Harnessing the Power of Data: How Social Services Can Benefit from Analytics
Within the social service sector, the ultimate goal is clear: to empower individuals to progress toward their fullest potential. Whether it’s providing care, facilitating job training, aiding in employment searches, or supporting individuals with disabilities, the common thread that binds these diverse fields together is the commitment to assisting people in their journey towards improvement. However, achieving this goal requires more than just good intentions; it requires a deep understanding of individuals’ needs, experiences, and circumstances.
Harnessing the power of data insights can become a transformative tool for social service professionals. By leveraging data, practitioners gain invaluable insights into the realities of the individuals they serve, enabling them to tailor interventions, allocate resources effectively, and ultimately drive meaningful progress.
Understanding the Journey:
Every individual’s journey is unique, shaped by a multitude of factors such as socioeconomic status, cultural background, health conditions, and personal experiences. To truly assist someone on their path to improvement, it’s imperative to understand where they currently stand and what challenges they face. This is where data comes into play.
The data from iyarn is unique in that it doesn’t require people to fill out 50 question long surveys or questionnaires. It takes 30 seconds to complete an iyarn check in and the rich data comes from consistent check ins over time.
Skill Hire, a national employment and job training service has been using iyarn to check in on their apprentices for the past couple of years. Here’s what a business manager had to say about the data from iyarn:
“[iyarn] is a way to get more clarity on what’s happening in [the apprentice’s] world…they might want to talk about it, but they’re not sure about how to start that conversation with the career coaches. It’s a safe and easy way to open up that conversation about it with them and gives participants a place to say if they aren’t feeling very confident or safe. It’s a big eye opener for the career coaches when the apprentices are saying they’re fine but the scores are saying something different.”
-Transition to Work (TtW) Business Manager – Great Southern
iyarn data has empowered career coaches and managers to understand their apprentices on a deeper level. Data insights from iyarn are more than just numbers or information, iyarn provides a visual representation of an individual’s journey– aspects that are often left unspoken, but can profoundly impact the way case managers understand and support the people they are working with.
Empowering Progress through Data:
Data drives informed decision-making and facilitates evidence-based practices. By harnessing data insights, social service professionals can make more accurate assessments, track progress over time, and measure the effectiveness of interventions. iyarn data also enables organisations to evaluate and improve their programs.
Another business manager at Skill Hire mentioned using iyarn for this purpose,
“We can look at the iyarn data and ask [career coaches], “How are you helping them build up their scores? We’ve used the data to ask other team members for specific advice about how to help each individual. At the end of the day we can look at the data and ask, ‘Are we doing everything we can?”
-Business Manager– Wheatbelt
Working in the social service sector is all about helping people progress, and data insights serve as a powerful ally in this endeavour. By understanding where individuals are in their journey and what they’re experiencing, practitioners can tailor interventions, allocate resources effectively, and ultimately empower individuals to achieve their goals.
