Idaho Careline: Information and Referral Services

While I was bopping around my email, I found some articles on Digital Inclusion (They were very interesting, btw). One of them mentioned a service that sounded familiar but I wasn't completely sure about, so I decided to look it up and talk about it today.

The service is Idaho 211: Idaho Careline, and it is a free statewide community information and referral service. Ultimately, it is a program of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, but there are a lot of services in the database. The goal is to have information on health and human services in the local communities of Idaho, whether they be government, faith-based, or community resources.

As it turns out, 2-1-1 services are available in pretty much every state in the Union, but Idaho was the fourth in the nation to implement the service statewide.  In Fiscal Year 2012, the Idaho Careline helped 162,500 people. I was curious if the Hayden Library was included as one of the resources, and it turns out that we are. The information was obviously given some time ago, but it will still get you to the right place =D

So the next time you need a referral, try called 2-1-1 and see what they can do for you. Or, you could check out their Helpful Links. If you do, let me know how it goes.