Andrew Dickman, A.I.C.P
Panagiotis Tsoumpas, M.S.
Sifu Zhou, Ph.D.
TITLE
ABSTRACT
Allocating social service resources to needy communities and populations
in a fast changing, multi-cultural urban region is becoming even
more complex due to welfare reform and the trend for disinvestment
of social support systems.
In 1993, the Miami district of Florida's Department of Children
and Families (DCF) began building a geographic information system
(GIS) to better define South Florida's social pathologies and
to support public policy decisions which previously relied upon
inadequate information. Today, the Office of Research and Planning
is using GIS to assist with National and State welfare reform,
a neighborhood-based decentralization of the DCF's programs within
a two county region, and the charter Metro-Dade County Social
Services Master Plan. Furthermore, previously inaccessible social
data is now available to grass-roots organizations for grant applications,
planning, monitoring and evaluating of neighborhood programs.
Client data from DCF databases and from contracted service provider
databases is extracted and cleaned in order to bring it to the
format required by ArcView and ArcInfo. After the data is geocoded,
the resulting point coverages are aggregated by polygon areas
such as census block groups, municipal and neighborhood boundaries,
county commission districts, state senate and house districts,
and school board districts. This data is then analyzed according
to planning areas based on population, social characteristics
and other criteria important to social services policy makers.
Based on this analysis, DCF prepares strategies and recommendations
along with GIS maps and charts, which are published and presented
to a multi-governmental audience responsible for implementing
social programs in the region.
ArcInfo, ArcView, Arc Macro Language (AML), Dbase IV, and MS
Excel are all part of the application described above which converts
confidential client records into legally safe, yet meaningful
informational products that can be displayed for multiple purposes.
BACKGROUND
Shortly after Hurricane Andrew devastated Dade County, Florida
in August 1992, DCF began experimenting with GIS maps as a tool
for targeting social conditions where public health and human
services resource should be directed. The maps presented a new
perspective for public administrators, welfare workers, health
officials and community advocates to collectively, rapidly and
intuitively evaluate several types of information against a common
geographic backdrop to create a logical service delivery strategy
for crucially needed human services.
By 1993, DCF was satisfied that GIS technology would improve planning
and then decided to invest in their first SUN Workstation, a single
user ArcInfo license, and a C-size 8-pen plotter. Local governments
and other State agencies contributed basemap coverages, which
kept startup costs down, and DCF was welcomed as a new user into
the local GIS family, heretofore dominated by environmental and
land management applications. At this time, and using limited
Federal hurricane recovery funds, the DCF attracted two planners
experienced with ArcInfo and ArcView GIS to work as temporary
employees setting up and demonstrating GIS capability in the health
and human services. This initiative operated out of the DCF's
Hurricane Andrew recovery operations center, coined the Community
Health Action Teams (CHAT) in southern Dade County.
Consequently, the DCF opened a small planning office, equipped
with the new GIS technology, to assist CHATs in their mobile outreach
program designed to provide rapid public health services and community-based
welfare support in the hurricane impact area. Census data and
locally collected service data were uploaded into the GIS to build
demographic profiles by neighborhood in order to direct the 40
member CHAT program into services zones, termed "CHAT Zones."
Seven CHATs canvassed the impact area providing wide ranging services,
making referrals to other service providers, and capturing client
information, which was immediately brought into the GIS for analysis.
In this capacity, GIS provided CHAT management with timely decision
support information within an emergency recovery scenario directing
mobile personnel to geographic areas in greatest need of health
and social services.
In addition, the DCF's fledgling GIS project gave strategic support
to local public health officials and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) when a Hanta Virus outbreak occurred in South
Dade. GIS was used to develop an artificial grid for selecting
random trap sites, and then to display and analyze results from
environmental assessments.
In time, and as the recovery funds diminishing, DCF came to see
tremendous value in GIS as a permanent planning tool. Subsequently,
in the Fall of 1994, the State's first full scale GIS program
began under the auspices of DCF's District 11 Office of Research
and Planning. Since that time, the office has tackled many projects
that demonstrate the usefulness of GIS in social and health services
planning, especially in complex metropolitan regions. The following
are summaries of those projects.
THE LIFE ZONE PROJECT
In the Fall of 1994, the GIS project in South Dade moved into
a permanent facility within the District Administrator's office.
Rather than using GIS specifically for community health outreach
in South Dade, District 11 decided to apply the technology comprehensively
in seven program areas in both Dade and Monroe Counties. The problem
GIS and planning staff were given was to devise a strategy to
better organize the District's $840 million social services resources
to communities and populations with the greatest need.
By January 1995, the Office of Research and Planning devised a
plan that called for an internal reorganization of the District's
nearly 5000 employees and a reengineering of the District's philosophy
regarding analysis of data and reporting information to the community.
This plan came to be known as the "Life Zone Project."
Borrowing heavily from the original CHAT zone concept, the Life
Zone project required the District to shift its service delivery
plan from a program-based organization to a geographic-based organization.
In 1995, the District was charged with administering State and
Federal resources through seven (7) core programs:
Operating under directives from the DCF's State Headquarters,
locally these programs were independent of one another even though
it was very apparent that a significant proportion of the District's
clientele receive services from multiple programs. Unfortunately,
over time the program-based organization acquired program-based
information systems for client management, which did not and do
not interact with each other. As a result, in complex metropolitan
geography like South Florida, where social service program caseloads
are very high, there is no mechanism for an accurate unduplicated
client count for District-wide strategic planning, or the ability
to track a single client across program lines to ensure quality
service. Given the present trend for cutting social services,
the District made a decision that the program-based scenario was
too costly and inefficient. A new approach was needed.
The Life Zone project calls for a division of the District's jurisdiction
into twelve (12) zones, or catchment areas. GIS was used to identify
community and neighborhood boundaries, grouping them to create
ten (10) life zones in Dade County and two (2) life zones in Monroe
County. While social service zones were not uncommon in District
11, prior to the Life Zone project each program created their
own independent zones arbitrarily drawn on street boundaries.
Planning staff used GIS to demonstrate how common zones drawn
to census or zip code boundaries would enhance a program's ability
to capture important demographic information as well as track
services over time.
After establishing zone boundaries, client records were extracted
from program client information systems and then uploaded into
the GIS via geocoding in both ArcView and ArcInfo. Generally,
three types of datasets were generated:
Consequently, using this data in GIS, we were able to calculate
District-wide unduplicated calculations, and we were able to analyze
programs regionally and in small areas like a zone or neighborhood
with far great accuracy.
Another important feature of the Life Zone project was the focus
on community and neighborhood empowerment. Before the District
implemented the Life Zone project, individual program administrators
acted independently in targeting populations and communities with
services under their direction. Further, community advocate groups
seeking cooperative partnerships with the District could only
look to one office for assistance: District Administration. This
arrangement failed to give adequate emphases to measuring community
quality of life and to providing communities with the tools for
improvement. Under the Life Zone project, each zone is a collection
of entire communities, which can be statistically profiled using
GIS data from the U.S. Census summary tape files and our own client
services databases.
To further decentralize the Districts programs into the community,
new position titles were created and senior program executives
were reassigned. Today, every life zone has a "Life Zone
Manager" responsible for overseeing service delivery in a
defined geographic zone. The life zone manager is the liaison
for the communities in his or her zone, and it is the life zone
manager's job to ensure that the District's seven (7) programs
are not under- or over- serving communities. Consequently, life
zone managers have been provided new training in community development,
GIS, strategic planning, data analysis, and more in order to promote
their perspective away from programmatic viewpoints, towards comprehensive
community points of view. The zone managers work closely with
the Office of Research and Planning to create informational products
useful to the community at public meetings where program issues
are debated openly. Because all of this is community based, GIS
is the core technology that enables the District to convert its
confidential client data into meaningful aggregate information
with more specificity than County or Zip Code level data. Information
is power to a community!
COMMUNITY MAPPING
After the Life Zone project got under way and the first wave of
GIS maps displaying social pathologies, services and facilities
hit the street, the demand for specifically tailored small-area
maps dramatically increased. Apparently, despite the growth in
personal computer use and Internet services, few social services
professional or community advocacy groups have access to statistical
information needed to support their program in planning, evaluation
and grant applications. Simple demographic information and social
services data is admittedly very important to their programs;
however, barriers prevent their effectively accessing and analyzing
this data. Our initial point-on-polygon and thematic GIS maps
greatly appealed to social services professionals because of the
simplicity, graphic and intuitive nature of showing complex social
problems over a geographic landscape.
At first, planning staff tried unsuccessfully to satisfy all the
individual requests for GIS maps. However, it became quickly apparent
that we could not meet the entire demand and at the same time
complete our established priorities and goals building the office
and the GIS capability. Therefore, after assessing the types and
frequency of our requests over the past year, we designed a standard
prototypical map that could be automated using ArcInfo's Arc
Macro Language (AML). Consequently, two new applications were
developed that provide rapid production of GIS maps for specific
small-areas using existing GIS datasets:
The CRMS uses basic AML functionality to lead staff through a
series of questions that ultimately creates a standardized presentation
size GIS point map of a pre-selected area showing type, location
and total frequency of pre-selected facilities, such as daycare
centers, police stations, homeless shelters, or public housing
sites. The requester can select one or all of the community resources
of our ArcInfo point coverages currently available for mapping.
Likewise, the CIMS also uses basic AML functionality to guide
staff through questions that produces a standard presentation
size GIS thematic map of a pre-selected area displaying either
social pathology (i.e., teen pregnancy and child abuse) or client
service (i.e., welfare payments and drug abuse counseling). The
requester can select one item attached to the block group ArcInfo
polygon coverage currently available for mapping.
Both applications have helped meet the demand by standardizing
a map composition in response to request made by internal District
staff and external community advocacy groups, allowing us time
to develop our GIS.
THE DADE ALLIANCE
Before she was called on by President Bill Clinton to serve as
United States Attorney General, Janet Reno established an informal
meeting of chief executives from public and private non-profit
sector who together have influence on social policy in Dade County,
Florida. This group, consisting of the United Way, DCF District
11, Dade County Public Schools, City of Miami, Metro-Dade County,
State Attorney's Office, and Metro-Dade Police Department continued
meeting periodically to discuss ways they could collectively promote
coordinated planning.
Today, the group has acquired an official budget and is formalizing
strategies and goals, including the creation of a comprehensive
baseline database and a steering committee to coordinate collecting
and sharing of important planning data among Alliance member agencies.
The District's use of GIS for social services planning quickly
gained importance to Alliance members, who are becoming more adept
to GIS issues like basemapping, sharing and privacy. As the CEOs
in these agencies become more familiar with the benefits and challenges
of using GIS as a tool for social planning, District 11 has been
called on to navigate many of these decisions. In the coming months,
the District will host the first "planning data coordinating
committee" for the Alliance, where GIS will play a central
role.
DADE COUNTY'S SOCIAL SERVICES PLAN
Last year the Dade County Board of County Commission passed a
resolution to create a "Social Services Master Plan"
that will document the entire system of social services in the
County, and provide Commissioners concrete facts upon which they
can resolve funding issues. The entire system of social services
includes many large and small public and private non-profit organizations,
who all together contribute to an estimated $2 billion in annual
social resource to Dade County residents. DCF is the principal
contributor of this fund, which is delivered through direct services
and through contracts with local public and private non-profit
providers. The problem is that any single provider can request
and receive funding from multiple sources (i.e., DCF, Metro-Dade
County, United Way) and usually those funding sources never know
who is funding who. In other words, it is very difficult to get
an accurate accounting of the total funds delivered in Dade County.
Consequently, and in light of the decreasing availability of social
services funds, the Master Plan will attempt to establish a comprehensive
baseline and document existing funding activities in order to
address the issue of coordination and comprehensive planning.
Since DCF has under its authority important planning databases,
like vital statistics and state and federal entitlement programs,
our office with GIS is geocoding multiple social services databases
and aggregating them into census block group areas. This data
is being made available to the County's GIS personnel working
on the Master Plan for the Commission to create a baseline analysis
from which the County can prioritize its spending on social services.
From this initial work, our office and the County are strengthening
our ability to coordinate and share data since both organizations
use similar hardware and ArcInfo software.
WELFARE REFORM
Recent legislative changes will alter programmatic responsibilities
between the Federal government and the States. These changes rest
on the notion that traditional social assistance programs are
not promoting self-sufficiency and are too costly. Moreover, these
changes reflect the idea that our federal government has grown
too large to effectively address the issues at the community level.
Known collectively as "New Federalism," state governments
are now receiving federal block grants, or lump sums for social
services, and states are now allowed to create new requirements
for recipients of welfare. Florida passed its version of welfare
reform, known as "Work And Gain Economic Self-Sufficiency"
(WAGES), putting great pressure on local governments to move welfare
recipients to work or education. Those who do not meet work or
education requirements risk loosing their benefits within two
years.
As a result, welfare reform in Florida has caused Dade County
leaders to refocus their energy in the direction of economic development,
since the entire South Florida region, especially Dade County,
stands to loose significant local resources in two years if approximately
40,000 welfare recipients are not placed in work or education
programs. Consequently, our office is using GIS to identify spatial
relationships between employment and education centers in relation
to the welfare populations most at risk of loosing benefits. GIS
is also used to evaluated proximity of available daycare for mothers
who need child care support while they seek employment or education.
We also using GIS to examine the relationship between tangential
community development programs like the Federal Empowerment Zones
and Enterprise Communities in relation to the welfare populations
to help use those affirmative programs to promote economic development
in blighted areas.
DADE COUNTY'S CITIZENSHIP CAMPAIGN
New Federalism also has ushered in a social crisis of sorts especially
painful to Dade County. With an estimated 50% of its population
identifying itself as Hispanic and 40% identified as foreign born,
Dade County is a gateway from Latin America and the Caribbean
into the United States. Some of the new arrivals move out of South
Florida, but the numbers show a vast majority choosing to stay
in the region. Recently, Congress passed new regulations that
ends social benefits to legal non-citizens within a matter of
months. In Dade County the estimated number of legal non-citizens
who will loose benefits is 57,000.
Recognizing the tremendous economic disinvestment this would cause
in the region, Metro-Dade, DCF and a consortium of local providers
are mobilizing resources to conduct a citizenship campaign to
help the most disadvantaged individuals to complete the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) requirements to become legal
citizens before their benefits are cut off. Under this program,
we are using GIS to analyze our client records for non-citizenship
and then identify communities where the citizenship outreach teams
should be organizing.
MUNICIPAL AND LEGISLATIVE ASSESSMENTS
Considering the ongoing defunding of social programs and changes
produced by welfare reform, the District has become increasingly
aware of the need to effectively communicate with local municipal
officials, who will eventually feel the impact, and elected officials
at all levels, who directly control DCF's policy and budget. To
this end, we have acquired ArcInfo municipal and political district
coverages from the County and State GIS offices, and then analyzed
our geocoded client records to calculate very accurate assessments
of client totals, rates and funding allocation for every city
and political district in Dade and Monroe County. As changes in
public policy are contemplated by Congress, our State Legislature
or the local Commission, we immediately provide those officials
with powerful GIS maps and charts illustrating where the impact
will occur. GIS is a tremendous lobbying tool!
CONCLUSION
Since 1993, Florida's GIS technology has managed to transfer from
very advanced environmental and land management programs into
social applications. Moreover, GIS is now so firmly planted into
DCF's menu of planning tools that District 11 and the DCF's central
Office of Standards and Evaluations have both made considerable
investments into ArcInfo and ArcView. These application have
caused a full scale reorganization of social services in District
11 and promise to alter the way the entire agency examines client
data in the very near future. However, despite GIS's obvious benefits
in the social arena, there are still serious concerns about client
privacy and community stigmatization. In fact, but for our District
Administrator's aggressive leadership in favor of GIS, our applications
would not have progressed further than zip code level thematic
mapping. Fortunately, we have a strong GIS champion locally and
at the head of our agency in the Governor's cabinet. Thus, we
fully expect GIS to continue to expand into the social services
field in Florida because GIS basemap data is very accessible from
local governments and water management districts, and because
ArcView's desktop applications are cost effective and user friendly.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Andrew Dickman, AICP
Senior Management Analyst
Florida Department of Children and Families
401 NW 2nd Ave., Suite N1007
Miami, FL 33128
Tel: (305) 377-7639
Fax: (305 377-5504
Email: dickmana@stu.law.nova.edu
Panagiotis Tsoumpas, MS
Database Analyst
Florida Department of Children and Families
401 NW 2nd Ave., Suite N1007
Miami, FL 33128
Tel: (305) 377-7639
Fax: (305 377-5504
Email: panos_tsoumpas@dcf.state.fl.us
Sifu Zhou, Ph.D.
GIS Analyst
Florida Department of Children and Families
401 NW 2nd Ave., Suite N1007
Miami, FL 33128
Tel: (305) 377-7639
Fax: (305 377-5504
Email: sifu_zhou@dcf.state.fl.us