Care4Me: City of Tempe
The Arizona State University Smart City Cloud Innovation Center Powered by AWS (ASU CIC) recently collaborated with the City of Tempe, Arizona to explore digital solutions to improve access to information and services to support care for children.
Tempe conducted extensive research into the community and region to understand the universe of existing services and the support children and care givers need. Tempe estimates that 60% of local families that could obtain child care subsidies and tuition support are not aware these programs exist or how to access them.
Problem
Child care is a significant barrier to economic opportunity for families. Research shows 75% of people with children have problems finding affordable, quality child care and another 74% say insufficient child care has prevented or impacted employment and career opportunities. One of the reasons for these challenges is the difficulty identifying, accessing and paying for good quality care.
Approach
Tempe decided to solve these challenges by creating a centralized location for families to find the information required to identify child care resources and apply for benefits. CARE4ME is designed to consolidate and simplify the process for accessing services with a single software application. Care4Me works in tandem with a live Care Navigator to guide users through the identification and application processes by answering questions and helping complete and submit applications.
Supporting Artifacts
The Amazon Working Backwards process produces three artifacts - a Press Release, a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and a Visual depiction of the user experience. You can find the Care4Me artifacts here:
Watch the video below for a demo of the solution:
Next Steps
The ASU Cloud Innovation Center completed the wireframe development in 2021 working with ASU Interns, AWS Solution Architects and City of Tempe staff. The solution was published and made available to other communities as open source information. A demo of the wirefames can be found below:
About the ASU CIC
The ASU Smart Cities Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is supported by AWS on ASU’s Innovation campus - SkySong. The mission of the CIC is to drive Innovation Challenges that materially benefit the greater Phoenix metro area and beyond. The CIC will do this by solving pressing community and regional challenges, using shareable and repeatable technology solutions from ideation through prototype, as a service for the greater human good.
The CIC also provides real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector.
The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, water conservation, vandalism, pedestrian safety, digital service delivery and many others. The CIC leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.
For more information on the ASU CIC, to read about projects or to submit a challenge, please visit https://smartchallenges.asu.edu.
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