How to Use the KIDS COUNT Data Center

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter is the pre­mier source of data on child and fam­i­ly well-being in the Unit­ed States. With thou­sands of indi­ca­tors, what’s the best way for some­one to har­ness the pow­er of all this data? Some examples:

Child Advo­cates

Imag­ine Andrew. He works for a non­prof­it that pro­vides after-school options for kids and fam­i­lies in his north­ern Cal­i­for­nia town. In order to show the need for a sum­mer jobs pro­gram for high school stu­dents, he turns to the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter. From there he is able to cre­ate a bar chart of youth unem­ploy­ment in the region that he shares with the elect­ed offi­cials through social media.

Jour­nal­ists

Or pic­ture Sue, a reporter for an inves­tiga­tive tele­vi­sion news show in New York City. She just got word that a local school is plan­ning to elim­i­nate fam­i­ly-plan­ning resources for stu­dents. After talk­ing to stu­dents, par­ents and local lead­ers, she vis­its the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter for infor­ma­tion on teen births in the school’s zip code. Sue’s sto­ry leads to imme­di­ate action by city leaders.

Grant Writer

There’s Peter, the fundrais­ing direc­tor for a start-up tech com­pa­ny that match­es engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­als with local stu­dents for men­tor­ships. Peter used edu­ca­tion data from sur­round­ing school dis­tricts in a pro­pos­al that earned his com­pa­ny a five-year grant from the state government. 

These are just sev­er­al ways to use the KIDS COUNT Data Center. 

So if you’re mak­ing the case for chil­dren, make sure you vis­it dat​a​cen​ter​.aecf​.org for max­i­mum impact. 

Down­load PDFs of the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter How-To info­graph­ics for

• Child Advo­cates
• Grant Writ­ers
• Jour­nal­ists
• Pol­i­cy­mak­ers