The SOURCE Launches First-In-State Child Wellbeing Dashboard With Technical Support From enFocus

Innovation Fellow Haley Allaben sat down with Director of The SOURCE, Rebecca Shetler Fast, and Children’s Public Mental Health Specialist for The SOURCE, David Wiegner, to discuss the Elkhart County Child Dashboard website.

Tell us about the Child Dashboard. How did this initiative come to fruition and what is its purpose?

It started with a story and a desire to bring about more successes like it.

David Wiegner (DW): There’s a community team that meets as the overseers of The SOURCE who got together right at the beginning of the pandemic to discuss concerns over lower abuse and neglect reports. From professional experience, the committee knew that the decline in abuse and neglect reports wasn’t actually a good thing. Most of these reports come from schools—the people who see kids every day and are trained to submit those reports. With remote learning, there wasn’t the same opportunity to see students and report any concerning behaviors or appearances and hence, the reports were going down.

The committee determined that they needed to train an additional set of school employees to identify and report potential abuse or neglect. Over 170 new people were trained, including bus drivers and cafeteria workers—the people who would be dropping off food or transporting kids across the city. As a result, the abuse and neglect reports began to stabilize at a rate more true to the situation.

Rebecca Shetler-Fast (RSF): The community team realized that the county needed more of these data-informed actions, and this realization led to the development of the Child Dashboard. This website, we hoped, would serve as a tool for community collaboration and collective ownership in the factors that impact children’s risk and resilience in our community.

What value did enFocus create on this project?

DW: One of the most critically important challenges to the Child Dashboard was to develop a dashboard and website that were user-friendly because most of the people viewing this dashboard aren’t necessarily data-tech gurus or experts. We needed to create something that is easily understood and that can really help inform people’s actions or organizational initiatives.

DW: Haley, who came on halfway through the project, had to learn everything about the project and then take it to the next level through the launch. It was difficult to develop it online, it was probably challenging to listen and change things on a whim because suddenly we wanted to go in a different direction.

What was it like working with enFocus?

RSF: What I always appreciate about enFocus is how creative, flexible and responsive they are as an organization with each individual staff member supporting the needs and vision of projects. enFocus’s support on the Child Dashboard has been extraordinary!

DW: Working with enFocus was absolutely fantastic. Creating an online presence that is both meaningful and understandable was a challenge, so bringing on enFocus to take the heavy lifting of that portion has been a tremendous help. It’s very important how we show the information. That validity often comes from what people see and enFocus really took that to the next level. Without them, I don’t think we would have had as much success. We really appreciated how much enFocus wanted to be present at action meetings. It was great to have a company match where we were.

Talk about the impact the Dashboard made in just the first couple of months since launching.

DW: In the first month of launching, September of 2021, the website had over 1,500 hits with over 260 unique visits. It really affirmed our initial vision to develop this website in a way that is appealing and accessible.

RSF: Each quarter, we host community action meetings with these collaborating partners. Seeing leaders work with the data, talk about trends, issues, and opportunities—that cross-sector synergy is really amazing to see. I’ve been so pleased to see how the community has engaged with the Dashboard.

DW: In less than a year, the number of collaborating partners has grown from 13 to 65, ranging from other local non-profit organizations, schools, and initiatives, to churches, libraries and manufacturing businesses. The Child Dashboard also supports the ideas leaders brainstorm during action meetings through Mini Grant awards of up to $2,000. Organizations can submit initiatives, programs, and projects that can go towards actionable work. To date, the Dashboard has awarded 21 Mini Grants—$46,320 towards ideas, solutions, and initiatives, with its eye set on larger grants to continue supporting organizations in Elkhart County.

What are your hopes for the future of the dashboard?

RSF: The Child Dashboard is a tool for community collaboration and collective ownership in the factors that impact children’s risk and resilience in our community. One positive thing that we already see emerging is the Dashboard’s value in setting the agenda for important data-informed issues and trends affecting children in Elkhart County. For example, highlighting the workforce crisis across child-serving sectors. We’ve also already seen how the Dashboard is being used to help organizations apply to even larger grant opportunities.

You can visit the Elkhart County Child Dashboard website by visiting www.childdashboard.org. To learn more about how you and your organization can get involved, contact David Wiegner at david.wiegner@oaklawn.org.

Learn more about enFocus' work with regional organizations in our next Sponsor Spotlight.