Strategies for Coordinating Data for Youth Counts: Street Counts, HMIS and Schools Data

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Youth Count! Webinar Series

Publication Date: December 19, 2012
Current as of:

One of the greatest challenges, and opportunities, for getting to better data on unaccompanied youth homelessness in PIT counts is coordinating and sharing data between systems and services. This webinar includes presenters from Federal agencies and the field to outline innovations and possible solutions for using and integrating data between schools, homeless management information systems (HMIS), and runaway and homeless youth services to provide a more accurate youth count. The webinar discusses common challenges, such as timing, data protection and data comparability issues.

Presenters: Karen Deblasio, US Department of Housing & Urban Development; John McLaughlin, US Department of Education

Watch the webinar .

More about Youth Count!

The Youth Count! webinar series is a resource that the Federal government, supported by the Runaway and Homeless Youth Training and Technical Assistance Center, is providing to communities across the country to support better collaborative local point-in-time counts of youth homelessness.

Youth Count! is an interagency initiative led jointly by the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and the US Departments of Education (ED), Health & Human Services (HHS), and Housing & Urban Development (HUD). The purpose of Youth Count! is to aid and encourage communities across the country in developing and implementing strategies to better reach unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness in the 2013 HUD point-in-time (PIT) count of homeless persons and families.

Getting better local and national data on the numbers and characteristics of unaccompanied youth is a key part of the US framework to end youth homelessness. We are working closely with nine communities to pilot youth strategies for the 2013 PIT count and learn from their experiences. However, we encourage all communities to participate fully in improving youth data in the 2013 PIT count, and we want to provide resources to help broadly in that effort.

Through these webinars, stakeholders, including runaway and homeless youth programs, local educational agencies, and continuums of care, will get exposure to different perspectives from leading experts on how to conduct their youth count planning and implementation as effectively as possible. Participants will also have opportunities to ask questions of the presenters and get connected to resources for further follow-up.

These webinars will be recorded so that they can help other youth count efforts beyond the 2013 PIT count in the years ahead.