Executive Summary: San Mateo County Children's Summit
Children
in Our Community: A Report on Their Health and Well-Being
Background
www.plsinfo.org/healthysmc/html/children_youth.html
In 1998, the Children’s Executive Council Action Team (a group of key
managers from public agencies, education, community-based organizations,
parents, and other sectors of the community) began discussing the benefits of
having a process that would provide them with accurate and current information
regarding the well-being of children in San Mateo County.
They wanted to recommend policy decisions based on a common set of
outcomes and indicators. The idea of institutions and agencies making critical
program decisions was appealing to both County leaders and those working
directly with children and families.
Under staff direction from the San Mateo County Human Services Agency, a
countywide collaborative group developed a process to identify, with community
input, indicators that would measure the well-being of children in six outcome
areas: (1) children are healthy; (2) children are safe; (3) children are
nurtured in a stable, caring environment; (4) children are succeeding in school;
(5) children are out of trouble; and (6) systems support children. For
each of these outcomes, a set of indicators was identified to help
quantify our community’s progress. The
result was San Mateo County’s first report on the status of children and youth
in these key areas. Children in Our Community: A Report on Their Health and Well-Being
was published in January 2000, through a collaborative effort between public and
private agencies, schools, parents, and other community members in San Mateo
County.
By achieving countywide consensus on outcomes for children, the
Children’s Report has paved the way for service providers, policymakers,
parents and other stakeholders to work toward common goals.
The Report provided a baseline of children’s well-being, stimulated the
community to work collaboratively toward the same outcomes, and provided a way
to measure ongoing progress toward these outcomes in a systematic manner. This
Report was also intended to help the community understand the importance of
investing in children and guide programs to accomplish results desired by the
community. It is expected that the
data and indicators in the Report will be updated every other year.
Children’s
Summit
In order to
maintain and build on the community momentum generated by the Children’s
Report, San Mateo County’s first-ever Children’s Summit was held in May
2000. The purpose of the
Children’ Summit was to identify the implications of Children
in Our Community: A Report on Their Health and Well-Being, and engage the
community in creative and collaborative action to address concerns raised by the
Report. The Children’s Summit was a groundbreaking opportunity for elected
officials and community leaders to join forces and focus on improving the lives
of children in San Mateo County. The Summit was hosted by the County of San
Mateo and several community-based organizations and collaboratives.
The Summit’s 350 participants included representatives from city,
county and state government, schools, public agencies, community-based
organizations, faith-based organizations, collaboratives, health care
facilities, businesses, foundations, labor unions, and the criminal justice
system.
Summit
participants identified the top three indicators from the Children’s Report in
which collaborative action could have the most impact:
1.
Child
care availability
– there is only one subsidized child care space available for every eight
low-income children who need child care.
2.
Housing
affordability – only 16% of homes
were affordable to median income families in 1999.
3.
Children
who are self-supervised
after school – 41% of 16 and 17
year-olds have no adult supervision after school.
Next Steps
The Children’s Summit launched an ongoing community-wide effort to
systematically improve the quality of life for all children and families in San
Mateo County. Now that we have established broad-based community support,
collected data, and analyzed implications of the data, it is time to turn that
information into action. The next
steps will be to create and carry out an action plan based on ideas and
strategies proposed at the Summit, identify and support programs that work, and
use data to monitor progress and make service improvements. Included in these
next steps are plans to update the Report bi-annually and to follow through on a
data development agenda for the Children’s Report. The Peninsula Partnership
Council, a countywide collaborative for children, will be the official oversight body for the ongoing Children’s
Report project.
A Children’s Outcome Manager, employed jointly by the Office of Education, the
Human Services Agency and the Health Services Agency, assumed responsibility in
January 2001 for continuing the work of the Children’s Report. The incumbent
will report to the Director of the Peninsula Partnership for Children, Youth and
Families along with a multi-disciplinary management team, and has already begun
the work of updating the Children’s Report, overseeing the data development
committee, forming indicator action teams, and planning a Recognition and Awards
Ceremony for organizations that are turning the curve of the indicators selected at the Children’s
Summit.
Provided
by
Susan Ferren,
Management Analyst
Human Services Agency
2500 Middlefield Rd.
Redwood City, CA. 94063
Sferren@co.sanmateo.ca.us.
|
