Maryland’s Child Well-Being Scorecard
Tracking Outcomes for Maryland’s Children and Families

Overview
Welcome to Maryland’s Child Well-Being Scorecard where you can find up-to-date information pertaining to the well-being of children and families across the State of Maryland. In an effort to provide decision-makers and all visitors to our website with the most current and relevant picture of the lives of Maryland’s children and families, we have discontinued our annual printed Results for Child Well-Being report and will now update information through this Scorecard as its available throughout the year. This new initiative serves to further the Governor’s Office for Children’s mission of promoting the well-being of Maryland’s children, youth, and families through data-driven policies and collective solutions and provides analysis on emerging trends in both child well-being and the changing landscape of childhood.

Using a Results-Based Accountability™ framework, this Scorecard focuses on eight Results which describe the general well-being of Maryland’s children and families and measures progress in realizing these Results by tracking quantifiable proxies for success called Indicators. The links below will open new pages that include graphs, trend information, and narrative descriptions of the Indicator that will provide an explanation of the numbers and a description of what the State is doing to improve that outcome.

In addition, you can find jurisdiction-level data and information by following links on the menu to the left. Each jurisdiction has its own page that not only shows data for the Indicators at their local level but provides information on each of the programs in that jurisdiction funded by the Children’s Cabinet Interagency Fund. As a result of this level of transparency, Marylanders will be able to track how the investments of the Children’s Cabinet and the work of the Local Management Boards are seeking to improve child well-being in communities across the State.

The State has periodically revisited Indicators and added new ones, as necessary, to lend a fresh perspective to the assessment of child well-being and to take into consideration the changing landscape of well-being. Because 10 years had passed since the last review of the Results and Indicators, in June 2019, the Office convened a workgroup to consider if any changes should be made to the current set of Results and Indicators and to make recommendations to the Children’s Cabinet. As recommended, the Results were not changed; however, the “Families are Safe and Economically Stable” Result was renamed “Families are Economically Stable” and the corresponding safety Indicators were included under the “Communities are Safe for Children, Youth, and Families” Result to group all safety Indicators together.

We hope you find this tool useful and informative as we continue to improve our ability to track and improve upon the well-being of Maryland’s children and families.

User Tips:

• For those Indicators marked with an asterisk (*), you will be able to view multiple data points on the linked page. For example, the “Educational Attainment” page will allow you to view not only the percent of individuals with a Bachelor’s Degree, but by clicking on the “Trend Line Comparison” button at the top right of the graph, you will also be able to look at data for several additional educational outcomes over time. In other cases, clicking “Trend Line Comparison” will display how Maryland compares to national figures for a given indicator. In both cases, a legend will appear below the graph to identify each of the lines.
• Indicators are also viewable in a printable PDF and other formats. These can be accessed by clicking the small lined box at the top right corner of the graph to the right of the data source notation.