A strong social services program can make a big difference in a community. It’s why some of New Haven’s own residents run the city’s Youth Stat program, a school-based intervention program seeking to reduce justice involvement and improve health and wellness outcomes in students from elementary and postsecondary education. You can learn more about the program at youthstatnewhaven.com.
Jason Bartlett and Shaleah Williams, two members of the program’s leadership team, hosted a webinar explaining the program and the role Veoci plays in this community initiative. Here’s some of what they covered:
The Youth Stat Program
Youth Stat currently serves over 800 participants in the New Haven school system. At the heart of the program is crisis intervention, which is supported by the communication and collaboration Veoci facilitates for Youth Stat’s partners.
Youth Stat participants are chosen using five primary criteria:
- A high risk for school disengagement and/or juvenile or criminal justice involvement
- Poor academic performance
- Multiple suspensions and/or expulsions
- Chronic truancy and absences
- Exposure to trauma or violence
Through the collaboration between the program’s partner organizations and advisers, Youth Stat shapes a success plan for each individual based on their needs. Advisers, referrals, and other partners do their part to gather information about the participant, and use it to stage interventions and guide the participant to a successful outcome.
The Benefits of Veoci
Youth Stat handles a lot of information for its 800 plus participants. And given the sensitive nature of some of the information, it has to be locked down and protected.
Privacy is built into Veoci, and it’s an asset Youth Stat utilizes on a daily basis. Youth Stat hits a few important privacy benchmarks by using Veoci, including:
- Secure communications
- HIPPA and FERPA compliance
- Control over information accessibility, specifically which information to keep private, and what information to make public
The tangible privacy enables the Youth Stat team to an extent other tools don’t. The team enforces privacy through roles and permission settings available in every room in Veoci. And, due to Youth Stat’s structure and processes, they only need one dedicated Veoci room for each individual participant, where all parties can collaborate accordingly.
But the built-in privacy settings of Veoci aren’t the only benefit the Youth Stat team sees in Veoci. Other Veoci features, namely forms, workflows, and dashboards, contribute to the program’s goals for each participant.
The workflow, and Youth Stat’s Referral workflow in particular, brings a lot to the table. On the administrative side, it helps maintain accountability between all the parties involved in a participant’s intervention. It’s the reminders in the workflow, actually, that allow Youth Stat to maintain a culture of accountability, and they see better results because of it.
Of course, the importance of dashboards can’t be stated enough. Every participant’s room comes with the same dashboard arrangement, filled with information pertinent to their interventions. These dashboards accomplish a few key things. First, dashboards display the most current information about a participant. Second, they provide an at-a-glance overview for any observer. And third, it easily translates to a clean, ready-to-print document.
How Youth Stat Works
A student must receive parental consent to participate in Youth Stat. Since this action requires a form, Shaleah and the Youth Stat team built a form, accessible from mobile devices, to collect parental sign off.
Once the consent form is submitted, a room is automatically launched for the participant. A dashboard, standard across all participant rooms, is generated for the new participant. A form, called the “Intake form,” is also created to collect information about the participant, their behavior, and their social environment. Anyone involved (with the proper permissions) can modify this form, and the dashboard will reflect these changes.
The room also houses the cockpit, which is the most critical piece in some Youth Stat cases. The cockpit shows all the collaboration and actions that have taken place over the course of a participant’s involvement in the program. In long-term participants’ cases, this feature is vital, as the cockpit houses a participant’s entire intervention history.
Why Veoci?
Essentially, Veoci lets Youth Stat capture information. And it seems like a small role in the larger scheme of Youth Stat, considering much of the work that helps the participants is actionable work, such as securing necessary supplies or establishing stable career paths.
This work isn’t possible, however, without certain pieces of information. Information fuels the entire operation. For Youth Stat, and anyone who’s involved with them or a participant, Veoci is a must, simply because of how easily the platform captures information and translates it into operational starting lines, points for everyone to work from to make the vital difference.
Information guides all the decision making in Youth Stat. Regardless of who is in a participant’s room, they weigh the information that’s presented there into their choices. All of Youth Stat’s operations benefit from the way Veoci captures data, which contributes to the substantial difference this program makes.
Learn More
Jason, Shaleah, and every other member of the Youth Stat team contribute a lot of time and effort to the program. Youth Stat is efficient and successful, and it’s a testament to all the dedication the team gives the program.
If you want to learn more about Youth Stat, make sure you visit youthstatnewhaven.com. And if you want to learn more about the role Veoci plays in New Haven’s Youth Stat program, contact Julie at julie@veoci.com for a recording of the webinar.
