Taking Steps (a.k.a. eligible-for-what)

Connecting survivors of violent crime in Alameda County, Calif. with relevant resources. Currently a proof of concept using sample data.

What's the big idea?

Several efforts to connect helpseekers with services allow helpseekers to search for specific services or browse available categories of services. However, these approaches risk missing opportunities to connect helpseekers, as they require that the person searching already have some idea of what their options are. Sort of like asking someone to enter an unfamiliar restaurant and order without a menu, but with much higher stakes.

This project contends that to best connect people with relevant resources, you have to surface resources for which they're eligible, without requiring that the helpseeker already know that those resources exist. This project demonstrates an approach toward that end.

Who's behind this?

This tool was originally developed by @fureigh for Code for America with support from the Cantinas Foundation and guidance from Californians for Safety and Justice's Victims User Group.

Data sources

Due to the proprietary nature of social service data in Alameda County, this project is currently in demonstration mode. All services shown are sample data for illustration purposes only.

A word on taxonomies

The taxonomies of services and eligibility criteria used herein are drawn from One Degree's SocialServiceData.org and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License with slight modifications.

If you're interested in these kinds of taxonomies, you might also like Open Eligibility.

I have a database of social service information. Can I use this with my own data?

It’ll take some customizing, but yes! Take a look at db/seeds.rb for a sense of the current taxonomies and see the issue queue for some ways that this application can be improved.

Contribution opportunities

Want to help develop this further? Great! Taking Steps is an open source project. The issue queue includes a bunch of ways that this application can be improved. Pull requests welcome!