Data And Best Practice Resources
Key Websites for Obtaining Child Policy, Data, and Effective Policies and Programs
The following websites are particularly useful in providing information on children for use by advocates, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers in establishing child policy and developing effective programs and strategies. Many have Iowa-specific information as well as national information.
www.childtrendsdatabank.org. This Child Trends website provides a one-stop-shop for the latest national trends and research on over 100 key indicators of child and youth well-being. The website describes the significance of each indicator, trend information, and contains excellent resource information on approaches to positively impact that indicator.
www.nccp.org. The National Center for Children in Poverty website is a source of comprehensive information on children in low-income households. NCCP monitors a vast body of demographic and policy research – from all 50 states and federally – and develops user-friendly systems for retrieving, analyzing, and comparing data. In addition, the website house data tools, profiles for each state, and other unique online resources, including the Family Resource Simulator.
www.cssp.org. The Center for the Study of Social Policy’s “Policy Matters” section of its website includes state-by-state descriptions of state policies on child health, school readiness, education, family self-sufficiency, and youth development. Its “Strengthening Families Through Early Care and Education Section” provides information on effective approaches to strengthening families, building upon resiliency research and a protective factors approach.
www.financeproject.org. The Finance Project’s website contains a wealth of information on state financing of children’s programs and services. The website includes a searchable “Promising Practices Catalogue” that provides contact information for cutting-edge efforts to strengthen financing.
www.promisingpractices.net. The Promising Practices Network website, operated by the RAND Corporation in partnership with a number of state and national child policy organizations, provides detailed information on “programs that work” and the research base in the field to document practice and policy effectiveness. The website uses peer review and analysis to continuously identify and post recent findings from around the country on a range of topics.
www.pathwaystooutcomes.org The pathways project offers a comprehensive approach to building systems that can produce school readiness and early elementary success and that can promote youth development. The website offers information on both effective programs and strategic ways to think about building effective systems.
www.gettingready.org. This website (developed by Rhode Island Kids Count) describes a consensus list of key indicators of school readiness that states can use to spur action to achieve school readiness. The result of a 17-state school readiness initiative, the website includes documents developed by each of the sstates to inform policy making in early childhood.
www.finebynine.org. This website (developed by the Child and Family Policy Center) contains a variety of publications to guide policy development by states in achieving the goal that “all children start school ready to learn” – not only in early care and education but also in health, child welfare, and family support and related to governance and public education and political mobilization. It is a companion site to the “getting ready” website and was part of the 17-state school readiness initiative.