ECLDS Newsletter: Happy Holidays

 
 
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Photo of child's hands with colorful crafted Christmas miniature houses
 
Farewell, 2020!
Bring the Joy, 2021!

May this holiday season find you and your dear ones in good health and high spirits. From our homes to yours, we wish you happy holidays and a joyful 2021!

Before the year is over, though, below we invite you to try some new features that have been implemented to our data tools to provide you with accurate and relevant information. Be sure to check them out.

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Comprehensive Services Map Serves as COVID-19 Resource

The ECLDS comprehensive services map launched in June 2019 as a geolocation service to help individuals and families locate nearby support programs and resources. The coronavirus pandemic has inspired new, previously unimagined uses for the map. Responding to essential workers' need for reliable child care, more than 4,000 family and center-based child care providers have informed Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) that they are currently able to provide their services. Their locations have been integrated to the map and can be viewed in relation to a essential worker's home, work, or address. For the official MMB map, visit the MMB COVID-19 child care page.

School districts can now locate those emergency child care sites within district boundaries through a simple search on the map. Follow these step-by-step instructions.

By adding layers for essential sites to the comprehensive services map, such as nursing homes, hospitals, and correctional facilities, the ECLDS tool helped Child Care Aware of MN add proximity scoring to its evaluation rubric of thousands of Peacetime Emergency Child Care Grant applications.

We are proud that our data tools have adapted to become a new resource during the pandemic. We cheer on and thank those essential workers who are saving lives and serving the citizens of Minnesota during this unprecedented time.

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Census Data Tool Expanded

Photo of smiling children.

Minnesota's ECLDS is the exclusive online source of more detailed American Community Survey (ACS) tables for a variety of topics about kids ages 5 and under, for all states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The ECLDS Census Data Tool now includes ACS estimates from 2006-10 and 2011-15 for a more longitudinal look at your state or county's youngest kids and their families. We anticipate purchasing the 2016-2020 estimates when they are available, and including those as well.

ACS data are reported in large groups for pre-kindergarten children for age groups uniques to early childhood. The age bands Minnesota has made available at the county level cover infants (0-1 year old), toddlers and early preschoolers (2-3 years old), and pre-kindergarten and kindergartners (4-5 years old). These smaller age bands align with eligibility for programs or estimates, writing grant applications, and planning programs. Let us know how you have used this tool by emailing eclds.support@state.mn.us.

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Winter Data Upload Completed

Finally, this week we finalized the data upload to ECLDS. Take a few minutes to check for yourself the data updates for the Scholarships and Parent Aware reports, under Birth to Pre-K Report.

Screenshot of the Birth to Pre-K Scholarships report

If you would like assistance with navigating any of the ECLDS reports, don't hesitate to contact our Regional Coaching Network for an online demonstration.

 
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