State launches site on child well-being

A new one-stop, online system is available to help parents and others keep track of how Louisiana’s children are doing when it comes to education, health care and poverty statistics.

State officials said Tuesday that national surveys are usually two to three years behind, so they want to have more current statistics available to keep the pressure on for improvement.

“What gets measured gets done,” said Suzy Sonnier, secretary of the state Department of Children and Family Services.

The website — Louisiana Kids’ Dashboard — tracks 16 different indicators of children’s health care, education and well-being. It can be found at http://www.kidsdashboard.la.gov.

The website is a product of the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet and developed in collaboration with five state agencies that have children’s programs and services.

The agencies are DCFS, the state Department of Education, the state Department of Health and Hospitals, the Louisiana Workforce Commission and the Office of Juvenile Justice.

The initiative was unveiled at a State Capitol news conference attended by representatives of all agencies.

“Now, we are giving access to everything we track on children’s well-being indicators so we can monitor progress in real time and make better-informed decisions,” said Tiffany Simpson, executive director of the Children’s Cabinet.

Simpson said the website follows national measurements similar to those used by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Each indicator measured will include the baseline, current and target levels, and display trends to indicate if Louisiana is doing better, worse than or the same as the baseline for that indicator.