Once at risk for joining a gang, New Haven public school student John Smith recently got involved with his school’s audiovisual club after school. His grandmother met with a teacher last week to discuss his improved performance.
A written log of the conference, as well as “John’s” student attendance and disciplinary record, can now be found in one place, for those with authorized access.
At the first fall meeting of the data-sharing government committee Youth Stat Tuesday afternoon, representatives from schools, community groups and city administration learned the ropes to using Veoci, a secure software system for sharing information and strategies to help at-risk youth stay on the right track. They will now have access to the system to track, together, the progress of 323 at-risk young people like “John,” a fictional character used for purposes of the public demonstration. The parents of the 323 young people signed a release agreeing to have their children’s information included in the system.
The new use of Veoci — a local company’s software program already in use for charting city storm responses in real time — is the latest move by the Harp administration to try to help at-risk young people straighten out their lives, in the wake of a series of shootings earlier this year.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
City Youth Services chief Jason Bartlett (pictured) said the two main goals of Youth Stat are “intervention” and “prevention,” providing individualized plans to prevent young people from feeling “disengaged.”
Discussing sensitive data on Veoci is safer and more simple than having multi-party conversations via email, said Nathaniel Ellis, co-founder of Grey Wall, the tech company that created the software.
Originally designed to enable real-time communication during natural disasters or other public emergencies, Veoci will now be used for “dealing with emergencies on a more personal scale,” Ellis said.
Parents, teachers and other “case workers” such as mentors or specialists can log into the system to add immediate updates on specific students or assign tasks to other parties. They can add to ongoing “threads” or conversations, organized by topic. “John’s” teacher uploaded a written log of a parent-teacher conference under a thread called “School-Related Youth Stat Team.”
Veoci is also available as a mobile app.
“It’s helping you keep on top of the caseload,” Ellis said, during the demo.
Youth Stat Co-Chair Gemma Joseph Lumpkin said certain types of data point to students who are in trouble, such as poor attendance records or low grades. Other indicators are more difficult to assess. One high-achieving student suddenly began performing poorly on standardized tests, Lumpkin said. An in-depth inquiry revealed that both the student’s parents had been called to serve in Iraq.
Immediately sharing details like these with a student’s “team” can enable earlier intervention.
With 60 of the 333 total at-risk youth in the district, Hillhouse High School is beginning a school-based Youth Stat pilot program to address its own needs.
The school’s principal, Kermit Carolina, presented the details of the monitoring program, which will include a mixture of incentives, regular and frequent check-ins, and work or volunteer opportunities. About 15 students are involved so far.
Police Chief Dean Esserman asked about police involvement in the program. Carolina responded that no officers will be involved, in order to “make sure kids are comfortable” and parents are willingly “divulging information.”
Lumpkin and Bartlett said they would continue to discuss potential roles for police in Youth Stat.
