2020 Florida Data Science for Social Good Big Reveal

Editor's Notes

1. Image source: https://deepconnect.cloud/data-science-is-hard/
2. Studies found that being detained previously was not as effective as reducing crime as diversion services, which had almost half the recidivism
3. Center for Children’s Rights (CCR) provides civil legal representation to kids involved with the juvenile justice system.  CCR receives direct referrals from key juvenile justice stakeholders. Legal Representation: CCR completes a comprehensive legal needs assessment and zealously advocates for kids who are: out of school, having problems in school, homeless, having trouble getting appropriate health care or counseling, and being locked up in detention. As an alternative to arrest, detention, and incarceration, the center advocates developmentally and trauma-informed policies and practices. Restorative justice : CCR facilitates juvenile justice reform by working with a variety of community partners and provide kids access to what they need in the school and in the community to thrive. One important thing to note is CCR doesn’t charge anything to kids for all these services. Additionally CCR has setup emergency funds to help the families better and efficiently. LIFT meeting : And recently they have also initiated the LIFT meetings, wherein they provide case management consulting for other organizations/entities. CCR helps cases which require interaction with multiple organizations while also onboarding the parents into the whole process.
4. Center for Children’s Rights (CCR) provides civil legal representation to kids involved with the juvenile justice system.  CCR receives direct referrals from key juvenile justice stakeholders. Legal Representation: CCR completes a comprehensive legal needs assessment and zealously advocates for kids who are: out of school, having problems in school, homeless, having trouble getting appropriate health care or counseling, and being locked up in detention. As an alternative to arrest, detention, and incarceration, the center advocates developmentally and trauma-informed policies and practices. Restorative justice : CCR facilitates juvenile justice reform by working with a variety of community partners and provide kids access to what they need in the school and in the community to thrive. One important thing to note is CCR doesn’t charge anything to kids for all these services. Additionally CCR has setup emergency funds to help the families better and efficiently. LIFT meeting : And recently they have also initiated the LIFT meetings, wherein they provide case management consulting for other organizations/entities. CCR helps cases which require interaction with multiple organizations while also onboarding the parents into the whole process.
5. Lets look at few demographic features of the kids referred to CCR. As per the census data, the median household income of Duval county is about 53 thousand and 400 dollars. More than 60% of the kids referred to CCR belong to neighborhoods/zipcodes with median household income on the lower end of the spectrum. When we look at the school grades, 52% of the kids come from schools graded C or below and Alt education settings. Schools in florida are known to reflect the socioeconomic status of their students, where schools with grades C or below have a median household income in the range of $30k / have an average poverty rate over 80%. So these kids are not only coming from economically challenged family background but they are going to schools that are facing many challenges of their own. Source - https://feaweb.org/news/frontline/the-reality-of-school-grades/ Questions: 1)
6. The schools that have higher referrals to enforcement rates, are usually the ones with less resources.
7. CCR is already off to an excellent start. Congratulations to the team. Few recommendations from our team to CCR to enhance their journey are improvement in data collection strategy for their clients, exit survey of the clients post case closure. Though CCR has good relationship with all of the schools they work with, putting more effort into the schools with most referrals will help in several ways. They could work with the school and other organizations to come up with some preventive measures so that the kids don’t land up in the juvenile justice system. Since the current teams' hands are full, a dedicated staff attorney will be of immense help. A resilience navigator, who is a part social worker, part community builder will be equally important. And finally, direct referrals from the court system will help them navigate through the cases quickly and efficiently.
8. Now picture a child, not disadvantaged going into college, but disadvantaged going into kindergarten! They are starting at a level behind the majority of the students, and that set back then follows them for the rest of their lives. Why do you think that child is sitting all alone on the bench while all the other kids are playing? It’s possible they are having trouble making friends, or they’ve gotten in trouble for being disobedient, or maybe they just lack the energy to play. This is just speculation, but all possible situations for children starting school at a disadvantage.
9. But, there is hope. One program in particular is the Early Head Start program, and Episcopal Children’s Services is one of the companies making this program possible. Their Early Head Start initiative includes helping pregnant women and children under the age of 3 whose environment puts the child’s development at risk. They do this with center-based and home-based services with the children’s health and the parent’s needs in mind.
10. ECS came to us with a wicked problem; children were being born without vital resources, and they have these resources to give the children a chance for healthy development, but with 174 neighborhoods to canvass they needed help managing data and narrowing down locations of children and their families that could benefit from their help.
11. Together we came up with a solution to create a GIS based decision tool. We started right away with data collection. Collecting 18 publicly available datasets with hundreds and hundreds of variables. From there we cleaned the data by narrowing the datasets down to 18 variables. We then normalized the values so that we were comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges and any other fruit that was in the basket. Once normalized we ran some analyses, which I will discuss more in a few slides, and merged the data into Tableau to build a dashboard, which you will also get to see later in the presentation.
12. Here are the 18 datasets we collected, some are doubled up on the slide to save space. So we have our Income based variables. We made sure to include low income because they do not get as many benefits offered to them as do people in poverty, but they still struggle to survive on what little money they have, so very important to keep them included. Home based variables; including the current children in ECS’ Early Head Start program. Minority based. We included race for demographic analysis purposes. And finally, Family based. Population 0-5 is a combination of pregnant women and children 5 years and under. It includes 4 and 5 year olds because that is how the census data is collected and all you can do is work with the data you have access to.
13. Thank you Kayla, thank you Vinay. I am so proud to be part of an initiative that gives children a healthy alternative to what they were born into. ECS provides health and education resources to children and their families to assist in the developmental process. And Now they have a map and indices to help identify even more neighborhoods with those families that could benefit from ECS’ services. Showing that if we all work together, all children could grow up in a healthy environment.