Welcome to the Illinois Children & Youth Coordinated Data System!

LLINOIS CHILDREN & YOUTH
COORDINATED DATA SYSTEM

Welcome to the Illinois Children & Youth Coordinated Data System!

The Data Coordination Project, (DCP) is an effort to begin placing information about children, youth, and their families into a common data system for state and community use.

The overarching goal for the system is to create a user-friendly web database and GIS system that provides up-to-date data for all Illinois communities to use for planning, monitoring, and tracking outcomes for children and youth. State and local government and community agencies will also be able to identify essential outcomes and indicators for their programs and initiatives.

Data collected over time could be used, with care, to show how well community-wide interventions work.

Sources of data

The data displayed in this system come from many different sources, such as the Illinois Department of Public Health, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Illinois Youth Survey. Each of these organizations retains the responsibility for and the copyrights to its own information. For a complete list of sources and links to their websites , click here.

Cautions about using the data

Privacy

While all information collected about individuals needs to be protected, data about children is particularly sensitive. Data where there are fewer than 10 cases in a particular geographic area are not displayed.

Illinois Youth Survey data are not displayed by individual school. The data are also not displayed within any particular geographic area unless there are surveys from at least two schools in that geographic area.

Representativeness

Please note that survey data, such as from the Illinois Youth Survey, may not completely represent all the people in a particular geographic area. For example, if you display alcohol access by county, the entire county is shaded based on the survey data from that county as long as there is data from at least two schools. There may be more non-reporting schools and students whose answers to the survey could have been very different.

What’s New?

In January 2008, all data has been updated to the most current year available. Indicators with updated data include:

Updated ISBE data
Updated State Police data
New Census estimates
Updated IDPH data
Updated Juvenile Justice data
Updated Child Poverty data
Updated Illinois County Unemployment data
Updated Licensed Child Care Center data

Training & Technical Assistance can be effective—sign up now

Most people who use this system may be unfamiliar with geographic information systems (GIS). Training and technical assistance are available to all interested Illinois communities and organizations that work to improve the lives of children and families. Click here to request upcoming training dates.