55 Community Leaders Collaborated to Address Challenging Data Trends Impacting Children
My name is Suzanna Yoder and I’m a senior social work student at Goshen College. I began my internship at The SOURCE in the Fall, and I’ve been interested in the Child Dashboard since the beginning! The Action Meeting was an exciting event for me because I was interested in seeing how the information on the dashboard is analyzed and used by the community.
At the most recent child dashboard meeting on November 9th, several key trends were highlighted, including the housing crisis, the workforce crisis, and child distress. In terms of the housing crisis, we talked about the difficulty of building and finding affordable housing, as well as the difficulty people have with paying their current rent. A data point that sheds light on this issue is the rise in evictions, and we drew connections between evictions and negative effects for children. One salient point that stood out to me was the point that Heidi Stoltzfus McHugh, Chief Impact Officer for Lacasa Inc., made about how “poverty causes eviction AND eviction causes poverty.” This statement furthered the sentiment that preventing evictions is important for the well-being of our community. Additionally, my discussion group was shocked by the statistic that there are over 33,000 people commuting into Elkhart County everyday for work, and 9,000 from inside Elkhart County commuting elsewhere. We talked about how commuting time means that parents have less time at home with the family. These statistics further supported the point that the housing crisis is an issue worth addressing.
The next theme, the workforce crisis, was illustrated through several data points. The unemployment rate is not trending down, and there are many manufacturing jobs available. Yet, child-serving organizations are suffering. In some ways, the thriving manufacturing sector is impacting the ability of child-serving organizations to recruit and retain employees. Less staff available to provide good quality childcare means that it is harder for parents to find childcare. My group highlighted the dilemma that is produced by this situation; childcare workers are not paid well, and raising pay would inevitably mean increasing the price that parents pay for childcare when they are already struggling to pay for it in the first place.
The final theme, child distress, sparked several questions for my group. Groups were introduced to the data through four stations that highlighted specific indicators. The first station highlighted postpartum depression rates, the second station looked at wait times for mental health evaluations, the third station looked at children with high mental health needs, and the fourth station discussed community actions. Many people were inspired by the recent change that Oaklawn made to have open access, and they were also inspired that the indicator for children with high mental health needs was trending down. I am interested and excited to see what other outcomes result from Oaklawn switching to open access, and what unique solutions they develop to accommodate for the influx of clients.
The data-driven work that Elkhart County is doing is an inspiration. There is hope that when we track trends, we can catch potential undesirable trends early and develop creative ideas for how to address these trends. As echoed at the meeting, we can best address challenges when we do it together. It feels as though the Elkhart community is invested in addressing the needs of our children as a community.