THERE’S AN APP FOR USING TECHNOLOGY TO SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS
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echnology offers immense opportunities for the field of social work. Mobile apps and computer programs are convenient and familiar ways to connect and engage with both individual clients and the public, while also offering a level of accessibility that surmounts geographic and economic considerations.
CHAT-E: How Do Kids See Their Future American children hear that if they attend college, success and happiness are theirs. But for many low-income children, college is something they cannot imagine. Their parents may not have saved for college or taught the children the importance of saving.
Assistant Professor Terri Sabol of Northwestern University created CHAT-E, a brief, tablet-based assessment for schoolkids. CHAT-E is a fun, interactive way to collect data. Administration of the assessment is managed by Megan O’Brien, project director at AEDI.
Professor William Elliott III of the Center on Assets, Education and Inclusion (AEDI), studies how children’s savings accounts (CSAs) can teach families about saving and help low-income children get to college. CSAs may be initially seeded and/or built up over time with local government contributions (one city uses parking fees), community organizations or foundations. Corporations also pitch in: Elliott recently piloted a program in which parental spending at Kroger and Schnucks supermarkets generated deposits into CSAs.
“Without this tablet-based app, we wouldn’t be able to get information from kids this young on a large scale,” O’Brien says. Children listen to instructions through headphones. Animated figures offer dichotomous choices, such as, “School is fun”/“School is not fun”, and the child presses a button to answer. If they wish, they may skip a question. The questions investigate financial awareness, school dynamics and socioeconomic status.
As important as dollars saved, though, is the way kids think about money, saving and college. Most CSA programs send kids their own statements, so they can track their account’s growth and appreciate the act of saving. But Elliott has an even broader goal, harder to measure than dollars in the bank. “I want kids to trust in the future,” he says. How do we measure a child’s “trust in the future”? How do we assess a fiveyear-old’s perception of whether she is “college-bound” or not?
2 · University of Michigan School of Social Work
“We are advancing the science of gathering information from young children,” O’Brien says. “This tabletbased approach could be used to survey kids about other, sensitive topics. The headphones let them work on their own. It’s a way to ask kids about complex issues that may lie way in their futures.” Thanks to Elliott, O’Brien and AEDI, those futures are looking brighter and brighter.
