Presenting Community-Level Data in an "Outcomes and Indicators" Framework: Lessons from Vermont's Experience

Vermont, along with a number of other states in recent years,(1) has embarked on a new way of doing business that places pre-eminent emphasis on for children and families. Precursors of this direction included Healthy Vermonters 2000 goals (paralleling Healthy People 2000 initiative at federal level), Vermont Kids Count project, and efforts to create greater collaboration between Agency of Human Services (which in Vermont includes nine departments and divisions) and Department of Education. Outcomes are here defined as basic conditions of well-being for children, families, individuals, and communities; an example is Are Ready for School. An outcomes-approach explicitly recognizes that same children and families are often served by multiple systems (though sometimes in ways that are poorly coordinated), and that no system can, by itself, adequately meet needs of people it serves. Such a focus also re-frames discussions about responsibility, accountability, and effectiveness, and allows for new flexibility in how current resources are used.(2) In Vermont, State Team for Children and Families and its 12 Regional Partnerships are charged with putting outcomes-focus into practice.(3) Indicators, as term is used here, are existing data that quantify achievement of outcomes. For example, percent low birthweight is an indicator of outcome, Pregnant Women and Infants Thrive. Ideally, both and are phrased in language that is readily grasped by stakeholders at all levels--state and local government, service providers, and members. In addition, ideally provide data that are credible, complete, and available on a timely and frequent schedule. Vermont's Profiles, now in their fourth year of publication, embody our outcomes & indicators framework, for state as a whole, for our 14 counties, and for 60 regions of our state served by school supervisory unions.(4) The and span areas of maternal and child health, school readiness and success, youth behavior, economic vitality, and safety and welfare (see Appendix A). In most cases, multi-year trend data are represented graphically, so regions and communities can evaluate their progress over time. Also, wherever possible, information is presented side-by-side with county and state data. (See Appendix B.) Producing Profiles raised many challenging issues--organizational, technical, practical, and otherwise. The remainder of this article will highlight these challenges, Vermont's experience in meeting them, and lessons that may be instructive to others considering similar projects. Challenge #1: Devising a Working Definition of Community This is obviously a political issue as well as a technical one, and it looms large in nearly every other challenge. In Vermont it may be compounded by a fierce tradition of local independence, which centers on As most rural state, more than two-thirds of our population lives in towns of fewer than 2500. But here's kicker: we have some 255 towns (including a few where no one lives), in a state with total population of a small city (589,000 at last Census Bureau estimate). Add to that mix fact that we have no county government to speak of. Strictly from point of view of statistical wisdom, we have no business defining community as anything less than State of Vermont. However, politically that is simply impossible. The compromise we arrived at was the area served by a school supervisory (totalling 60), typically comprised of several towns. These share, if nothing else, fact that their families' children typically attend, and their taxpayers support, same schools. Felicitously, this reinforced human services-education partnership around children and families, while also taking into account fact that education data were at a school or supervisory union level, not by town. …