SAVI Supports Data-Driven Decision-Making: Early Intervention and Prevention Initiative (EIP)

Marion County Commission on Youth, Inc. coordinates the strategic planning and service delivery of the EIP initiative, which involves hundreds of youth and family service providers, data providers, and funders.  The goal of EIP is to reduce the number of children entering the county’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems by improving the coordination of youth services in Marion County.  SAVI is involved in this effort in a number of ways.  First, its director serves on the EIP Steering Committee, Central Database Implementation Team, and the Co-location and Self-Sufficiency Implementation Team. 

Second, MCCOY is using SAVI to support the decision-making process of the Co-location and Self-Sufficiency Implementation Team.  This team is tasked with identifying potential youth and family services to co-locate in areas of greatest need of services.  We recommended indicators to define need and used those to create a needs index,  created maps to identify neighborhoods most at risk, generated asset maps to identify locations of existing services, and conducted a gap analysis to determine areas most in need of services. 

And third, Polis is working with MCCOY and several data providers to develop a central data portal that integrates data from several databases on programs and services.  The purpose of this portal is to improve access to programs and services that serve children and families in Marion County.  SAVI data will be part of the integration, and more importantly, we will be integrating data in a distributed manner.  The data will not be stored in a central database.  Rather, it will link the data directly from the data providers for search and access by the end-users.