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Children and Caregivers

Our History

A $3.5 million grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Administration for Children and Families was awarded to the SC Department of Social Services in December, 2018. South Carolina then received the Preschool Development Birth (PDG) Through 5 Renewal Grant to build upon the initial work of the PDG grant. Two activities of the PDG grant (1) coordination, collaboration, and alignment across the state's mixed delivery system support an increase in access for families and (2) improved data-driven decision-making, have been a driving force behind the establishment of the Palmetto Drive to Five initiative of the SC Early Childhood Integrated Data System (SC ECIDS).

The SC ECIDS is a data governance framework, governed by the Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) and operationalized by a Data Governance Work Group (DGWG). The DGWG includes program experts, data stewards, and technical experts from various State Agencies and non-profits providing services and leading programs for children, birth through five, and families across the state. The roles and responsibilities of the members is outlined in the SC ECIDS Data Governance Charter. link

The Palmetto Drive to Five (PDt5) initiative will integrate early childhood data from the birth through five landscape of South Carolina to support data-driven decision-making. The data inputs will include existing early childhood data sources being shared with the SC Integrated Data System housed at the SC Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office and new sources from other early childhood programs serving children and families.

The first dashboard indicator has been developed to align with the PDG Annual Report data from 2021, providing an unduplicated count of children across a select group of programs and services. As more data is shared with the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office, additional indicators will be developed by the DGWG. Future indicators will help us understand where services are, if they are meeting the needs of children and families in SC, and where there might be gaps in access.

South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office can “unduplicate” at the person level using personal identifiers provided by our participating partners. Individuals are assigned a Unique ID; the Unique ID is a random number generated by a computer program algorithm. While the algorithm uses personal identifiers to assign the Unique ID, the Unique ID is not based on any of an individual's identifiers. Upon assignment, the identifiers are stripped from the data file(s). We can then follow that Unique ID across data systems allowing for an unduplicated count of individuals across agencies and programs.