Today, new interactive online dashboards show how North Carolina’s children from birth to age 5 receive services like child care, food benefits and protective services, providing insight into program successes and elevating continued needs. The dashboards use data from the North Carolina Early Childhood Integrated Data System (NC ECIDS) and reflect the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ commitment to comprehensive child and family well-being. Making the data easily accessible and relevant for use by policymakers, researchers, communities and families will support investments and decisions that foster equity.
"These dashboards help tell the story of North Carolina’s youngest children and will guide leaders across the state in making equitable investments to support our children and families," said Susan Gale Perry, NCDHHS Chief Deputy Secretary for Opportunity and Well-Being. "With this accessible, integrated data, we can celebrate the successes and address the gaps in programs for young children, working toward our goal of improving results for families and communities."
The interactive dashboards represent significant improvement over previous paper reports, expanding the availability of data from 2013 through 2021 with regular updates planned to keep data current. Using the dashboards, users can generate customizable reports to summarize the number of children receiving early childhood services by program, fiscal year, gender, race, ethnicity, age and county; provide a distinct count of children served by each program; and differentiate the number of children receiving services from two or more of these seven early education, health and social services programs:
- NC Pre-K - Carolina Pre-Kindergarten
- Child Care Financial Assistance
- NC Infant-Toddler Program - North Carolina Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (IDEA Part C)
- Food and Nutrition Services
- Child Protective Services
- Work First Family Assistance
- Preschool Exceptional Children’s Program - NC IDEA Part B 619 Program (Administered by the NC Department of Public Instruction)
The new data dashboards are made possible, in part, by federal funding from the Preschool Development Grant. Future enhancements planned include integrating new early childhood data from the NC Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program, select home visiting programs and Head Start.
For more information and to use the NC Early Childhood Integrated Data System dashboards, visit www.ncdhhs.gov/about/department-initiatives/early-childhood/north-carolina-early-childhood-integrated-data-system.