COLUMBIA, S.C. - Parents who receive aid for their children from government agencies and charities often find themselves repeatedly filling out the same forms at different agencies as they search for child care or vouchers for food.

But a group of Beaufort County children's agencies wants to eliminate the time-consuming stacks of paperwork by making information about children and their families available to a various agencies with the swipe of a small card.

The Beaufort Cares Network initially would link eight agencies that make up the county's Early Childhood Coalition, providing those groups with information such as phone numbers, addresses and social security numbers for the children they serve.

Parents and other individuals who want to have their information included in a database could ask for the service when they visited places like schools or the Department of Social Services.

Workers would give out a card - as big as a credit card or as small as a key ring discount card - with a bar code that would give access to a secure Internet site containing information about the child and the child's family.

The information for the database can be used to automatically fill out forms saving time and money.

"If you've ever been through the human services shuffle and filled out applications at five agencies in one day for the services that you need, you know the advantages to this," said Jim Glasson agencies, vice president for community development for United Way, the lead agency on the project.

There are other important advantages, Glasson says. The database would allow agencies like DSS to follow-up to track whether individuals follow-up when one agency makes referrals to another.

The database would allow different agencies to track services that children and their families receive over long periods of time and would also allow agencies to avoid providing duplicate services to children and families, Glasson said.

"It's going to keep people from abusing the system because we're going to know if someone went to the food pantry and the salvation army and DSS on the same day to get food for example," he said.

Different agencies would have different levels of access. While a Department of Social Services case worker may be able to access a family's complete history, a charity may only be able to access a name, address and referral information.

The database could only be accessed by agencies that have a username and password, not parents or children who receive services.

The project would initially start with eight programs: the United Way's Success by 6, county government, schools, First Steps, Lowcountry Health District, Healthy Families America Beaufort, Department of Social Services and Beaufort-Jasper EOC Head Start.

But eventually, the Early Childhood Coalition hopes to expand the program to include various charities in the county and other government agencies, Glasson said.

"It's fairly ambitious, but the technology is here to do it," he said. "What's been lacking is the will and determination to do it. The technology's the easy part."

The network is named for Edgelee Robinson Black, who suggested a similar idea to community leaders.

Black's daughter, Helen Black Elliott said her mother would be pleased with the program.

"She was very concerned about the children and making sure that were taken care of," Elliott said of her mother, who died in December at age 73. "She had eight children of her own and she knew the struggle to educate eight children even with a husband."

The project is being paid for in part with a $285,000 federal grant. That money should be enough to pay to have cards made, buy and install card readers and train workers, Glasson said.

Beaufort County will be the first county in the state to use the program, which has already started in one county in North Carolina and four in Arkansas, according to the company that markets the software for the program.