Vision for Children and Risk/St. Louis Children’s Agenda was local host this afternoon to a national web seminar (”webinar”) sponsored by the National League of Cities.

Twenty or so people associated with children’s service agencies and projects assembled at VCR’s offices on Grand and North Market.

The topic was a new Web-based data center developed by the Annie Casey Foundation called KIDS COUNT.

The Annie Casey Foundation focuses on 10 major indicators (what it calls “outcome measures) in describing the status of children in a particular community, county or state: students enrolled in free/reduced lunch program; births to mothers without high school diplomas; low birth weight babies; infant mortality; child deaths ages 1 through 14; child abuse and neglect (incidents per 1,000), out of home placements of children; annual high school dropouts; births to teens ages 15-19; and violent deaths of children ages 15-19.

The list seems sounds.

The data on the site also includes various indicators around family economic status, family support (including availability of child care), and health and mental health status and services available.

VCR will be rolling out a new Web feature with hyper local data (by zip code) and links to information that is especially relevant to the children’s service agenda here.

But take some time and spin through the Annie E. Casey site. You can slice and dice the data on the city and county and state levels. There’s talk about adding a geographical feature that enables one to view conditions by Congressional district.

Check this out and let me know what you think, especially how you see this information being put to good use.