Continuing a long tradition of invention and innovation, the City of New Haven, under the leadership of Mayor Toni Harp, has launched a program called YouthStat which seeks to use technology to manage and deliver social services to several hundred at-risk youth in the New Haven school system. The City has chosen to partner with Veoci to provide a robust case management, collaboration, and communications platform for everyone involved in getting and keeping students on the path to progress.
The idea behind YouthStat is to engage everyone who in some way influences the development and growth of a student in the school system “Board of Ed and housing authority officials, cops, city youth workers, state probation and social workers, firefighters, street outreach workers, and people from community agencies that work with kids in trouble”
A vital aspect of making this collaboration work is having a tool like Veoci which enables them to communicate in a structured, coherent manner, with ways to assign, follow-up, and intervene within a disciplined and yet flexible process.
YouthStat currently focuses on 323 at-risk children from across New Haven’s schools. Along with a full-featured task and people management system, the secure communications system in Veoci provides a secure alternative to emails and paper notes which are easy to lose track of. Information is entered directly into Veoci where only those who need to have access can read it. Emails and text messages provide links to Veoci where a secure login gets them the information they need. For those making overall decisions, real-time dashboards can be configured to cover various parameters such as task progress and milestone achievements; and controls can be set to limit access to specific entities such as school, community agencies, case-workers, or any role.
Jason Bartlett, the New Haven City Youth Services Chief, was aware of Veoci through its use at the New Haven Emergency Operations Center, especially during Hurricane Sandy and Blizzard Nemo, and saw the potential of using the software for YouthStat. After a demonstration of Veoci’s out-of-the-box capabilities to various stakeholders, it was clear that it would more than fulfill the technological needs of the program.
For much more in-depth coverage and details about YouthStat and Veoci, please see these articles from the New Haven Register and the New Haven Independent:
New Haven will use software to track progress of at-risk youths
