1 Using ArcView and a theory to assess the need of pre-school children in San Bernardino County: A Newly Integrated County Human Services System Looks at Unmet Needs of Young Children Jim Banta, Colin Bailey, Noelle Hartwick, Kelly McAuley, Evelyn Trevino Presented at First Annual ESRI International Health GIS Conference, Washington, D.C., November 2001. ABSTRACT A collaborative approach to identifying needs of young children in San Bernardino County was developed. Departments providing services to children identified needs and services delivered. ArcView GIS was used to integrate these diverse data sources and to identify areas of greatest unmet need within this large and diverse population. Introduction Counties provide a number of services to improve the health status of children, including public health prenatal and well-baby care visits, behavioral health services for children and parents, financial support and job training for parents, as well as removal of children from dangerous home environments. California counties received even greater support for enhancing the health of young children with the passage of Proposition 10 (Prop. 10), which led to the California Children and Families Act of 1998. Revenue for this act is generated through an additional surtax of $.50 per pack of cigarettes and equivalent increases for other tobacco products. The act also established a state commission and individual, independent county commissions. County commissions, composed of government and community leaders as specified by the act, were established to create a strategic plan and distribute Prop. 10 - generated revenues in accordance with their strategic plans. The act targets families with children prenatal to age 5, and its ultimate goals are to: improve family functioning, improve child learning and school readiness, and improve child health. Eighty percent of the Prop.10 money is allocated to local trust funds set up by each county’s commission. Funds received by each county are proportional to the percent of births recorded within a county. More than $508 million were distributed to the 58 California counties in fiscal year 2000/2001. San Bernardino County received over $27 million of these funds. Within San Bernardino, a Southern Californian county of 1.7 million residents, various health and social service agencies were officially merged in 1999 into a Human Services System (HSS) consisting of more than 5,800 budgeted positions and a billion dollar budget. A primary objective of this merger is improved service delivery. Categorical federal and state funding and privacy regulations hinder actual integration of the many programs comprising HSS.