Children’s information: improving lives through better listening and better data

This ambitious Strategic Fund project will improve the lives of children and families by enhancing understanding of their needs and experiences, and that of practitioners, and using that knowledge to shape and improve service provision.

The project involves an innovative collaboration between five local authorities and five universities, with researchers working closely with practitioners, children and families. It will transform how information about and from families is gathered, interpreted and used in child and family social policy, locally and nationally. It will focus primarily on children and families needing additional support from local authority children’s services, who are often the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society, but also consider universal services.

Statistical and administrative information can improve policy and practice, but the views and experiences of children and families are also vitally important. There are gaps and complexities in how data is used. This project aims to ensure the voices of children, families and practitioners are heard and used to improve practice, services and policy. It will test how better use of information can improve local authority children’s services to reduce inequalities, improve cost effectiveness, and produce better outcomes for the children and families that they serve.

The five areas of practice s the project seeks to improve are:

• Data: the collection, linking and analysis of data by local authorities
• Voice: engaging the views, perspectives and experiences of children, families, practitioners and wider community organisations, both as data and about data
• Ethics: how principles of individual privacy, social justice and public good are applied to the use of data and voice
• Information use: how data and voice are used to inform and shape policy and practice
• Learning: testing, evaluating and disseminating how new initiatives are working

Greater Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, North Yorkshire, and Hampshire local authorities will work together with academics from Oxford University, the University of Sussex, the London School of Economics and Political Science, University College London, and Manchester Metropolitan University. They will collaborate with children, young people, parents, carers, professionals and policymakers to understand and shape how information can be used ethically and effectively.

Using a combination of quantitative analyses and qualitative fieldwork, the researchers will work with the local authority partners to implement and assess an Information Use project in each local site:

• School readiness: developing a framework to assess progress and understand activity on early years child development across the Greater Manchester region
• Care leavers: co-designing and co-producing a set of measures for assessing outcomes for care leavers aged 16-25 in North Yorkshire
• Referrals to children’s social care: investigating how local and national data can be used to understand the predictors and consequences of referrals, and how these insights can be used to inform policy and practice, in Hampshire.

The three local projects will take a flexible and iterative approach to adapt to changing circumstances (including COVID-19) across the five year period. The researchers will also test and improve a range of existing tools for local authority services, such as the Cost Calculator for Children’s Services and the Children’s Social Care Outcomes Framework.

Wider change will be promoted through a Learning Network run by Research in Practice which will bring together 20 other local authorities to test the findings and co-produce tools, guides and other learning materials to improve the quality and use of children’s services data in England. A series of workshops, webinars and podcasts will share the learning with all those working with children and families, including researchers, practitioners, managers and policymakers.

Children, families and practitioners will be involved in naming the project during its initial period of operation.

This project was previously called Data and voice to improve children’s lives.