Client
Aboriginal Head Start Initiative, is a program of the Government of Canada for helping enhance child development and school readiness of aboriginal children living in urban centres and large northern communities.
Approach
We developed a web application for keeping track of the status of the children enrolled in the program. The website allows the user to set up different sites along with their program groups, their working staff and attending aboriginal children. Different user roles allows for people involved at different levels of the program manipulate and access different pieces of information.
Results
A built-in workflow for each child allows the AHS staff to register children on waiting lists, enrol them in programs, track their attendance and identify the reasons for departure if they leave the AHS program.
Each year, administrators can create customized questionnaires, which are then completed by staff from each of the sites. This enables the administrators to obtain individual feedback about the program’s status at each location.
Any user can generate a highly customizable and detailed set of reports. This allows them the ability to analyze, review and assess the impact the AHS program has on the children & their families.
Developed in partnership with IDFusion Software, the system uses Ruby on Rails 2.3 as the framework and Latex for generating the reports. The system has been in use for several years, and every new school year more features and enhancements are introduced based on the feedback collected during the previous period.