News | Article from Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

2-1-1 marks one-year anniversary

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY (October 5, 2007) - Since the launch of the call center one year ago, San Bernardino County residents have had access to health and social services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by simply dialing 2-1-1 or (888) 435-7565.

The call center, with live call specialists, offers free and confidential information and referrals for community services in the county.

"The anniversary for 2-1-1 was a testimony to the growth and significance of the 2-1-1 system in meeting the needs of children and families in the City and County of San Bernardino," said Kent Paxton, community safety and violence-prevention liaison for San Bernardino.

2-1-1 has gathered comprehensive data of caller demographics and expressed needs, collecting demographic information such as location of persons seeking, calls by gender, race/ethnicity and age, needs of the callers and children in the household. The data generated by callers to 2-1-1 can be used by government, nonprofit organizations and funding agencies for planning, program development and funding purposes. The report, including maps and data sets, is available on www.ieuw.org.

"The information collected from these calls recognizes the services most requested and the resources that are scarce, and it will ultimately help determine where our efforts should be," Gary Madden, 2-1-1 director, said in the press release. "This rich array of data, when analyzed, can paint a defining picture of our communities and their needs. It can be framed as wide as the whole county or focused down to the zip code level. It can be used to determine trends and identify service gaps. When overlaid with a GIS mapping of service of providers' locations extracted from the 2-1-1 database, the picture becomes multi-dimensional and can be used to determine best locations for new service provision, or to avoid duplication of services already in place."

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