Understanding Childhood Vulnerability in The City of Surrey

TL;DR

This paper presents two data-driven methods to visualize and analyze childhood vulnerabilities and community engagement in Surrey, aiding strategic planning for early childhood development.

Contribution

It introduces novel approaches combining health and recreation data to understand neighborhood differences and inform community initiatives.

Findings

Neighborhoods can be clustered based on childhood vulnerability data.

Census variables help explain neighborhood similarities.

Critical ages for program participation influence retention rates.

Abstract

Understanding the community conditions that best support universal access and improved childhood outcomes allows ultimately to improve decision-making in the areas of planning and investment across the early stages of childhood development. Here we describe two different data-driven approaches to visualizing the lived experiences of children throughout the City of Surrey, combining data derived from both public and private sources. In one approach, we find specifically that the Early Development Instrument measuring childhood vulnerabilities across varying domains can be used to cluster neighborhoods, and that census variables can help explain similarities between neighborhoods within these clusters. In our second approach, we use program registration data from the City of Surrey's Community and Recreation Services Division. We also find a critical age of entry and exit for each program related to early childhood development and beyond, and find that certain neighborhoods and recreational programs have larger retention rates than others. This report details the journey of using data to tell the story of these neighborhoods, and provides a lens to which community initiatives can be strategically crafted through their use.