Develop an early childhood care and education integrated data system.
1.4.1 Create a governance structure for data integration, and develop guidelines, agreements, and procedures for information sharing that ensure ethical use, data integrity, privacy, and consent.
1.4.2 Establish a Kansas Early Childhood Integrated Data Systems (ECIDS) Core Group to coordinate the work involved with analyzing data across early childhood care and education programs.
1.4.3 Collect and analyze information (stories) received from Kansans with lived experiences (program participation, quality, outcomes, and community access) to inform decision-making at the state level.
1.4.4 Analyze data to generate an unduplicated count of children receiving early childhood care and education services.
1.4.5 Link appropriate early childhood data to other systems that serve children and families to analyze the long-term impact of early childhood investments.
The Kansas Early Childhood Data Trust expanded its membership in 2022 to include the Department of Corrections, in addition to the original four lead agencies for early childhood care and education (KSDE, the Children’s Cabinet, KDHE, and DCF) who executed the first Data Trust Agreement in April 2021. The agreement establishes a data governance board that meets regularly to establish best practices for data sharing and oversee projects that help better assess service provision.
The first authorized project from this new Data Trust linked data from the Kansas Children’s Cabinet and DCF. Analyses reveal that families who participate in Early Childhood Block Grant programs or Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention programs are significantly less likely to experience a removal into foster care. This alone represents an 8% return on investment for early childhood services. Future analyses will identify the services most effective at preventing child maltreatment reports and removals into foster care, while also identifying relationships between removal reasons and various early childhood services.
To inform decision-making at the state level through understanding Kansans lived experience, the Our Tomorrows story collection effort held monthly mini-SenseMaking sessions at the All In For Kansas Kids bi-weekly webinars. As a result, 358 Community Action Labs were awarded to address urgent and emerging needs of Kansas families. Applicants include non-profit organizations, child care providers, school districts, city and county governments, and health care providers. To further explore experiences from various levels of the child care system, a new Our Tomorrows framework was developed in 2022, identifying and incorporating statewide child care-focused issues.
