How can we support families’ needs during the Covid-19 crisis?
With the outbreak of Covid-19, ABC Head Start* wanted to understand the immediate needs of their children and families, including food security, employment, housing, health insurance, continuity of education, and more.
ABC Head Start used a family needs checklist tool inside of their monitoring and analytics platform, DataSay, to collect this information. Staff members reached out to families individually and recorded the results in the checklist tool on a scale of 1 to 4. Dire needs were recorded as a 1, while secure status was recorded as a 4.
(*ABC Head Start is a generic name we use in the Playbook when a program does not wish to be identified.)
Analysis
ABC Head Start was able to look at the results through dashboards in DataSay in order to both individual family needs and larger trends facing their community.
The Family Needs Survey Dashboard includes 4 different visualizations of the ten quality of life criteria addressed in the survey: food security, employment, transportation, health insurance, unemployment compensation, medication, health and wellness, continuity of education, mental health, and housing.
The dashboard allows ABC Head Start to select each criteria and assess families’ needs throughout the program in several ways. ABC Head Start began its analysis with food insecurity by selecting it in the upper-left quadrant. (See below.)
On the pie chart, ABC Head Start saw that six of their families, or 16.67%, were in dire need of food. Below the pie chart, they got a list of the six specific families in need. On the map to the right, they could see where those families were located. This information helped ABC Head Start understand where the greatest food needs were and develop a plan to support those families.
ABC Head Start could evaluate each need one at a time by selecting the relevant question in the upper-left quadrant.
The dashboard also allowed ABC Head Start to analyze data center by center to understand how needs varied by site. For example, while looking at data on housing status, ABC Head Start clicked on the Roswell Center specifically on the map. This showed them that, at the Roswell Center in particular, nearly half of their families were housing insecure.
Finally, ABC Head Start used the heat map visualization function to identify those families that were most in need. The heat map highlights families in different colored text based on their average score across all ten indicators. If a family had an average score less than 2, their name was written in red. An average score below 3, yellow. An average score below 4, green.
Result
Using the dashboards, ABC Head Start learned that there was widespread need across the community and across the quality of life indicators. However, using the data visualizations, they were able to identify and prioritize the needs for food security and other quality of life indicators to prioritize families in the greatest need.
They analyzed results for each indicator, focusing on the most serious needs and providing guidance and support to families based on those needs.
ABC Head Start was able to make referrals to food banks, provide food assistance through school programs, and make referrals to unemployment programs, rental assistance programs, and grants throughout their communities. Visualizing their survey responses with drillable dashboards allowed ABC Head Start to quickly understand the scope of their families’ needs, provide resources, and track action items to provide the quickest, most targeted support possible.
Additional details
Audience: Leadership, management, staff
Level of Analysis: Grantee, Center, Family
Difficulty: Basic
Content Area: Health, Family and Community Engagement
Data Sources: DataSay
Technical Appendix
ABC Head Start uses the DataSay to collect this information.
To fill out the checklist for a family, click on the Reviews Tab in DataSay, create a New Review, and select the Family Needs Survey Checklist Tool.
To review results, navigate to the Family Needs Survey Dashboard and click on a specific quality of life indicator. The other visualizations will display data around the indicator chosen.
To generate a list of families for any choice, simply click on that choice in the pie chart and those families will be displayed in the list below. Color coding helps to indicate each family’s needs in every quality of life indicator.