Who’s in? And who’s out? These are the questions regularly asked of Database Curators who are responsible for the maintenance of human services databases in accordance with the Inform USA Standards for Professional Information and Referral. This course provides insight into how to make those decisions. It also provides important background information for Information & Referral (I&R) managers and for everyone within the I&R field who needs a better understanding and appreciation of the composition of resource databases. The course covers the challenges of deciding what human service organizations and programs should be included in a resource database and which should be excluded, taking into account the practical reality of balancing the community needs of the resource database with the means available to effectively maintain it.

This course discusses the nature and implications of stress, stress management, and self-care within information and referral (I&R).

The objectives of this course are:

• Discuss what the Inform USA Standards say about wellness and self-care
• Explore sources of stress for the I&R profession.
• Review the importance of agency wellness programs and their impact on staff well-being.
• Discuss self-care techniques and how it can lead to improved performance.

Although they sometimes have different titles in different agencies, within Information and Referral (I&R) organizations, there are two main categories of staff: (1) Community Resource Specialists who work directly with clients, and (2) Database Curators who provide the information needed by the Community Resource Specialists and other community partners. Both use the 211 LA County Taxonomy of Human Services. Database Curators use it to index database records, while Community Resource Specialists use it to retrieve database records to find accurate client referrals. The Taxonomy consists of over 11,000 fully-defined terms covering all aspects of human services. This course outlines the structure of the Taxonomy, the different types of Taxonomy terms, and the principles of quality indexing that facilitate information retrieval.

Database Curators in Information and Referral (I&R) programs create and maintain community databases that detail the information that helps bring people and services together. 

This interactive course is for new staff at Information & Referral (I&R) organizations who will be responsible for the maintenance of resource databases. The course provides an overview of the activities of a Database Curator and an insight into some of the challenges of their position. Although they sometimes have different titles in different agencies, there are two main categories of staff within I&R organizations: Community Resources Specialists who work directly with clients, and Database Curators who provide the information needed by the Community Resources Specialists and other community partners. 

Course Objectives

When you have successfully completed this course, you will be able to:

• Identify the functions and purposes of an I&R resource database.
• Demonstrate how the Inform USA Standards outline the processes and methods for ensuring database quality.
• Describe the primary activities and skills of an I&R Database Curator.

Being able to convey information that is clear, concise, consistent, and relevant is one of the most critical skills required by Database Curators who are responsible for the maintenance of human services databases in accordance with the Inform USA Standards and Quality Indicators for Professional Information and Referral (I&R). This interactive course covers the structure of I&R database records and the data elements within that structure. It outlines the style considerations for many of those elements, while focusing on 2 of the most important yet challenging tasks confronted by a Database Curator: naming organizations and writing good service descriptions.

An Information and Referral (I&R) resource database must be accurate and responsive to the creation of new programs and the closure of existing ones. Database maintenance is a standards-driven requirement for I&R services. This course describes the resource database maintenance process, including ways of handling agencies that are not responsive to requests for information. It outlines activities that help I&R services keep up-to-date on changes in the various sectors of health and human services, and stresses the importance of database security.

This course will help you understand the Ethical Principles of a Community Resource Specialist and the values that Community Resource Specialists should display in information and referral (I&R).

The objectives of this course are:

• Discuss what the Inform USA Standards say about how Comunity Resource Specialists perform their work.
• Review the Ethical Principles for Community Resource Specialists
• Review the values needed by Community Resource Specialists
• Discuss why establishing professional boundaries is important in information and referral

NOTE: This course was recently revised, and the portions about self-care and wellness were moved to a separate course.

In April of 2021, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) announced Phase 1 winners of the Social Care Referrals Challenge competition. Launched in March of 2020, the challenge will awarded prizes for developing and optimizing interoperable and scalable technology solutions that foster connections between community-based organizations and health care systems in support of holistic health and social care for older adults and people with disabilities.

Among the awardees were Inform USA members United Way of Salt Lake, United Way of Southeastern Michigan and the VIA (Visually Impaired Advancement) of Western New York. We are thrilled to have representatives from these organizations serve as panelists in a conversation about the necessary technology solutions they are incorporating to make true community work around the social determinants of health a reality. 

Your information about community services is valuable. Shared with others, it is exponentially more so. Indeed, now we expect data will flow frictionlessly between an ever-expanding network of agencies and organizations. This workshop will be an intensive primer on all methods of data exchange, key standards to understand, how to talk to partners about their data exchange needs, and how not to be taken for a ride.

Objectives:

• Understand when imports, exports, APIs, and other forms of connectivity are appropriate to different use cases and expectations.
• Be able to describe 5 key data standards and how they are used, and why each can be good or bad for your organization.
• Learn the 7 key questions to ask as you begin a data exchange discussion so you can scope, price, and deliver results--instead of living with never ending headaches.
• Learn about the costs that go into data exchange, and how to price the value of your information, as part of expanding exchanges of which you are a part.
• Take away a number of documents and a slide deck to use this to inform their own work, and to share with colleagues not at the conference.