do We Change Smaller Cities? Building Communities with Help from the Press Using Data to Strengthen Communities and Improve Services Forging the Essential Connections Between Schools and Work School-to-Work Update Young Men as Fathers Drug Prevention Education Conference TABLE OF CONTENTS

Using Data to Strengthen Communities and Improve Services

The Foundation Consortium, in its March 1999 publication, What Works: Policy Brief, points out the value of using a variety of data about the community to strengthen communities and services.

"How do policymakers know what works? How do they justify their choices and decisions? How do they balance among competing interests and priorities? Policymakers can help answer these questions by collecting, organizing and analyzing data from multiple sources. Data also provide a framework that brings people with diverse interests together, helping people to focus on mutually desired results for children, youth, families and communities.

"Data can increase ... rationality in planning, policy development and resource allocation decisions, whether at the program, agency or service system level. Data help people to understand their assets and problems and to create shared visions and hopes for the future. Using data, people from different perspectives can often find common ground, agreeing on the results they want to achieve, their priorities for action and the indicators that will demonstrate joint progress toward improving the well-being of the children, youth and families in their communities. Data-driven decision-making processes can also help decision makers hold people accountable for the results they want to achieve.

"Shared information is the key to better results for children and youth. To improve the well-being of children, youth, families and communities, many people with different perspectives must be involved. Concerned organizations, disciplines and formal and informal groups such as neighborhood associations must focus their resources and energy on common purposes. Data become the collective language that enables them to work together toward these purposes.

"Shared information helps people from different cultural, community and professional perspectives value and respect their differences while developing:

"A continuing flow of strategic information about the wide array of education, health and social service programs available for families and children is essential both to policymakers and to community residents. Data can help policymakers assess equity of resources across geographic areas, track service utilization among different cultural, ethnic, racial and community groups and identify which agencies and departments are serving the same clients. Planners and policymakers can also use data to track expenditures and measure the effectiveness and cost efficiency of funded programs. Such information is also vital for community residents. Within the context of the history and roles of major service systems and their ever-changing laws, funding and management practices, residents can use data to hold agencies accountable for key performance measures.

"Data can provide helpful tools—shining a light on key issues, challenges and accomplishments. Sometimes though, the sheer amount of data available through current technology can be overwhelming, killing initiative, not sparking action. The ideal is to present enough data to stimulate thinking, inform planning and focus action without burying people in mounds of data they don't know how to use or apply."

Some Data-Based Tools for Decision-Making

"The Kids Count Data Book, issued annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, contains data on a selected set of indicators for all 50 states, allowing for comparison of data across states. The Children Now Report Card issued annually provides statewide data on key indicators for California; it also provides data on each of the 58 California counties, allowing comparison across counties."

How Do We Know Data-Driven Decision-Making Works?

"The jury is still out on whether data-driven decision-making will lead to significant improvements in the lives of children and families, but there are some indications that strategic use of data does help groups to build consensus on the best directions for change, to prioritize among competing alternatives, and to focus discussion on the needs of children, rather than on organizational needs.

"One of the measures used by the Los Angeles County Children's Planning Council to judge its success in building a consensus for change is the voting record of the county's Board of Supervisors on Planning Council motions. Of 23 motions brought to the Board between June 1991 and December 1997, all but one were unanimously carried. (The other motion was approved but not unanimously.)

"In the children's field, it is all too common that energies which should be focused on children are spent in turf protection and conflicts based on old organizational and disciplinary rivalries. Another measure that data can help was the Planning Council's experience in developing recommendations to the Board of Supervisors for improving outcomes for children and families in Los Angeles. The 250 people who worked in five work groups to develop the recommendations used the Children's Score Card as a starting place for their discussions.

"The data helped them to set aside some traditional rivalries, put aside organizational agendas and listen to community residents about the most pressing priorities for action. The Board adopted their recommendations, and a collaborative two-year implementation process is underway."

Definitions of Terms

"An outcome or desired result is a bottom-line condition of well-being for children, youth, families or communities. Some desired results may be achieved by the efforts of a single agency or program and the families it serves. Usually, however, the efforts of multiple programs and agencies, community groups and families are needed to achieve important outcomes or results. Examples include: children are born healthy, families are selfsufficient and youth succeed in school.

"Indicators are measurable elements, for which data is available, that help quantify achievement of desired results.

"Performance measures track how well programs, agencies or service delivery systems are working."

League Tools

The 1999 LWVUS Diversity Tool Kit (which every local League should have) encourages local Leagues to develop databases for their communities and suggests a number of resources to help them. Some are listed at the end of this publication.

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© Copyright 1999 by the League of Women Voters of California