First in state: Shared dashboard to help monitor well-being of children

ELKHART — Keeping an eye on the well-being of Elkhart County children is becoming easier, as several community organizations have collaborated to create a shared Child Dashboard, which they say is the first of its kind in Indiana.

The online dashboard has more than 45 data points showing trends for child well-being and safety, empowering organizations to make informed decisions for a healthier Elkhart County. The dashboard, which will be updated quarterly, uses data indicators from both local organizations and public sources to help gauge the health of the community and trends in child well-being. 

“This is such an extraordinary collaboration. What a great way to make data local and drive decisions from an informed space,” said former Indiana Family Social Services Administration Secretary Dr. Jennifer Sullivan.

The types of data that will be displayed on the dashboard will cover areas such as education, including things like kindergarten readiness, reading level and high school graduation rates. The dashboard will also display data on more immediate threats to children’s well-being, such as reports of child abuse. 

“Basically, we have really carefully picked data points that either point to children having risks, or protective factors for kids, and then we’re trying to show trends so that leaders can know strategically where should we be placing our energy,” said Rebecca Shetler Fast, the director of The Source, a mental health network for children and young adults.

She hopes that having this information easily available will have significant positive outcomes for children and young adults, perhaps even saving lives. 

“How can we move toward more preventative stuff instead of waiting until, for example, after a child has died by suicide?” she said. “We want to be upstream of that and preventing that, and we know that data can sometimes tell us what those trends are before it happens.” 

The collaborative effort to create the dashboard began in April 2020, when reports of child abuse dropped as schools moved to remote learning. Elkhart County leaders sounded the alarm and mounted a collective community effort to train more child abuse reporters. In the summer of 2020, Shetler Fast contacted agency leaders to see if they would share key data points to create a collective child dashboard. 

Organizations are usually hesitant to share data, according to Shetler Fast. Yet time after time, nonprofit and government leaders in Elkhart County said they would share their own organizational data for the collective good, and now, 30 organizations have committed to helping the effort, either through sharing data or participating in the collective process.

“One of the things that makes Elkhart County a truly unique place to serve is the cooperation among partners,” said Laurie Nafziger, president and CEO of Oaklawn, which hosts The Source. “The Child Dashboard is a prime example of how stakeholders are willing to not only work together to benefit kids in our community, but also to seek out the most effective ways to do it. It’s exciting to be part of something that’s unique in our state and has such positive potential impact on kids and families.” 

Each quarter’s data will be compared to the prior quarter. The data points going in a desirable direction will get a green label. Those trending in an undesirable direction get a red label, and gray is neutral. By showing the data together in one place, organized from early warning signs to undesirable outcomes, trends should be easier to identify. 

The dashboard will launch as a prototype that is only available to the involved organizations, but it may become public later, Shetler Fast said. Those who have access will be able to see trends immediately after the launch, as data have been collected for months. The data tell both good and bad stories. 

“We’ve had a strong economy and strong community resources which have in many ways buffered some of the impacts of COVID-19 in our community,” Shetler Fast said. 

But it is clear that the pandemic has created a bigger need for those resources.

“We see more children are suffering mental health challenges,” she said. “We know COVID has been hard on kids and families and everyone, and so we see kids at younger ages having more mental distress. We see that in schools, we see that in emergency departments, we see that at Oaklawn.” 

With the dashboard, community leaders are hopeful that the needs of the county’s young people can be addressed more effectively. 

The Child Dashboard “will allow us to consider how a trend another organization is seeing in their data could be affecting the trend in our own data, or vice versa,” said Nate Tipton, director of Elkhart County Court Services. 

“The collective effort to gather and utilize data from across our community will help all of us better help children and families in our community. This innovative effort by The Source and the partnering organizations makes collaboration and collective efforts possible in powerful, new ways,” said Candy Yoder, chief program officer for the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. 

By: RASMUS S. JORGENSEN - rjorgensen@elkharttruth.com - September 8th 2021