Article archive / November 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 3. Source pages: 1, 5.
The Children’s Cabinet launched its “Louisiana Kid’s Dashboard” on October 9, 2012, a continuing step in the Cabinet’s efforts to coordinate and engage agencies, policy makers, families and the larger community, with the goal of improving conditions for Louisiana’s children.
The Children’s Cabinet is part of the Office of the Governor, and Dr. Tiffany Simpson, a graduate of the University of New Orleans psychology department, is the Executive Director.
The Cabinet was created in 1998 by legislation. Development was prompted by the awareness that a better coordination of efforts were needed in Louisiana to improve the systems of juvenile justice, child welfare, and education, according to the website introduction. Dr. Simpson obtained her doctorate in psychology from the University of New Orleans. She worked closely with her major professor and current Chair of the psychology department, Dr. Paul Frick. Dr. Frick is an international expert in child behavior and psychological factors that impact adolescent behavior.
The Times asked Dr. Simpson how her training in psychology has helped her with the challenges of her role as Director of the Children’s Cabinet.
“Most of the work I’ve done, including in graduate school,” Dr. Simpson told the Times, “was in the juvenile justice area. In juvenile justice you have an understanding of the broader view, you aren’t stuck in one box,” she explained.
“I’ve realized that in order to impact the justice system,” she said, “you have to understand the other factors––how important education is, the impact of poverty on children and families, the impact of poor health outcomes, …”
This broad perspective may be essential in Dr. Simpson’s complex role. The main objective of the Cabinet is to coordinate five state departments that provide services and set policies for children and adolescents. These are the Departments of Education, Health and Hospitals, Children and Family Services, Office of Juvenile Justice and the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
The Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board is composed of thirty-eight representatives from all over the state and in all capacities. The Children’s Cabinet is also responsible for making funding recommendations to the Governor, and also for the Children’s Budget, part of the General Appropriation Act of the state legislature.
Coordinating the variety of data and views requires a certain perspective, something for which Simpson’s background in psychology has helped prepare her. “I’m able to see how many factors come together and this helps me to understand what can drive change,” Simpson explained to the Times.
The Louisiana Kid’s Dashboard is an example of this integrated effort, using web-based technologies to help coordinate ideas, services, and feedback of key indicators to help promote positive change.
In October the Children’s Cabinet launched the Kid’s Dashboard, a lively, user-friendly, and educational website that links important information and tracking of information for citizens, families, policymakers, and those interested in helping improve the lives of Louisiana youngsters.
The Dashboard brings together, in one place and in a comfortable, understandable format, key indicators such as health outcomes, educational progress, and economic variables. Visitors can review the status of important conditions for children’s well-being and how the state compares nationally.
Indicators in the topic of health care, for example, include “Low Birth-Weight Babies.” For education, “Students Will Graduate On-Time” is included. The category for well- being includes “Child Support Collections.” Visitors can see at a glance that these factors are going in a positive direction. But, “Children in Poverty,” is flat and no change has occurred from baseline. This can provide accurate feedback to help focus efforts and review programs.
All indicators have a section on the Dashboard so that data can be downloaded from the site, with an explanation of the measure and how it is calculated. And, there are links to the five state agencies.
The Times asked Dr. Simpson how the project was created. “We were thinking ‘where do we want to go, what is our direction?’” she said. “So I met with every member of the Cabinet individually and talked about the direction we wanted to go.”
“Every single one of them said, ‘We want to look at outcomes.’”
“At that same time,” Simpson explained, “the current Chief Justice [Catherine Kimball], who was not a member of the Cabinet, had a conversation with the Secretary of DHH and with the Governor.”
“The Chief Justice wanted to know what we could do to improve our ranking, how we could not be 49th or near the bottom, in nearly every indicator. She felt we needed to do something to really improve the well-being of children in Louisiana. And, she talked with the Governor about her ideas.”
Then when Simpson spoke with the Governor, everything came together. “It was almost like an ‘ah ha moment.’” Simpson said. “The Children’ Dashboard came from those discussions.”
“We wanted to involve the community. We knew that until we could get the community involved, we were really not going to get the change we wanted,” she said.
“We wanted to create the Dashboard and use the real-time indicators …,” she explained to the Times. “We could use it as an internal tool to track indicators, but also we felt it could be a way to really drive change.”
The Kid’s Dashboard is found at www.kidsdashboard.la.gov
In October the Children’s Cabinet launched the Kid’s Dashboard, a creation of the Children’s Cabinet and Executive Director Dr. Tiffany Simpson, to help drive positive change. The Dashboard helps coordinate a variety of data points and links agencies together with the same information. The Children’s Cabinet is a policy office in the Office of the Governor, created by the legislature in 1998. Dr. Simpson works closely with five departments that provide services to children in the state. These are the Department of Education, Health and Hospitals, the Louisiana Workforce Commission, Public Safety and Corrections, and Social Services. Dr. Simpson received her doctorate in psychology from the University of New Orleans. For the Dashboard go to http://www.kidsdashboard.la.gov/ Dr. Tiffiany Simpson, Executive Director of the Children’s Cabinet. Dr. Simpson studied with Dr. Paul Frick at the University of New Orleans.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.