SHELBY Child Impact Assessment
SHELBY is a decision aid designed specifically to foreground children in policy planning and decision-making. It helps elected officials, county administrators, boards, and agency staff investigate the connections, or conflicts, between child well-being and the legislation they are considering. The application’s prompts, examples, and information resources help users identify disparities, plan new initiatives, consider the risks and benefits of proposed actions, and develop alternatives. SHELBY’s five-step statement drafting process aims for overall community gains by valuing foremost the conditions, experiences, and opportunities of children and youth. SHELBY is not intended to serve as a screening or advocacy tool. Optimally, it should be used from the earliest stages of policy development forward.
SHELBY child impact statements have accompanied proposals to reduce homelessness among ex-offender adults, approve or reject tax abatements, decrease juvenile offender recidivism, fight childhood obesity and preventable diseases, prepare for mass-casualty disasters, comprehensively aid victims of domestic violence, increase traffic and pedestrian safety, repair and expand public infrastructure, sell county-owned property, improve air quality in schools and school buses, expand early childhood education, remove toxins from homes, provide utility assistance to low-income residents, convert brownfields into greenways, and retain the region’s public safety-net hospital and neighborhood clinics. This is a partial list from SHELBY’s first year of deployment. Many more purposes could be and certainly need to be served.
About Child Impact Statements | Why use Child Impact Statements?