The Healthier Barrington - Quintessential Barrington Magazine

By Lisa Stamos
Photos by April Graves
The Health of a Community
What the Healthier Barrington Needs Survey
Has Taught Us
The Healthier Barrington Needs Survey has measured various
aspects of our lives for the past 15 years, offering insight about what
we value and what we see as the challenges. There is much to be
learned from this study, but the real story that’s told is one of a
community that listens to its needs and works together to improve
its quality of life.
Healthier Barrington Coalition partners Karen Lambert,
President of Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital; Leslie
Luther-Jeschke, Executive Director of Barrington Area
United Way; and Karen Darch, President of the Village of
Barrington.

Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital initiated the Healthier Barrington Needs
Survey. Karen Lambert, president of the hospital, has provided the support
necessary for the survey’s success, including a dedicated staff person and
funding.
Karen Darch has been involved in the Healthier Barrington Needs
survey since its inception in 1995.
Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital started the survey as a means to
reach out to the greater Barrington area community, and to become
better connected and more aware of the needs of the community. In
their commitment, they hired Sylvia (Syl) Boeder for the role of community
relations. She has been instrumental in all aspects of conducting the survey,
reporting results, and building a coalition of community service organizations
that can respond to the data. Syl is joined by Karen Darch and the researcher,
Joel Cowen, as those of a handful of people who were there from
the start.
The Healthier Barrington Project’s first survey was conducted, and has
since been, through a partnership with the Health Systems Research at the
University of Illinois College of Medicine. The survey is the main method for
collecting input and data for the Healthier Barrington Project. Every three
years, starting in 1996, the survey has reached between 3-4,000 residents
through a random selection, with what is considered a successful outcome
at a 13.1 percent response rate for the 2011 survey. For the 2011 survey, that
represents 524 surveys returned. According to Joel Cowen, the researcher
who has led the survey’s development, that is a response adequate for the
task.
“We wanted 400 survey responses, which assumes a margin of error of
+5/-5 percent. Statistically, this is a successful outcome. After a thousand
responses, you really don’t gain anything — you’re at the point where you’ve
got the right answers,” he said.
Joel also noted that he maps the Healthier Barrington data against U.S.
Census data to see if there are any biases. “For Barrington, the bias does
lean to older people, women, and a better-educated individual,” he noted.
He added that women tend to respond more often to inquiries that involve
human services.
The information from the survey was made available to the public through
the Village of Barrington’s presentation at a public meeting in the fall. The
survey is also currently available through the Barrington Area Library’s Web
site, at www.barringtonarealibrary.org/community-resources.html.
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The Barrington Area United Way has supported the Healthier Barrington Needs Survey since its beginning. Today, Leslie Luther-Jeschke , its executive director, puts
the survey results to work in how BAUW programs are developed and how initiatives are funded.
The information collected is directed at a broad spectrum that represents
an overall understanding of the quality of life in the area. The main focus is
the community’s sense of what it needs, what it wants, as well as questions
that look into both positive and negative aspects of life here. The main theme
that rises to the top – the primary factors that matter most – are the quality
of our schools, living in a peaceful, small town atmosphere, and low levels
of crime. Services related to the school district and local library were rated
highest.
Employment issues — a key theme
According to the 2011 survey, 13.9 percent of households experienced involuntary
job loss during the past year, up from 10.5 percent in 2008. Today, job
losses are the most common within households of respondents aged 45-65.
Unemployed respondents indicated that they did not find the assistance that
they needed to help them locate a job – at a rate of over 44 percent of people
responding who are unemployed.
While the unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent nationally, Barrington
area residents who responded to the survey report that 19.5% of
households had someone unemployed and looking for work in the past year.
While we were reading this information, on the other end of the unemployment
conversation, we learned that at CareerPlace, a Barrington-based
job coaching and support agency, the services are currently under-utilized by
the public. We’ve featured them in this issue to help let people know about
their services, including three current job seekers who shared their stories.
A large shift in employment is that more people are working from home.
In 2011, the percentage was noted at 27.9 percent — almost double what it
was in 1999, when it was measured at 13.4%. The Barrington Area Chamber
of Commerce is well-aware of this statistic, and is developing its programs
to help support this sector. Extra meeting space, news ways to connect and
network, and services that are geared for the small business are a priority, as
reported in our feature story on the Chamber.
Basic needs in a recession
Another key finding in the 2011 Healthier Barrington Needs Survey is that
people are putting off health care services because of cost, or had difficulty in
paying their bills – both categories noted at about 20 percent of households.
More than half of all respondents (56.9 percent) noted that they had been
affected financially by the recession through pay cuts and investment losses.
People are spending their dollars more carefully.
Concern for our children
One of the ways in which the Healthier Barrington coalition works together is
adding new questions, or updating the manner in which questions are asked.
Coalition members share information and network together to continually
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Joel Cowen just retired as the Assistant Dean for Health Systems Research at the
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford. Joel has guided the survey
process since 1995, offering academic excellence in managing the survey, but
also continuity in what he says is a survey with the greatest longitudinal data
in the region.
improve the data collections, especially based on the trends that they see. For
example, a new question was added that asked, “Which of the following are
issues for your child or children under 18?”
Three problems led the list — over-scheduling (10 percent), anxiety and
nervousness (9.4 percent), and attention deficit disorder (9.1 percent). The
next concerns listed were sleep deprivation (7.5 percent), bullying (6 percent)
and learning disabilities (5.7 percent). Of all respondents, nearly 70 percent of
parents noted one of the above concerns.
Sylvia (Syl) Boeder was hired by Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital to
coordinate the survey and participating coalition members. She began
the project in 1995 and just this year is stepping down, handing her legacy
of building a healthier community in the capable hands of Julie Mayer, who
works for the hospital and will carry on the tradition as an ambassador to
work with the coalition member organizations.
Putting the information to work
Village of Barrington president, Karen Darch, has found the surveys to be
very useful through the years. “It allows us to make informed decisions,” she
said. Yet the greatest benefit is in how the coalition partners come together.
“The group is cohesive, and comfortable with each other” she said. “They
are cooperative, knowledgeable and able to implement the findings that are
important — and with results.”
There is an enormous amount of information in the 2011 Healthier
Barrington Needs Survey to wade through and put to work. Coalition members
are looking to take the relationships they’ve built and create a system
that makes it easier for residents to find the help they need in social services
and the many areas that together make up a better quality of life.
It’s impressive that the Healthier Barrington project is still going — and
that its members are even looking to move their collective efforts to a more
efficient level for the public. Researcher Joel Cowen says that this survey is
the longest-running of its kind in our area. But he is quick to add a personal
perspective.
“The heart of this story is not just the longitudinal aspect of the effort and
the data – it’s the collaboration, and the people working together to carry it
forward, getting results. It’s what differentiates Barrington.”
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The Healthier Barrington
Project Coalition
Partner Organizations
»»
Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital
»»
Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce
»»
Barrington Area Council on Aging
»»
Barrington Area Council of Governments
»»
Barrington Area Drug Prevention Coalition
»»
Barrington Area Library
»»
Barrington Area Safety Council
»»
Barrington Area United Way
Barrington High School student, Kylie Mena, is working in an internship role with the coalition
this year. Her job is to gather, organize and document data from social service agencies
throughout the greater Barrington area. The resulting data will be integrated into a
navigation system, whereby individuals seeking assistance can get to the support, help and
resources they need more directly, and quickly.
»»
Barrington District 220
»»
Barrington Park District
»»
Barrington Township
»»
Barrington Youth & Family Services
»»
CareerPlace
»»
Citizens for Conservation
»»
Character Counts in Barrington
»»
Cuba Township
»»
Family Service of the Barrington Area
»»
H.E.R.E. in Barrington
»»
Hospice and Palliative Care of
Northeastern Illinois
»»
Leave No Child Inside
»»
Samaritan Counseling Center of the
Northwest Suburbs
»»
Smart Farm
»»
Village of Barrington
The coalition members of the Healthier Barrington Project
have learned that citizens may require between five to eight (or even more) contacts
by phone to agencies and service providers before they find one that is a fit. There is
so much to wade through. There are layers of qualifying and general discussion to see
if a particular organization is the right one, and one whose services can be afforded,
and qualified for in terms of where that person lives, and other criteria. This insight
might be the most important information of all. It could be the next evolution for the
coalition.
Coalition members meet on a regular basis to discuss survey findings. A topic at a
meeting in November was the discussion of a possible initiative to address and raise
questions that revolve around how to offer a path to simplify the process for people
who are reaching out for assistance. Also, there is room for greater alignment and
understanding between coalition members in terms of referring people to the right
agency for their needs, hopefully within the first referral.
As the discussion continues into 2012, Julie Mayer, from Advocate Good Shepherd
Hospital, and founding coalition member, Joyce Palmquist of the Barrington Area
Council on Aging, spearhead the discussions.
Taking notes is Kylie Mena, a Barrington High School student with an eye toward
med school in the years ahead. Kylie is working as an intern for the coalition, contacting
agencies in the surrounding communities, and gathering and organizing data that
may become the basis for an informational “navigation” system of some kind, made
available to the general public once created. It’s a work in progress.
For now, at QB we’ve gathered some of that basic information — a directory of sorts
— that we’ve posted on the homepage of our Web site. We hope it’s the beginning of
something good.
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