Mapping a System of Children's Group Homes in San Bernardino County, California A Paper presented at the 22nd Annual ESRI International User Conference (July 2002), San Diego, CA By Jim Banta, Evelyn Trevino and Kelly Cross-McAuley ABSTRACT For various reasons, county agencies place children and adolescents in group homes. Costs and capacity are issues, with costs for the most behaviorally difficult youth surpassing $4,000 per month per child. More than 90 group homes exist in San Bernardino, receiving referrals from the County's Probation, Children's Services and Behavioral Health Departments and agencies from other counties. ArcView GIS is used to depict this residential care system, including the volume and description of clients. Social indicators are also examined, comparing geographical areas where group homes are located to the rest of the county. INTRODUCTION In most service industries, there is a desire to be located in such a way as to be convenient to consumers and potential consumers. Indeed, one value of geographic information systems (GIS) is the ability to combine various socio-economic data to suggest the best sites to place a business. Within local governments, there is a desire to examine socio-economic data even though there may be restrictions on where facilities can be placed. For a variety of economic, political, organizational and legal reasons, government facilities may not always be located where there is the greatest need. An example of local government GIS analysis by staff from several different health/social service departments was presented at the first Esri International Health GIS conference (Banta, et al. 2001). That paper documented efforts by staff within a Human Services System to combine various data sources at the zip code level in order to determine potential areas of greatest need for young children within the southern Californian county of 1.7 million residents. A multiple determinants of health model provided the framework for that analysis. Although it has been demonstrated in a study of SES among children that small area data by 1