The Illinois Risk and Reach Report is a collaborative project from the combined expertise of three institutions — Erikson Institute, Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map (IECAM) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and The Fiscal Policy Center at Voices for Illinois Children.

IECAM collects, cleans, geocodes, and analyzes all Risk and Reach data to produce maps and tables. The Fiscal Policy Center at Voices for Illinois Children collects, categorizes, and analyzes fiscal data for the Report. Erikson facilitates project management, conducts data quality control, provides lead authorship in the narrative, and leads the ongoing dissemination strategy for the Report.

The inaugural Report was released in Spring 2019 and consists of data primarily from 2016 except Mental Health Services and Developmental Screening from 2018, Kindergarten Readiness and High-Quality Child Care from 2017, and Housing Assistance from 2015. The latest iteration of the Report released in Spring 2021 includes data primarily from 2019 except Maternal Education, Child Care Cost, Preterm Births, Lead Exposure, Prenatal Care and Lead Testing from 2018, and Housing Assistance from 2017.

With the creation of each Report, Erikson sought feedback to inform the content, design, and available collateral. Erikson surveyed people who downloaded the Report and held various meetings with the Illinois Risk and Reach Report Advisory Council, which consists of key public and private stakeholders and early childhood advocates. Additionally, Erikson consulted with the Illinois Office of Early Childhood Development’s Early Learning Council Data, Research, and the Evaluation and Community Systems Development committees.

Feedback in 2021 informed the following additions to the Illinois Risk and Reach Report:

• Earned Income Tax Credit – Family Stability
• Healthcare Coverage – Health
• The Asian demographic was parsed out for the Race and Ethnicity data when it was available. Previously, this group was included in the category labeled “Other, Non-Hispanic.”

Now with two datasets, we encourage you to compare data for indicators between the two reports. To make a uniform comparison between the 2019 and 2016 datasets, the following indicators from the 2016 dataset have been recalculated and updated on this site.

FY2017 data for High-Quality Child Care was updated to look at children ages 0-12 as it previously showed data for children ages 0-18.

FY2016 data for Publicly Funded Preschool was updated to look at children in the 3-4 age range and include Preschool For All-Expansion data. Previously, it was mistakenly omitted from the analysis.