Profile of Child Well-Being

This profile of child well-being was developed by Iowa State University—Office of Social and Economic Trend Analysis (SETA), Iowa Kids Count Child and Family Policy Center, and the State Data Center of the State Library of Iowa. The profile provides a snapshot of information regarding the children of your county. Of special interest will be the “education profile,” which addresses pre-kindergarten enrollment and school readiness information, provided by the Iowa Department of Education. Other profiles within the document for your county address population, economic, family living, and safety profiles, all valuable information as you seek to engage your families and community in your schools and focus efforts on increasing all students’ opportunities to learn and be successful.

Please use the framework for analysis to facilitate the discussion of your county’s profile of child well-being.

Guiding Questions for Reflection and Discussion

For each component (i.e., Population Profile, Health Profile, Education Profile, Economic Profile, Family Living Profile, Safety Profile) of your county profile of child well-being, reflect on, discuss, and answer the following three questions:

• What do you notice when you look at these data? What are you comfortable saying about this component?
  
• What additional questions do the data in this component generate?
  
• What are the current building/district practices that address the key findings from your profile? 

Using your answers for each component, respond to the following questions:

• What do these data indicate that we need to develop or enhance in order to tailor communications and/or provide strategies to engage parents/ community in their critical role to increase student achievement?
  
• Of the identified needs, which one(s) will we include in our action plan, considering the following factors:
  
  • Actions which are identified as best practices in parent engagement,
    
  • Present practices/actions already in place that support our need, and
    
  • Available resources (e.g., time, people, money).