Single digital view of the child

[Introduction]   

This is a Research in Practice podcast, supporting evidence-informed practice with children and families, young people and adults.  

Sarah: Hello and welcome to this podcast about the single digital view of the child. I'm Sarah Rothera, a research and practice associate, and today we are pleased to have Gary Davies with us. Gary has supported Somerset Council to develop a single digital view of the child and he has also been working with twelve local authorities to assess their readiness to build their own platforms. Today, Gary will talk us through some of the technical and governance considerations for sharing information in this way. This conversation with Gary builds on our conversation with Jill Baller. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome, Gary. It's great to be here with you today. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your role?

Gary: Hi, I'm Gary Davies and I'm currently working for Somerset Council, assisting them in implementing work that I developed in Bristol City Council with a single digital view for children and families and also some work for the Department for Education in supporting twelve local authorities around the country to develop their approach to the same sort of product.

[Somerset's single digital view of the child] 

Sarah: Thanks, Gary. Great to have you here today. Could you describe for us a little bit about Somerset's single digital view of the child, bearing in mind that our audience is not particularly technically minded? Just describe the basic functionality and what it does and how it serves children and families and social workers.

Gary: Yes, certainly. People typically call this a single digital view, but it's basically extracting useful information from computer systems or case management systems that include risk and vulnerability factors for children and families and the family network, and it brings that information from those computer systems to a single place, where it then is presented in an easy-to-use, attractive way for operational staff. And where the benefits of that come is that it reduces the retrieval burden for staff. It eliminates the need for them to access a range of disparate systems by providing a more complex picture of the issues and risks that families are facing. That helps to improve assessments. It helps to improve decision making and in particular leads professionals to improve coordination while families are being worked with.

Sarah: So, there are a range of technical challenges that must be solved when developing a single view of the child, such as bringing data together from a variety of sources, as you've just described, and different data definitions coming from different organisations as well. Talk us through the steps that local authorities need to take to build a single view of the child and what does that architecture look like? So, what kind of technology are you using to build that platform? 

Gary: The most important aspect is that it's user-led. So, the requirements come from the professionals. The point of this product is to assist professionals to reduce their retrieval burden, strengthen their family working, so therefore it is about identifying through those professionals what information they need in order to do their work more effectively. That creates a user requirement list, which is typically, in this case, a set of data that comes from multiple systems. So, what's that then telling you is, 'This is the information I need to gather into one place.' So, it then requires you to go to those computer systems, with the assistance of data engineers, and they create the ability to take that information out of the back of those systems and bring it to a data platform. Now, they call that bringing the information and taking it through a pipeline, so you take the information, for instance, out of a case management system for children and social care and you take it into a data platform. And a data platform is effectively a big bucket of data.

So, that is done many times from many different systems and you end up with a big bucket of all the information that you think you need to create this visual of a child or family. The next stage is for some data engineers to structure that information in a way that makes it able to be extracted and to do that, one of the main functions is to match and merge the information. So, the same child taken out of three systems has to be merged into one single set of record. So, that is then carried out, the match and merge function. That brings you structured information that has been merged so that you can see single children from multiple sources and then that information has to be visualised. So, most local authorities have Microsoft, in fact it's about 97% of local authorities have Microsoft, so quite typically the Microsoft products are used to do much of this work and they've got a toolkit, which they call Fabric, and the engineers will use that toolkit to do al this behind-the-scenes work.

The visualisation is another product that's very typical across all local authorities, which is Power BI, and that's a dashboard. Part of the secret of this is listening to the user about how they want that dashboard designed, because they often don't want a lot of complexity. They want it very simple information, presented in an easy-to-read format, in a situation where they can't break the system. They just want to look at it, see what they need, and that's where the art of creating a very good dashboard is, in trying to keep it simple. So, all of that requires the local authority to bring a project together, really. Most of this is built in-house, relatively cheaply, because it's using existing staff with existing computer software equipment that's already available to the local authority.

[Information governance] 

Sarah: And it sounds like information governance is a significant part of developing the platform. Could you describe for us the legal basis for sharing information in this way and the information governance processes that you follow as you begin that process? 

Gary: Yes, definitely an important area. The general basis of the information governance, the lawful basis of it, is that within legislation, either explicitly or implicitly, various acts of Parliament require local authorities and other statutory partners and commissioning services to deliver services for the whole population. Those services are set out in that legislation, so for instance, the Children's Act requires partners to work together to safeguard children, to provide economic situation where they can thrive to improve health and wellbeing. The Education Act, get people to school. Crime and Disorder Act, to reduce crime and disorder. So, what the basis is, is that in order for you to deliver those services to the whole population, it is reasonably necessary and proportionate for you to understand risk and vulnerability in the children and families in your area. And the absence of information is as important as the presence of information, because if you understand that a child that you've known for many years doesn't present a certain risk, then it assists you in your assessment and decision making on what's about to happen. So, the data protection procedure really captures that story, that in order to do the public tasks required, it is necessary to bring this information together under these pieces of legislation and in order to do that, you have to have, really, four elements in place.

One is an overarching information sharing agreement, which is strategic, which sets out across the partnership that you're going to work together, that you've got these services to deliver and you need to share information to do that. The next level is an information sharing agreement that sets out the granular detail of what you're sharing, why you're sharing, and how your arrangements are in place. The third is a data protection impact assessment, which tells you how you're going to manage the risks and the issues that emerge and what processing activities are taking place and why you're doing it. And then, fourthly is a public notice, a privacy notice on your website telling the general public what it is you're doing with their information and why, so that they have transparency about what you're doing. And if you put those arrangements in place and follow the various guidance, you will know that you have robust and sound information governance arrangements to support a single digital view.

[Information sharing] 

Sarah: During my conversations around single view of the child, I've heard a number of myths emerge around the ethics of sharing information in this way. What are some of the myths that you have heard from stakeholders and how do you respond to some of those myths? 

Gary: Most people that you speak to actually think that local authorities and other agencies are more advanced than we really are in managing this information. So, there is almost an element of surprise that we don't already do this, because they think we understand the lives of children and family better than we do. That is one myth that is actually our inability to do some things that people think are obvious. I don't think there's any particular myth about doing this. I think that there is suspicion that we will do things that people don't want us to do. So, concern about things like predictive analytics and algorithms and machine decision making and things like that. A lot of the work is going on about being open, honest, and transparent and explaining exactly what you do and making that information publicly available, going beyond what the legislation requires to try and create the best level of transparency that you can. Actually, the argument about why we should do this is extremely strong. You know, every child serious case review for the last twenty years has said that failure to share information has been a causal factor. Most people of reasonable mind would recognise that if people could understand risk that's held in different organisations and bring that picture together would help you understand and protect children better. So, the argument is quite fundamentally strong, the suspicions around doing other things.

Sarah: So, we're not necessarily developing new rules for sharing information, are we? We're simply developing new and more efficient systems for doing something that we already do and could do better?

Gary: Yes, most of the information, in fact all of the information in a single digital view is information that's already shared across the partnership. This enables it to be done much more efficiently and creates a memory of that information, which otherwise has previously been lost. And also, the simplicity of being able to see it all in one place.

Sarah: I imagine the time savings for social workers is one part of that argument as well. Social workers being able to focus on the function of social work, rather than the process of social work. 

Gary: So, in Bristol, the single digital view is searched 60,000 times a year and if you equated that to ten-minute saving, which is quite a modest saving, that equates to 10,000 hours of low-level retrieval burden that staff have saved. So, it is quite surprising how much more efficient it is.

Sarah: And is that 60,000 individual children or families, or could that be multiple searches for the same family as well? 

Gary: It's 60,000 searches by a member of staff, a practitioner or lead professional, so they could potentially look up a family a few weeks later or a few months later and that would be the same family.

[A single digital view of the child] 

Sarah: So, that's quite a significant quantifiable time saving, isn't it? Ok. Let's move on to the work that you're doing with DfE [Department for Education]. So, Somerset has been awarded a grant to work with twelve local authorities to assess their readiness to implement a single digital view of the child. Talk us through the work that you're doing in that space. 

Gary: So, an opportunity came from the Department for Education for local authorities to apply if they were interested in developing a single digital view and they would like some support or assistance to understand what that journey looked like. So, twelve local authorities were selected, a broad range all across the country, and the work I'm doing with them, really, is selling the ambition of a single digital view to senior leaders who may not otherwise be as aware of it. It demonstrates the art of the possible and the fact that it's been done in Bristol and Somerset shows what can be done and the way in which data and digital products can support family working. So, part of the work is then to understand their current digital maturity, so what journey are they on and where they have reached on that journey, and carry out a bit of a gap analysis to understand what they would need to do if they wanted to introduce a single digital view. Then, I'm going to write a report to them setting out some of the key issues, some of the considerations that they would need to give, and recommendations as to how they could move from where they are now to developing the single digital view. And while working with them, assisting them in taking their key stakeholders and partner agencies into the discussions about why organisations should work together more effectively in this space.

Sarah: So, what are some of the key learning points so far?

Gary: There are several, actually, that have emerged. One is that this is a piece of work that has a level of complexity and it is a journey over time and therefore it appears to me that it's quite important that the local authority has a digital strategy that sets out that journey. It's a very iterative product. You can build information from your internal sources into a single digital view. You can then start to bring in information from partner organisations. You can develop the maturity of it and, in time, we will want to start to take advantage of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. So, therefore, having it written down as a strategy with themes and prioritisation and explaining to the organisation how you're trying to develop those products seems to be a really important element of this.

The second factor that seems to be equally as important is that it's a corporate digital platform. The future is going to be very much about data and if you start to rely on these types of products and they become critical to operational services, then they need to be held by the organisation. They need to be recognised by the organisation as a key element of the working practices. They need to be maintained, kept up to date, developed, and if they do break for any reason, someone needs to maintain them and repair them and get them back operational. The single digital view of children and families is one but product that comes from building this data architecture. Most organisations and many that I already talked to will want to do something similar with adults, with a single citizen view, or with revs and benefits or housing, and so therefore it being a corporate data platform where the departments are customers of that platform, so for instance children and families go to the digital platform and say, 'Can I have these 26 sets of data, because I want to build a dashboard about SEND [Special educational needs and disability] or looked-after children?' And then they receive that data and build their dashboard and they model seems to be one that's quite important for the future.

[Artificial Intelligence] 

Sarah: You touched on incorporating emerging technologies such as AI [Artificial Intelligence]. Could you expand on that a little bit? How do you see AI being incorporated in the future and what function would it perform? 

Gary: It's early in the journey with AI and I don't think we can see the full potential, but you can see some emerging opportunities. The single digital view creates an as it is at this moment in time view of a child or family. You could imagine quite a complex search capability. So, if you were to go in and start to ask complex questions about the child and family, about, you know, what relationship is there with drugs and alcohol in this family and how has it presented itself and get a complex answer to that type of scenario, could you come in, in the morning, as a family worker and the system has worked out what has happened overnight, what are the new priorities for that family, what's the recommended best practice to your action plan with that family? Can it prompt you into the most effective things that you could do? Other aspects of when you speak to children in the home, you know, if that's recorded on video or audio, the ability to bring that back and embed it in the system and immediately be able to summarise it and search it and access the whole level of information about that child and family to decide what are the levels of risk and vulnerability. You can see all sorts of different ways in which this can get developed and I think some of it we haven't yet thought of.

Sarah: There's a lot of potential, isn't there? And we're doing a separate project on AI in terms of the labour savings, so thinking about how we can reduce the administrative burden for social workers, but then it's only a matter of time until we get into the predictive analytics space and rethinking opportunities for families to contribute to their own case file and access their own information, but also to connect to really important information as well. I think that AI has a lot of opportunity to bridge language and learning gaps and things like that. So, there are certainly benefits to adopting it into practice and I think we're in the same space as you, where we're thinking we can see the opportunities, but how do we do this responsibly and ethically and safely, and how should children and families be involved in that conversation and the development process? So, just refocusing on the DfE scoping work, so part of the project is assessing a local authority's readiness to implement a single digital view of the child. What sort of conversations are you having in that space? What factors are you looking for, and what are some of the themes that are emerging there in terms of readiness? 

Gary: I think one of the aspects that has slightly hindered some people is the supporting families programme has provided an awful lot of work around data, digitalised products, and transformational work, that many of the local authorities around the country have held onto that programme as the reason why they are sharing information. And it's trying to tell them a new narrative that, actually, they need to move past that programme, and obviously it's coming to an end now. When you actually say, 'Why should you share information?' It's to deliver your core function of safeguarding and safeguarding includes early intervention, prevention, and the improvement of health and wellbeing. So, the reason that information should be shared is to equip public services to do their job more effectively and there's a lot of rewriting of that narrative for partner agencies.

The slight downside of the Supporting Families programme is that some agencies see it as a method for the local authority to get money from the government, rather than that it might help to reduce demand for, for instance, the police. It might improve outcomes for families, which would then diminish the need to call on crisis services, which would then reduce demand and improve outcomes for families, but also outcomes for public services. So, it's really selling that narrative as to why a single digital view facilitates inter-operative working practices of different agencies. If you talk about safeguarding for nurses and hospitals, if they can understand the context of which a family or a member of the family, a mum or a dad, is being discharged back into their home or community, then they could put better provision in place. If a GP [General Practitioner] understands the nature of work going on with a family, he or she might work differently with them in terms of referrals. If the police understand the context of a young person and the challenges they're going through in their life, because they're being worked with in two or three different ways because of other traumatic events in their life, they might respond differently. So, it's trying to build a more mainstream narrative about why we should all work together.

[Leadership] 

Sarah: There are a lot of moving parts to these projects and it sounds like leadership is a really important component of that. Talk me through what leaders need to do to be able to bring together a project like this. 

Gary: One of the interesting aspects that I see across the country in children's senior leaders is a recognition that data and digital products have a role to play, but sometimes there's a lack of understanding about how digital products can assist family working and a disconnect between the IT [Information Technology] departments of local authorities and the senior leaders in children's services. And you can talk to the IT people who say, 'Look, I can develop this type of capability,' but it hasn't yet dawned on some of the senior leaders how they could shape that to create products that would really assist and strengthen their family working. And there's something about trying to bring those two skill sets, which are quite different, because one is a people-orientated and one is a data-orientated, or digital-orientated, together to create some blue sky thinking.

Sarah: And when you say that relationship working well, what does that look like? What characteristics can you draw out of that? 

Gary: Quite typically, it ends up needing a middle person who can bring those two skill sets together and almost translate between the two. Children's services managers obviously typically come from that profession, so they're people… they want families and children to talk about their experiences. They don't naturally turn to digital products. The data-type people don't understand the life of family working, so you end up almost with a communication barrier between the two skill sets. A lot of local authorities have data and governance boards, but they're not strongly represented by children's services, because they don't see them as particularly helpful in a pressurised, prioritised environment. So, the senior leaders often don't go to some of those meetings or don't play an active part and the way the conversations play out in those meetings are too heavily digitalised, or data-led, to facilitate that blue sky thinking about how the two could come together. So, I haven't entirely worked out what the best model is, but you can see that some connectivity needs to be developed that is different than what currently exists.

Sarah: A shared vision and way to bridge the expertise gap. It's almost about developing a common language. In one sense, this is what we're working on in this project, so we're thinking about how we can actually join up these two things. We're building on the maturity models that are out there. Some of the things that we're thinking about are when you actually start one of these projects, how do we apply that best practice that's well-evidenced in implementation research and project management research, but how do we actually apply it to this thinking? And what are some of those characteristics that we can encourage people to develop to give these types of projects the best chance of surviving and doing what they intend to do? 

Gary: Very often, when you say to DCSs [Directors of Children’s Services] about single digital view, they don't really know what that is, and then you show them a version of it and they go, 'I want that,' because that language, single digital view, or whatever language you use to describe it becomes, like, typical meaningless terms. They don't envisage it as a result of hearing about it. They've got no frame of reference to it, but when they say it's a product, they can immediately see the immense value that would bring to staff. And then, they're on board, but what then happens, they just want it delivered then. They don't want to, you know, have the back office-type arrangements that need to be put in place, so then you need the data people to take that task on.

Sarah: Yes, there are steps to be followed, aren't there? And I think one of the things that we're hoping to articulate as part of this process is what do those steps actually look like? You know, once we can picture the product, people tend to want it, but where do we start? It's not just a matter of going, 'Yes, we're going to do that.' There is a sequence of events that need to take place and, I guess, that largely points to the work that you're doing with DfE, doesn't it? It's thinking about what does that readiness actually look like? 

Gary: As I alluded to earlier, though, you end up selling the art of the 'possible'. You're going to the partnership meetings and saying, 'This is the type of thing that we're talking about. This is what you could design in your local environment to your local strategic priorities,' and that's the direction. Very often, the IT department is already heading in that direction, because they know it's the way to go, but they don't really understand what the final product is going to look like.

[Challenges around data] 

Sarah: Can you talk us through some of the challenges that you face with different data definitions across organisations and how you approach that challenge in terms of data matching and the technologies that you use to overcome that?

Gary: Data matching is obviously critical to the success of this type of work and what that means is that the name and date of birth of a child in one system and the name and date of birth in the child of another system have to be matched together and then those records merged. Now, simply that's quite easy if it all is the same, but sometimes you get Freddie or Frederick, or Fred, and variations, and so you have to design some software that supports the merging of records that don't quite match. They call that 'fuzzy matching' and fuzzy matching is a series of agreed principles as to what you will or won't merge. Fundamentally, if two records have got many different inaccuracies, you cannot merge those records and it would be dangerous to do so in this context.

So, you have to agree an acceptable point where you will allow records to merge. The Ministry of Justice developed some software which is called Splink and they've spent an awful lot of money and development time in creating this software to facilitate matching and merging and a lot of local authorities now returning to Splink, because it's free of charge and it works very well in this space. Quality of data is an issue that's raised by a lot of local authorities as a consequence and a nervous concern about introducing a single digital view. A couple of things I would say about that. It hasn't played out in the real world, so when we have matched the data, the data quality has, actually, in several organisations, proved to be perfectly acceptable and it's never foolproof, but it does not bring out the issues that you might concern yourself about. Secondly, there is some experience that by socialising the information, it makes the person who inputs the data realise the importance of the data and they are keeping better and more accurate inputting of data. And if the data is improved or updated, then it comes through every day as the systems are updated, so you get that improved data, so you're matching and merging. If a date of birth in, say, the school system is made to be correct, then as that comes through overnight it will now then match with the existing record of the child in the other way. So, you do, as you improve your quality, you improve the single digital view as well.

[Strategic benefits of the single digital view of the child] 

Sarah: Great. Thank you. Okay, talk us through the strategic benefits of having a single digital view of the child. 

Gary: There are a lot of practical benefits that have been described, but strategically what you are allowing is a better understanding of the impact or difference that services can make. Having this information all in one place also allows you to manage your services more effectively, because you can better cope with the demand, you can allocate resources more effectively, because you understand risk and vulnerability better than you did before. And obviously, for leaders or commissioners, you've got access to more information, so you can better understand the social issues that will perhaps support the creation of a strategy document or the commissioning of services out in the community. Once you've got that information in your single digital view, you can analyse it, so you can understand trends or patterns or geographical areas, you can layer information on top of other information to do risk stratification, you can work out where demand is in your town or city or area. So, there are a lot of strategic aspects that create better outcomes for you.

Sarah: In the work that you're doing with DfE, do you have a set of outcomes that you're working to or have you articulated outcomes in relation to developing a single view of the child? 

Gary: The outcomes for this piece of work really are enabling the local authority to understand its journey better and to take advantage of the learnings that I've had over the years of trying to introduce this type of system. You will see the national legislation is being drawn up now to have a duty to share information. There's a lot of work going on about a unique identifier for children. There is a lot of work in the government documents that describes frictionless information sharing and multi-agency information sharing coming together more seamlessly and I think a single digital view is seen as a requirement for effective safeguarding. It wouldn't surprise me now to see more regulators either requiring it or seeking out the direction of travel that partner agencies have in regard improving their understanding of the lives of children.

Sarah: Could you expand a bit on the duty to share information? How does that build on the existing statutory requirements?

Gary: The government are putting in place legislation to place a duty for people to share information relating to safeguarding. I obviously haven't seen the full detail of this yet, but my understanding is that this is following on from Josh MacAlister’s review and the desire to get frictionless information sharing. So, what this is doing is it's providing a clear legal basis to share information for the purposes of safeguarding and the promotion of welfare. So, very often safeguarding is perceived as child protection and not early intervention and prevention. So, I think an element of this will support improving information sharing at that lower level of need and also help to demystify some of the worries and concern about the common law duty which is placed upon people, like health, not to disclose information where it's been gathered in a confidential way. That causes a lot of confusion, particularly in the mass arrangements, and I think this legislation will go some way in trying to simplify those arrangements.

Sarah: Yes, it appears to be addressing some of the common reasons for people to not share information. Would that be a fair summary? 

Gary: Yes. I think what Josh MacAlister said in his report was basically that people have self-imposed restraint on safeguarding information sharing, which does not need to be there, because the legislation does equip you already to share to a greater extent than we currently do, but culture has been difficult to break down. So, I think the purpose of a piece of legislation is to totally make it clear that there is legal protection for organisations that are operating in this way.

[Outro] 

Thanks for listening to this Research in Practice podcast. We hope you've enjoyed it. Why not share with your colleagues and let us know your thoughts on Twitter. Tweet us @researchIP. 

[Introduction] 

This is a Research in Practice podcast, supporting evidence informed practice with children and families, young people, and adults.  

Sarah: Hello, and welcome to this podcast about the single digital view of the child. I'm Sarah Rothera, a Research in Practice associate. Today, we are pleased to have Gill Bawler from Somerset Council with us. Gill has worked with local colleagues to develop Transform Family View which is a single digital view of the child. Today she will talk us through some of the factors that make this kind of project possible such as leadership and relationships. She'll also talk us through how sharing information in this way can shape practice and ways of working. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome, Gill. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey to develop a single digital view of the child? 

Gill: I'm Gill Bawler, I work for Somerset Council as a service manager for partnership transformation, and my work with Somerset Council has been a journey which has spanned twelve years. Initially starting as the troubled families, or supporting families programme as it's now known, coordinator, and realising the need to have one view of a young person. Agencies have many fragmented systems, and their systems hold information on the same child, but often through a different lens, and I realised quite quickly that as we were joining together our systems internally, external partnerships were really lacking the ability to understand more around a child and their family and their circumstances, and their associations. So, the work that we were doing, really, with supporting family was the lever to our digital transformation. Thinking about our data culture and the way we work, you know, not just as a local authority but right across our partnerships. I think the biggest piece of work which I do now is around the work with partners and the relationships I have and right across the system, and when I talk about partners, I'm talking about the police, I'm talking about the Department of Work and Pensions.

Our voluntary community sector, they play a huge part in the support of the families, and right across our system. So, enabling them to have access to joined up digital view of a child is really important, too, and, I mean, I'll come onto that later on. But, that was obviously some of the challenges that we faced. So, our single digital view in Somerset is called Transform Family View. It's built on a Power BI dashboard. So, a Microsoft platform. We have a Microsoft Azure Data Lake which is in-house within Somerset Council, and our partnership data which I've worked incredibly hard for the last ten years, is pulled into the dataset. Comes in by varying ways, it can be through secure file transfer tunnels, can be a spreadsheet that's automated and uploaded, and from that it gets matched and merged within our data lake, and then pushed into our Power BIs, our visualisation tool, and that Power BI tool has been incredibly helpful because we're able to assign role bases to it. So, we in effect have one platform which is viewed, but dependent on your role and organisation is the amount of information that you can see within it.

[Developing the dashboard] 

Sarah: Building in the single view of the child, it obviously involves a lot of people. So, you're bringing together a range of different partners from a range of different organisations to share data, to share children and families information, and that comes with certain challenges. Talk us through how you brought people together, and how you overcame some of those challenges as you were developing the dashboard? 

Gill: Yes, absolutely, yes. We did come across, obviously, many challenges. I think the first challenge to think about, you know, and for anybody that's just maybe starting on the journey, is around the information governance, and the fact that we can but should we, and that's really important, and the ethics that wrap around this work. So, that information governance were one of those big challenges, the other challenge I would say is around that relationship building with your partner. The trust amongst the organisations has to absolutely be there, because even if you have the legal basis, the data and protection impact assessment, the data sharing agreements. If the trust isn't there across the two organisations, then that sharing won't happen, and if that sharing doesn't happen then you're missing big parts of that child and family's life within the system, and, having pieces of it missing is almost as important as just not having it all. It's really important that we understand those gaps and lack of information in some cases. So, that partnership. Now, we were really fortunate in Somerset, because I'd worked in Somerset for a long time, and historically I came from the police. So, I'd already worked alongside many of these partners, and that trust was there. So, those relationships were built.

Absolutely, really important when you start to work alongside those partners is that you don't just work alongside the colleague that is at the level that you're at, you need to be coming in at the top strategically. So, there's a strategic buy in to share that information, and you also need to be including those practitioners who are on the ground working, because they need to have an understanding of how this information is being shared, what they can onwardly share with. So, there's two different elements to it. I know that our data protection officer is incredibly busy at the local authority, like many other local authorities. So, actually, we used some funding from the supporting families to buy in dedicated resource for our information governance work, and the other element which has been really helpful for us in Somerset is the Cabinet Office. So, we use a piece of legislation to onwardly share called the Digital Economy Act. Now, that power was built in 2017, and is owned by the Cabinet Office. So, I've worked alongside them from the time that we've been using that piece of legislation, and they now cite Somerset has the highest user of the Digital Economy Act, but what it meant for me is that I had a critical friend to work alongside me, to help me and make sure it was a proper and correct use of that power, and it's been really, really helpful.

So, the Cabinet Office have been incredibly helpful in the work that we've been doing. So, that's, kind of, the first part around the information governance. Obviously, the relationship building absolutely critical, and, then, the final and obviously I'd say the backbone to it, is your IT [Information Technology] architecture, the infrastructure that you have. Because, all this relationship work and the data sharing work is absolutely fine, but if you have nowhere for the data to go once you've secured it in effect, then, obviously, that will be a problem to you. So, you need, in effect, a data warehouse, or a data lake, that the data can be pulled into before it's matched and merged. So, really important, and, data engineers, data scientists, our data visualisation, our Power BI developers, you know, those roles are like gold dust for local authority, and we realised that many years ago, that actually it was hard to find people with those skills to come and work in Somerset Council. So, we started a whole program of work around apprentices. So, started bringing in apprentices who were doing their, sort of, Power BI stroke engineering qualifications, and bringing them in and supporting them through their apprenticeship and almost growing our own.

Sarah: It really illustrates the importance of that leadership culture in building those relationships across organisations, building that trust, bringing things together. It's difficult to imagine how you could really progress without that leadership culture being in place, and growing, and developing as you go through the work. 

Gill: Absolutely.

Sarah: And, on your second point there around the importance of having the right expertise to be able to deliver at a project like this. I think for a long time we really undervalued our data analysts, but they're really at the heart of what we're doing at the moment, aren't they? 

Gill: Absolutely are, yes, absolutely are, and, I think as well, you know, when we built our other version, Transform Family View, rather than the analysts building it. We actually built it with our service users, our lead professionals, our social workers, because them feeling they're part of the solution is really important. I've seen systems built by analysts and very technical, capable people, who it absolutely is not a system that's used because the professionals out on the front line don't feel it fits what they need it to do, and I think that's really important. So, I spent six months working alongside our social workers, our early help teams, and some of our external providers to understand where the frustrations were around that retrieval burden that Josh MacAlister touched on in his report on social care, to really understand those frustrations and then how we can bring that information in.

But, also, how we can visualise it in a way that they understand what it means, because it was really important to me that the system was easy to understand. Some of the technology and the capabilities within our teams are not, sort of, digitally. So, I know we're going to be talking a little bit later on around digital poverty, but actually some of the IT skills of some of our workers are not where we think it might be. So, having a system that was easy to use has meant it's more inclusive, and therefore, we're getting high usage, and therefore it's serving its purpose of providing a practitioner with that single view of a child and family.

Sarah: Yes. That relationship between front line staff and the developers is crucial, isn't it. So, we really need to be developing systems that support practice and shape practice, and, really help with those, the overheads of social work. So, you know, reaching out for information and communication. So, supporting those things that are essential, but they can be time consuming, they can be clunky if our systems aren't working properly, and they can divert social workers away from really important more impactful work. So, the more that we can build those relationships between developers and social works, and really overcome some of those technical challenges that we face in practice. 

Gill: Yes, absolutely. It’s been available to the practitioners since March last year, and previous to that we had an old system that was built on old technology, and we had a different view for internal and then a different platform for external. Now, that was where the challenge was, really, it was trying to keep both systems up to date. So, this new system that was built on the back of funding from the department for education on the digital and data solutions fund has been ground breaking for us. To have that team who is dedicated to the build, and also the funding to be able to do it, and alongside that we wrote a guide, a how to guide for a manager, and a data architect around what needs to be considered, and some of the learnings. Not just from Somerset, but from Bristol as well, you know, we worked really closely with Bristol on that programme of work. So, that's been really helpful for other authorities who are looking at starting the journey, or are maybe stuck in the journey which is obviously a really difficult place to be in.

[Sharing success] 

Sarah: So, your system has been in place for some time now. So, how has the implementation of the single view of the child impacted your work, and the outcomes for children and families? Can you share some success stories that you've had along the way? 

Gill: Yes. So, I think if we just start with the professionals, really. So, professionals, especially in our voluntary community sector, and our schools, we're almost working blind with some families. So, referral would come in and they wouldn't understand who else was involved with the family, that was really crucial, who else is involved. So, being able to show a professional who else is involved with the family and their email address and phone numbers, and I was surprised that professionals were still asking in this day and age for phone numbers, but they felt that they were really important if they were arranging strategy meetings and had to work fairly quickly for the safeguarding of a child. So, we started to pull in phone numbers as well, and that has really helped join up that early help system, and I was contacted by a school a couple of weeks ago who said, 'Access to Transform has absolutely been transformational in me arranging a meeting. I wanted to arrange a team around the family meeting, I'm the parent and family support advisor in the school, I had worries about the child, the head had worries about the child, we knew they were in social housing but we didn't know who the provider was, and, we knew that there were others involved with other members of the family who weren't on role at the school and we didn't know who they were, and we looked to Transform, all the information was there. I sent an email to everybody and the next day I was able to arrange a team around the family meeting, inclusive of all the practitioners who needed to be there alongside the family.' And, that to me, is amazing, because that would not have happened without Transform Family Views. So, that was one really good example, and, another is we have an emergency duty team, who work out of hours on safeguarding concerns, and they were contacted by the police to say 'There was an allegation of a kidnap of a child, and the police had attended the address, and the family have moved and they have no way of knowing the address.' The social care system still had the old address that the police had, because they closed the social care, but when they looked on Transform, the new address had been pulled through from the schools information. So, they sent the police there and they located the child safe and well within ten minutes. Just absolutely a couple of really good examples of when a joined up system is really needed to safeguard that child.

Sarah: Some great examples there of connecting people to people, and connecting people to information, and, I think that's what is really at the heart of these systems, isn't it. It's reducing the amount of work that it takes for busy professionals to actually connect to each other and the information that they need. 

Gill: Yes. Absolutely, and I think as well, you know, people say, 'Oh, you know, it will stop professional conversations.' It absolutely won't, you know it makes more professional conversations happen because they go to that right professional straight away and have those conversations. People are worried that it's a decision making tool, and it's absolutely not, it doesn't make decisions. But what it does, is it aids you to make a better decision based on facts that you have in front of you, and then you can use the information that the families have given you to layer over that, and you've got then a really rich picture of the difficulties that the family are experiencing. Something else which I hadn't thought too much about which is coming up now, is data quality and accuracy and assurance in the data that we have in our systems. So, because Transform Family View is a read only system, everything is automated within it, and there's no ability to edit anything. So, if information comes in on a child with a date of birth that's different to another date of birth for the same child in another system.

The system will create two children, because it doesn't know not to do that. So, what we're able to do then is go back to the data sources and unpick and investigate which is the accurate data there, and then reflect and speak to the data source owner of the inaccurate one and have that accurately changed. So, when the data comes in for the next refresh, the data is updated. So, in effect, its quality assuring the data that we have in all our systems across the partnership, and, again, that's a really good thing for us to be able to do.

Sarah: So, that's a good example of an unexpected benefit of the single view of the child.

Gill: Absolutely.

Sarah: We probably couldn't have anticipated that that would be the outcome. 

Gill: No, no, absolutely not. So, then we think about benefits to families. So, in Somerset many years ago I worked on the [unclear] place programme, and I was looking at families who were high contact of public services, and trying to understand why they were such high contact, and we had examples of perhaps eighteen different organisations working with a family, and unpicking why that was, and the families would tell us that they were assessed to death. They're just constantly assessed, and then another agency comes in to support us, and we're assessed again. So, actually, understanding on Transform Family View when an early help assessment has happened, and the date, and the author of that assessment, and their email address means that the link can be made very quickly. The author of the existing EHA [Early Help Assessment] can speak to the family and if the family are happy that can be shared, and although family circumstances change very quickly, the demographics and the background won't change. So, again, that doesn't need to be redone. So, that just prevents, then, the families telling their story over and over again, which is absolutely incredible.

I spent some time with young people at a youth forum. So, thinking about the ethics of this, it's really important to me that we get it right. So, although we have it on our privacy notice and we've published that, and we've spoken and we've sent out surveys to parents. I wanted to speak to young people about their thoughts around the work that we're doing, and they said to us, 'Actually, if the school knew that CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] were involved with my support, I feel that I might've had a better outcome than the school not knowing.' So, I think that it's really interesting that even the young people are picking up, you know, a CAMHS health organisation joining up with the school for them to understand that support that's being offered. So, I thought that was really important as well. Young people said that they're happy that the information is shared, but they don't want us to use it against them, which is fair enough, and parents who have children who have special educational needs and disability, our parent carer forum.

They said to me, 'We're happy for you to share fact, but we don't want you to share judgement. Sometimes if we've got a child with SEND [Special educational needs and disabilities] we feel we're judged. So, actually if you just share facts, you know, that's fine if it's to help and benefit our children.' So, I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at it as well.

Sarah: Yes, and I think there are assumptions from some children of families that we're already sharing information in this way. 

Gill: Absolutely.

[The voice of children and families] 

Sarah: Yes, yes. Just on the subject of children and families. How do you integrate the voice of children and families into firstly the design of the single view of the child, but also to build on that piece around not having to repeat their own story. I know that you were doing a little bit of thinking around this last time we spoke. 

Gill: Yes. We're still doing some thinking around this, actually, and we're also thinking about the protective factors as well, because it tends to show incidents that have happened, missing episodes, involvement with the police. So, actually, you know, those protective elements we're perhaps not capturing very well. In relation to the voice of the family. So, thinking about what those parents said and only sharing facts. Obviously, it's only the facts that's shared, but we don't share any case notes. So, we share enough information for the system to be useful. So, data minimisation but we don't share anything that would then go onto to become intrusive for families. So, more than would be expected. In relation to the thinking about that voice, we haven't really got much further than we are now around that. So, we have obviously spoken, we've been down to forums and we've spoken to parents, young people, we've published our privacy notices, and we've sent surveys out to many families who've been part of different activities through schools. But, that actual, sort of, voice of the child and then embedding in the build is not something that we've made much progress on yet. But, absolutely something that we're looking at.

[Looking forward] 

Sarah: Your system is already doing the basics very well, and I know that you're thinking about the direction of travel, and building additional pieces to your system. So, how do you see the future of the single view of the child evolving in the next few years, and how could you integrate emerging technologies such as AI [Artificial Intelligence] into your platform? 

Gill: So, we've already started looking at targeted risk models. So, thinking about the predictive analytics. We were funded by the Careers Enterprise Company about eighteen months ago to look at rebuilding the RONI [Risk of NEET indicator] tool. So, most local authorities have a risk of need indicator, which is a very old tool built just basically on whether the status of the child and their attendance levels and suspensions, exclusions. So, we wanted to re-look at that, and think, 'Are there other factors within a child's life where that child has gone onto to become an early school leaver, or a NEET [Not in Education, Employment, or Training], as they're often referred to, not in education, employment and training, and, actually, if we overlay what we know about the cohort onto our cohort for young people at the moment. Could we start to understand who looks likely to go onto become not in education, employment and training? So, that started to become really effective in the work that we're doing with our careers leads. So, we've built a specific page within that on our Transform Family View, and that page is accessed by careers leads, designated safeguarding leads, and some of our pupil referral units heads. So, that's a really interesting way of looking at it, and, now we're looking at exclusions and whether we can lay a similar risk model to young people who are excluded. So, that's a big piece of work for our data scientists, we're starting to look at AI and how it can support us with the population of our education healthcare plans.

So, our EHCPs [Education Health and Care Plans], there is quite a backlog with the preparation of these plans. So, we're starting to work with AI to see whether it can actually do build those plans for us, and then we can have the professional, basically, top and tailing it and making sure it's accurate. That is starting to show really good benefits, and at the moment we outsource this work. So, that would be a massive time saving and a cost saving to Somerset as well if we could look at that, and, also, a benefit for families. Because, they're waiting such a long time for their assessments, and then if we can obviously speed the process up that would be really helpful. We're looking at whether we can add in a complex search capability to our digital view which would pull from our case notes.

So, we're starting to think about whether we can, sort of, link up the case management system and the single view like that, which is really important. We're building a criminal justice page. So, our social workers and our family intervention workers have told us that even though we give them limited police information, it still doesn't help, it doesn't give them enough. So, they need to know more about the situation when there was criminality involved, whether it was the adult or the child. So, we're looking at having a page which will include probation data, data from the police, data from our youth justice team, and information on our prevention work, and some of our choice of consequences and our courses that we've run for children around prevention. And then, start to think about courts and whether we could pull in maybe, sort of, court orders into that, to really give that whole overview of what's going on in relation to criminal justice, that's a good piece of work at the moment. And, I guess, the final thing, which has been really helpful for schools at the moment is, we've built a schools dashboard, maybe two and a half, three years ago, and that's piloted in four schools. From that, the alerts of police involvement come in overnight to the school. So, building that into our transform family view as a page specifically for our designated safeguarding leads and our heads would reduce the need for the [unclear] notification domestic alerts to go backwards and forwards, and sometimes, not come in in a timely way.

What we absolutely want is if something happens to a young person of an evening, we want the schools to know about it in the morning when that young person comes in, so they're ready to offer them support, so it can be wrapped around at the appropriate time. So, that would be a really good piece of work when we've built that.

[Predictive analytics] 

Sarah: Yes. So, I think, with predictive analytics, there's a lot of interest in it but there's a lot of hesitance as well, isn't there. I think, early projects with predictive analytics, they ventured a little bit more into the decision-making processes than, I think, people were really comfortable with, and they had very poor predictive capabilities. There was a whole raft of ethical concerns that arose from that. But what I've noticed is that local authorities are tending to go towards the predictive capabilities, where there's no decision-making, it operates at an alert system. It's at that bottom end of the continuum, where there isn't really any automation or decision-making capabilities, or any of those sorts of things. And there's a human in the loop. There's a human sitting there, looking at the information. That person is being flagged, possibly sooner than they would otherwise have been. And then, a human is actually taking action and taking steps. And you mentioned earlier that there are some myths associated with a single view of the child, and likewise, with some of the emerging technologies as well. And the example that you gave was around single view of the child making decisions, which we know that it's not doing. What are some other myths that you've come across in the work you've been doing? Whether that's with professionals or with children and families that we can debunk?

Gill: Yes. I think, one of the myths is around, if you have this professionals won't talk to each other. And so, that's, obviously, the first one. And it absolutely, you know, has been proven across the system already to get those professionals talking. So, that's, yes, I was quite surprised by that one. I didn't think that would be something that would have, sort of, come out, but it absolutely has. We've, obviously, talked about the decision-making. The data accuracy, you know, how can you absolutely do all this and pull all this in in an automated way without any manual uploads, and actually be accurate. We don't trust what the data says. So, what we've had to do to overcome that is we've had to put a tool tip over the data. So, where you see the data in the system, you'll hover over it, and the tool tip tells you where the data came from, when it was last updated, how often it comes into the system. So, we assure the practitioner that the data they're seeing is accurate. We also do audits now, we do monthly audits on the system. So, we audit any internal professionals using it, about four, external professionals, but then, also the data it holds in the system. So, then, I look at a young person, and if I know they've got a CAMHS involved or they're supported by the voluntary community sector, or they have a number of exclusions, that's checked as well. And at the same time, we also-, if it's in relation to a school, check their privacy notice that they are publishing the fact that they do share information with the partnership in relation to Transform Family View, and the explanation around that.

So, how can you join all this information up without consent? And people will talk to me… still talk to me about that and say, you know, 'Do you write to the families and tell them that you're doing this work?' And the answer is, 'No, we do this work using our public task legal basis for the purposes of safeguarding, and we engage with the family, we explain to them what we're doing. We gain their cooperation, but we don't ask for their consent.' And then, I go on to talk about how consent needs to be explicit and freely given. So, we've done a big piece of work with the Somerset Safeguarding Partnership around the use of consent and the use of public task, and how we need to start with the right legal basis to start with, with the work that we're doing with families.

[Information governance] 

Sarah: And that information governance piece that you do at the start, that's quite a detailed piece of work, isn't it? So, the process is… perhaps you can describe the process for us, Gill? Just talk us through what that information governance process looks like at the beginning? How do you decide what is proportionate and necessary, and what purposeful limitations do you place on the data that you decide to share? 

Gill: Yes, that's a really good question. So, the very start of any of the data sharing is the data protection impact assessment. So, it identifies what the sharing is, and the risks involved with it, and what we can do to mitigate those risks. And then, we do that internally at Somerset Council. And then, the partner who we're looking at sharing with will also do a DPIA [Data Protection Impact Assessment], as they're known. What we've been starting to do now is, we've got a colleague working in the NHS IG [Information Governance] Central Self-Commissioning Unit. She's doing a template for us for a DPIA because lots of local authorities are having to write them. So, actually, if we had one template we can just populate, it would be really helpful to give us information around the things we need to be considering when we're looking at those risks and mitigation. So, once the DPIA has been agreed from ourselves, we then usually share it with the partner who we're looking to share data with. They then use it to, in effect, write their own DPIA. Once we've got our Data Protection Impact Assessments, we look at them and we work alongside our data protection officer to understand whether it's proportionate, and relevant, and actually, the risks, the mitigations we're putting in will outweigh those risks. And actually, it's, you know, for the right purpose. Alongside all that, we're looking at the legal gateways because you need a legal gateway to be able to share this information. So, what are those legal gateways, and obviously, around safeguarding of children, we have the public task legal basis. And then, you start to think about the data protection act, and actually, are you following all the guidance within the Data Protection Act, so you make sure you've got everything in place.

And once you're in place with all that, you can then start to think about what information it is that you need to be pulling into the system to be useful, but not so much to be intrusive, and I think, that was the parts that you were talking about then and you referred to, the how do we work out what we need? It's really tricky. So, often we use our service requirements we've done through our work with our practitioners. I look at user stories that people have sent me. You know, 'It's really good, but wouldn't it be great if it could be doing this?' And they identify the rationale around why it would be useful to have certain types of information. Going back to, obviously, the data owners and then, to the professionals. And a good example of that is probation. So, probation are currently accessing Transform Family View, but some of the information isn't detailed enough for them, such as, they need to know things like when a case closed to social care and why it closed, what the rationale was around the closure. But none of the other partners have the means to see that information. So, it's a very fine line between what information you show to which partner, and that's where the role-based profile will be really useful and really helpful. And once we have all that in place, we can then start to think about how the information will come across, and the security around sending that information. Obviously, the most secure way is through secure file transfer tunnels, but they have to be built between our organisations. So, it's huge amounts of work that need to happen.

And then, the other… I guess, once you have the data-sharing agreement in place and the data protection impact, and you've agreed how the changes are coming in, how do you help professionals understand around the data sharing? Because it's alright having these documents, but professionals on the ground need to understand. So, if it's twelve o'clock at night and our social worker is in A&E [Accident and Emergency] with a family, and a nurse comes, and they need to talk, you know, how do they understand that they have got the ability to talk about those individuals, and that governance that's wrapped around them.

[Digital poverty] 

Sarah: There's a lot of moving parts in there, isn't there? So, there's quite a journey to go on to develop a single view of the child. So, you've talked so far about that leadership culture, you've talked about building… it's the technical systems that you need to build, there are challenges there to overcome in terms of bringing that information together into a data lake, and making it accessible for people. But what you've described is that you don't want to offer too much information because you don't want to be in a situation where you're limiting the conversations that people then follow up with. So, there's, kind of, a balance to be struck there, isn't there? There's what's legal and what's necessary to share, but also, putting those purposeful limitations in there. So, you're still encouraging that professional relationship and enabling people to find a starting point to make a connection. Digital poverty affects millions of people in the UK, and this affects children, and families, and professionals, and this looks different for different people. So, this could be a lack of connectivity to the internet, it could be a lack of access to devices, it could be IT systems are out-of-date and a little bit clunky. It also could relate to digital skills and confidence in participating in online life. Now, there are a lot of negative outcomes that arise from digital poverty. What issues have you seen with digital poverty as you've worked on your project? And what needs to happen to ensure that we can adopt these technologies that enable more efficiency more widely in the social care sector? 

Gill: It's interesting that you ask that question. It's a real problem in Somerset, we have lots of areas of rural isolation with very limited digital capabilities. And in spite of us living in 2024, there are still huge areas of Somerset where we can't get any connection to anything, and that does cause a problem, not just for the families who are trying to manage and live in those areas, but our professionals who are working within them as well. You know, we're trying to have a culture now, where they come back to the office for limited time, and they do lots of their admin work with the families, and they work alongside them with their systems. So, that really does have a problem. And I touched on it earlier as well, is that the technical capabilities of some of our staff, you know, they didn't join to be technically wizards. They joined to work with children and families. So, some of their technical skills are not of a standard where they can use systems that are too complicated. Now, to help us with that, we have managed to build contextual launch buttons in our systems, so they can go into all the systems without, in effect, them feeling like they're within one. So, an example of that is, we've built an LCS [Liquidlogic Children's System] and an EHM [Early Help Module] button, which is our children social care system through Liquid Logic System C into Transform. So, if they're on the child's system, sorry, the child's record, in Transform Family View, they can go straight into the child's record in LCS or EHM, if they've got permissions. And similarly, we have SIDER in Somerset, which is our Somerset Integrated Digital Electronic Records, which is our joined-up health records, and we have a launch button in Transform Family View for that as well.

So, a social worker can go into their own system from Transform or into the joined-up digital health record of a child to self-serve their own health data requirements for that child, and once they're in LCS or EHM, we have a button going back to Transform. So, this has helped, and this button has only been in place for a couple of weeks now, but already, we've seen a significant increase in the usage because they haven't had to find the Transform Family View app, in effect, they can just go into it through their systems. So, that's one way we've understood that the technology capabilities are quite limited from some of our teams, and actually, enabled something to be done, a solution for that, to prevent them having to go into different systems. So, that's been really helpful. I think what needs to be done… oh, it's a very good question. I don't know the answer, Sarah, I don't know what else we can do in Somerset to help our families become more connected and their digital devices to work. I don't know the answer to that.

Sarah: I mean, to me, it feels like something that individual local authorities can't really resolve on their own. I think, largely, it's a big infrastructure issue, isn't it? Thinking about it at a national level, rather than a local level for the connectivity piece.

Gill: Yes, absolutely. I know that our libraries, obviously, have Wi-Fi and computers available for our families to use, so that's really helpful. But again, being so rural in Somerset, 250 square miles, actually, public transport was also a problem. So, it's great having the access in the libraries that they can use, but how do they get to the libraries? You know, so that's another problem in itself. So, it's a real problem for Somerset. For our families, for our children, for our parents, and for our professionals as well.

Sarah: And I wonder what it's going to mean, with AI emerging at the pace that it's emerging now, it feels a little bit like there's an equalities issue that is starting to emerge. I think, digital poverty is already an equalities issue. But with people being unable to share in the benefits of AI, and what that can do in terms of day-to-day life, being able to, sort of, really share the benefits of AI means that, I think, that we do need to address the digital poverty issue because we are going to see a widening inequalities gap. 

Gill: Absolutely.

Sarah: And it will start to affect people's education, employment, and opportunities in life more widely, I think. We're doing a separate piece on AI at the moment, Gill, just as an aside from this. 

Gill: Yes. No, that's helpful.

Sarah: Yes, which has been fascinating, by the way. 

Gill: Yes, I bet it has.

Sarah: Yes. I'm so excited about it. I've started blogging about AI. 

Gill: That's amazing.

[Working with the Department for Education] 

Sarah: So, let's focus in a little bit on the work that Somerset is doing with DfE [Department for Education] and twelve local authorities. So, Somerset has recently been awarded a DfE grant, to work with twelve local authorities to evaluate their readiness to implement a single digital view of the child. Tell us a little bit about that work?

Gill: Yes. So, this work has followed on from some other pieces of work, and I've already touched on the information governance work, and the NHS colleague who has helped us with that work, around the Data Protection Impact Assessment template that she's putting together, because we were given a grant a couple of years ago to write an information sharing data toolkit and template around tier two. We worked alongside the DfE for that piece of work, and the NHS, and actually, we've been able to publish that and really help some of our local authority colleagues improve their robustness of their data-sharing arrangements across their partnerships. So, that was really helpful. And then, following on from that, we actually gave support to nine safeguarding partnerships along… to the development of their tier ones, where we were looking at those safeguarding partners. So, the police, the local authority, and health coming together for those safeguarding arrangements. So, following on then from that, and the work that we were doing around our Transform Family View, our single view of a child, the DfE realised that there was a gap in some local authorities' ability to build such a product, and we really wanted to enable some effective support to those local authorities, so they could take from the starting place where they are, to that place where they could actually then build the view. So, it's basically, some gap analysis work. So, because we've got such limited time between now and the end of March, we really felt that we could only work with twelve local authorities. So, we looked for six local authorities who were of a low maturity in relation to their data culture and six who were more mature. We put out an expression of interest, we circulated that nationally, and we had a huge response.

And people really understood that we weren't going to build their system for them. But actually, what we could do is look at their current position and their goal, and then, we could look at what needed to be done to get from one place to the other, using the learnings from Bristol, and from Somerset, and our how-to guides, and all the work that we've done to really help them. So, we're doing the gap analysis, we're looking… we are doing it through interviews, really, with key people within the local authority. So, that's, obviously, the project lead for the single universal child view. The DCS, so the director of children's services. The early help head of service, the IG [Information Governance] manager, and the digital data lead. So, interviewing those key people within their organisation, understand their views, where they need to go, what they need to get there, help them with some workshops and some, sort of, strategic conversations if they're stuck. And then, put together a report at the end explaining, really, the steps they need to take to get them into that place. Alongside that, and this is the most advantageous piece of it, will be, to work alongside us to get from that position now to that scope and report at the end, they will have the benefit of us working alongside them and going to their workshops, and their strategic meetings. So, it's a really good offer. You know, it's, obviously, free for the local authorities and funded by that grant from the DfE.

Sarah: Sounds like interesting work. What key factors do you consider when you're assessing a local authority's readiness to implement a single digital view of the child? 

Gill: So, I mean, many of those things that I've spoken about already. So, do they have the infrastructure to receive information data? So, a data lake or a data warehouse. What are their information governance arrangements? What are their relationships with their partners like? Are they receiving police data, data from the DWP, so understanding all of that. Thinking about their experience in their current team to build the infrastructure, the pipeline, so whether they've got capacity in their data engineering team, even if they have data engineers at all. And support from the senior leaders, and we've talked, again, about that. But that's just so important. You know, is there buy-in from the senior leadership team that this work will happen? You know, is there a proper project initiation document? Is it embedded in their transformation plans? So, those are some of the areas that are considered. And then, any user requirement work. Have they even considered working alongside the end users? Because many of them will not have thought about that, and will, again, be thinking about a product built by a BI [Business Intelligence] developer, that then just goes into the service. So, that's really interesting, picking on that as well because as we talked about that, you know, no front-end should ever be built without that feedback and that buy-in from the practitioner.

Sarah: And so, the project is in its early days, but what have you learnt so far about local authorities' readiness? 

Gill: Some areas are very mature, and actually, just need minimal support to get them over that final push, to be able to, sort of, release a product. Some have got very huge data teams, you know, sort of, twenty plus in their data teams, which is surprising. Others think that they are very close, but actually, when we unpick it and we talk through, especially around the ethics, around the actual development of the front-end, realise that they might not be quite as close as they thought. And some are a very long way off, and actually, want our support to help them tell that story to their strategic lead, so it can really be seen as the way forward.

[Outro]  

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