8 ways CUSP transforms outcome for early childhood learning

3Si’s Child Universal Success Platform (CUSP) is a leading Early Childhood Integrated Data System (ECIDS), leveraging 3Si’s decade-long experience helping state and local agencies aggregate, integrate, analyze and use early childhood data to support their policy planning and decision-making. What sets 3Si’s CUSP apart from other ECIDS? Here are eight reasons why our innovative solution is transforming states’ view of the early childhood landscape. 

1. Data on the full child population to provide insight into the early childhood market: By modeling the entire child population, including those children not served in formal programs, CUSP offers a holistic view of the early childhood landscape, including a more complete understanding of the demand, supply, and accessibility of early childhood services in a state, city, or community. CUSP’s innovative approach thus provides a robust solution to the fragmentation common to early childhood data systems, seamlessly integrating data across agencies in combination with population data.
2. Flexible spatial analysis: CUSP’s geocoding and spatial analysis features enable users to identify communities with high concentrations of children, ensuring early childhood and broader child care services are strategically located to meet local needs. 3Si models population density based on residential address data, which allows CUSP to provide analysis beyond the census tract level, offering geographic views of counties, school districts, towns, legislative districts, and other geographic units.
3. Critical child-level demographic insights: Our deep experience of working closely with states and policymakers shows that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to providing access to equitable early childhood services. States are made up of diverse communities and it is therefore crucial for agencies and decision-makers to take this diversity into account in shaping programs and policies. By incorporating and analyzing granular data on household income and employment status, CUSP helps users understand the socio-economic characteristics of the child population, which is crucial for determining eligibility of families and children for subsidized early childhood services and providing targeted support to low-income, working families and their children.
4. Telling the full story of communities through data: Data can help tell powerful stories and 3Si’s CUSP supports communities in the United States in telling stories grounded in the reality in which children and families live.  CUSP provides data on the socio-economic vulnerability of communities (as measured by the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, a widely embraced indicator of local vulnerability). We update our social vulnerability data annually for our clients to make sure that we take into account the current context of communities, children, and families. With this approach, we illuminate regional socio-economic vulnerabilities that intersect with child care access and funding.
5. Deduplicated early childhood provider supply estimates: CUSP’s early childhood provider base algorithm provides deduplicated counts of early childhood providers, their locations, and essential characteristics like program quality and children served, empowering policymakers to assess the availability of child care in communities across their states and implement strategies for resource allocation to communities that need it the most.
6. Accessible early childhood enrollment data: Data quality and completeness vary across states, programs, and data systems, which can present barriers to understanding how many children are served by which combinations of programs. CUSP integrates child-level data when possible, but it also models enrollment counts based on empirical data and detailed and robust business rules that we establish in partnership with state experts. CUSP’s ability to estimate the number of children enrolled in various early childhood services across a state and within a state’s communities helps our clients understand program reach, effectiveness, and gaps in access to early childhood services, thus facilitating data-driven policy planning.
7. Adaptable to client needs: CUSP allows for flexible configuration of age and income requirements, aligning eligibility criteria with specific early childhood services and region-specific needs. CUSP can be easily implemented in any city or state within the United States. 
8. Seamless Cloud Base technology: 3Si’s CUSP is cost efficient and leverages cloud technology for easy implementation, allowing users to use the platform within less than a year.  CUSP allows state partners to go farther with fewer resources, leading to significant cost savings and faster implementation.

CUSP is the culmination of years of early childhood learning experience matched with 3Si’s data-driven innovation across dozens of implementations. The system offers unparalleled insights into early childhood learning, enabling clients to quickly make informed decisions using state-of-the-art cloud solutions.  

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