Garth Neil, VP Strategic Initiatives According to Garth Neil, VP Strategic Initiatives of LiteracyPro, there are roughly 32 Mn Americans who read at a 3rd grade level or less which means they can’t read a map, a prescription on bottle, or calculate a discount. Plus there are approximately 45 Mn Americans on Food Stamps. The commonality in these two groups is the low level of education which prevents individuals from earning a living wage. Almost 20 years ago, David Miller – Founder of LiteracyPro - embarked on a journey to impact these numbers by building LiteracyPro’s first technology platform – LACES – an adult education student information system that began on a Macintosh PC and is now available through the cloud. Today, LACES serves as a “system of record” student management and WIOA Title-II reporting system for about 900 agencies throughout the U.S. and tracks approximately 2.25 Mn adult students.
Through their experience with LACES, LiteracyPro realized a major problem in social services was the disconnection between agencies. Today - agencies, schools, workforce development, and community social services all operate with an independent IT system creating silos of information. None of the systems were built to share information with other agencies or service providers; there is no way of knowing if someone who is working with one agency might be helped by services provided at another agency. LiteracyPro realized they could change that by turning the silos into a network that was much more integrated and effective and the result was CommunityPro.
CommunityPro features start with a universal intake form that is completed by the individual and contains all the data required for service agencies targeted by the individual/ case worker.
It's really taking the Kaiser integrated health model and applying it for the first time to social and educational agencies in the community
CommunityPro also creates a community catalog of services available in the community and the eligibility requirements of each service to give case workers a full asset map of the community opportunities. Finally, CommunityPro connects the databases of each of the agencies and creates a consolidated, comprehensive record of the individual– a "golden record" as it is called. The golden record gives the case worker a 360-degree holistic view of the individual - where they have been served, where they have been successful and what community programs they are eligible for that allows the case worker to create a career or educational plan for them. Then all the counselors’ plans can be uploaded into CommunityPro providing case workers opportunities for collaboration and networking. It is a client opt-in system, and all individual data is completely secured as well by role-based and agency-based security standards to ensure access is only granted based on a need to know.
CommunityPro has just been launched but already they are contracted to serve 125 agencies with approximately 150,000 job seekers and LiteracyPro expects that number to explode. The marketplace is heating up and in California alone; they anticipate serving a minimum of 330,000 people. Products are sold to education and social service agencies with an initial fee to connect their database to CommunityPro’s database. Then fees shift to a very low cost per student/per month subscription based model for the cloud based service. In the future, LiteracyPro anticipates being able to provide data analysis that will answer questions and maximizes social service providers’ abilities to help individuals become self-sufficient. Per Neil, “It's really taking the Kaiser integrated health model and applying it for the first time to social and educational agencies in the community.”
