P&P December 2015

Sharing resources is critical; dollars are often so constrained by the time they reach local providers that organizations have to stretch themselves tomeet eligibility, reporting, program requirements, and other policy rules built into the funding.

When critical services don’t reach youth at the time of need, a host of problems can arise: gang involvement, lack of education, or trouble finding a job, just to name a few. To address these service delivery challenges, the Forum for Youth Investment is helping state and local agencies use data to more flexibly deliver the right service mix to youth ages 14–24, often referred to as disconnected or opportunity youth. 1 Completing the Individual Picture Abundant point of service and research data are scattered across labor, education, child welfare, justice, health, and other agencies. Aggregating these data opens new opportunities to better tailor services to the needs of the individual, and it offers a chance to learn what works. In collaboration with Accenture, the Forum is working with agencies to use data to identify services that will deliver the best outcomes. Analytics on data collected from state, local, federal, and provider databases are providing insights about which youth are most vulnerable and at risk. There’s a lot more integrated data can do, including: Provide caseworkers with a granular view. If data from all local,

multiple education, criminal justice, labor, and other programs to better meet the needs of their disadvantaged youth populations. Data sharing is really, after all, just a proxy for getting people to work at common purpose. So sharing resources is critical; dollars are often so con- strained by the time they reach local providers that organizations have to stretch themselves to meet eligibility, reporting, program requirements, and other policy rules built into the funding. Performance Partnerships allowmulti- service organizations and partnerships the flexibility to design a bottom-up approach to serving vulnerable youth. These are among the communities signing on to measure and achieve better outcomes in exchange for increased flexibility: Children’s Services Council of Broward County (Fort Lauderdale, Florida). Leaders in Broward County believe that Performance Partnerships can allow them to remove the road- blocks that have kept them from providing comprehensive services that support high school graduation, post-secondary attainment, and labor market success. In an effort to increase high school graduation rates and suc- cessful transition to post-secondary education or employment, the Council has proposed to: � Blend funds from state and federally funded programs at the local level. � Develop common eligibility. � Create a shared client database to streamline intake, client tracking, and outcome measurements, which

state, and federal public services a youth receives were fed into a central- ized, protected case management system, caseworkers could see, at an individual level, which services would benefit that youth the most. Measure and reward perfor- mance. Aggregated data provide insight into which interventions and services are getting the best results, while also opening new avenues for policymakers and service providers to measure their own performance against their peers. Reveal important trends. Integrated data can help agencies to better understand, on a macro level, if they are achieving desired results. For instance, by tracking key indicators of well-being, demographics, and partici- pation levels, agencies will be able to identify trends in rates of high school graduation, youth employment, health, safety, and more. Early identification of problems can lead to earlier interven- tion with solutions. Most important, coordinating data will allow agencies to work together to match the right provider with the right individual to deliver better results faster. Preparing to Share Data sharing remains a nascent—and somewhat uncomfortable—concept in the public sector. The subject gained traction through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, when Congress took bold steps to include funding for the integration of state data on children and youth in education systems. Since that time, Congress has authorized an innovative initiative, Performance Partnerships, which will ultimately allow up to 20 communities to blend funds across

Elizabeth Gaines is a senior fellow and director of the Children’s Cabinet Network at the Forum for Youth Investment.

Gary Glickman is the manag- ing director for Human Services at Accenture.

would then reduce the number of staff needed to administer the

See Connecting on page 25

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Policy&Practice   December 2015