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Data and information

Where is Scotland in 2024?

Data collection, analysis, and access continue to be major barriers to improving services, understanding outcomes and measuring the progress Scotland is making to #KeepThePromise. There are many organisations and projects which have the potential to address these barriers, but most are at an early stage and their impacts are not yet being felt by children, young people, families, and care experienced adults.

At present, data collection is largely experienced by the workforce as a burden. Reporting requirements are not aligned and take up a disproportionate amount of the workforce’s capacity. There are still gaps in data, especially regarding equalities information, as well as barriers – both technical and cultural - to the timely sharing of information within and between organisations.

Efforts to improve data include developing indicators and performance frameworks, as well as reviewing social work statistics. Some work has started to identify ways of streamlining reporting and increasing information sharing, but more work and investment are needed to ensure Scotland is able to use the best possible information for decision making and monitoring progress.

Data and information

Where does Scotland need to be by 2030?

By 2030, Scotland will have taken a different approach to how it collects data and information.

It will collect, analyse and use data that shows the whole person in context. Those who collect data will proactively listen to the experiences of children, young people, families, and care experienced adults, and those who support them, and that information will be treated as valuable evidence.

Data will be readily understood to be more than numbers alone and will also include qualitative measures so there is a holistic picture of the experiences of children, young people, families, and care experienced adults, the processes they encounter in and around the ‘care system’, and their outcomes.

This means:

  • The data Scotland collects will be of high quality and common gaps, such as a lack of equalities information, will be addressed. Incomplete data will no longer be a barrier to data linkage or use. Data will be joined up, allowing people and organisations to see entire journeys and changes over time.
  • Those who collect data will proactively think about data linkage in order to minimise duplication of effort and provide as complete and holistic view as possible. Joined up data will also improve accountability for outcomes instead of just activities or inputs.
  • The workforce will have the capacity and skills to use this high quality, holistic data in decision making and service design and not just in reporting and research. Services will therefore be designed on the basis of need - backed by diverse, strong data and evidence - rather than on an acceptance of how the system has always operated.
Where does Scotland need to be by 2030?

The route map to get there

Focus must be on the fact that money is not always focused on the right things and budgets are decreasing, leading to overstretched services and increasing numbers of families in poverty. There are clear tensions in what Scotland says it wants for its children and families, and what it is doing with the resources it has. For progress to be made, work must prioritise resolving this to ensure the money that is spent is clearly aligned to need and impact across the 'care system' and all adjacent systems.

Consideration must be given to how to increase analytical skills and capacity within all organisations to work with different kinds of data and enable better use of data for improvement, with a focus on what matters to children, young people, families, and care experienced adults. Local data needs to be fit for purpose and easily accessible so practitioners and leaders are not waiting for national, annual statistics.

Consideration must be given to how to develop effective data systems and better alignment of monitoring and reporting processes around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), corporate parenting and the promise.

Consideration must be given to how to collect data about what happens to young people leaving care as well as the outcomes associated with having been in care at any point. Listening to those with experience of care and valuing their stories will provide data for further improvement.

Consideration must be given to how to promote and support sharing ‘stories of change’ and good practice within and between organisations – including experiences around information-sharing.

There should be exploration as to how the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care and the Digital Strategy for Scotland, both published by the Scottish Government, can support the aims of the promise regarding data. Particular consideration should be given as to how the ‘Framework for Action’ for data standards in Scotland’s public sector can be linked with other ongoing data improvement projects.

Improvement Scotland will continue to work with the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government, COSLA, Solace, Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Government to deliver phase 2 of the Local Government Data Platform project.

The improvements to data on care leavers that Scottish Government has committed to will take effect.

Scottish Government will lead on development of data items into Children Looked After in Scotland Statistics (CLAS) to understand the reasons for children being separated from their siblings when this occurs.

Scottish Government will consider how to integrate and use data already available which reflects children's experiences of their sibling relationships (e.g. children's rights and wellbeing data via children's rights plans and advocacy data).

Data and information related recommendations accepted by the Scottish Government from the Hearings System Working Group will be progressed. This includes:

  • developing improved mechanisms to better capture data to understand the impact of voluntary measures and why children are re-referred to the Reporter. (Recommendation 4.4.5)
  • exploring (through the Redesign Board) ways to effectively and more consistency collect, share and learn from data across the children’s hearings system (Recommendation 13.3).
  • supporting local authorities to hold and provide the data to inform and support national and local understanding of the implementation, impact and outcome of decisions made by the children’s hearings system.

Work on the 45 actions in the Scottish Government’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 will be completed. This includes improvements to the Looked After Children, Child Protection, Growing Up in Scotland and School Leaver Attainment datasets.

Between now and 2030, The Promise Scotland will continue to support organisations to map the data currently collected and used by those in and around the ‘care system’, and to better understand their own data through the use of The Promise Data Map tool.

The actions outlined in the Voice foundation are fully embedded at every stage to progress actions on Data and information.

What is helping?

There are a wide variety of data improvement projects currently taking place in Scotland. Some are directly connected to the implementation of the promise – including monitoring and improvement - while others have broader aims but are working towards some of the same strategic goals of having easier access to better public sector data. There are also good examples of data improvements and information sharing.

In 2021 the National Hub for Child Death Reviews (CDR) was created to ensure a quality review is undertaken following the death of every child in Scotland. This includes all live born children up to the date of their 18th birthday, or 26th birthday for care leavers who are in receipt of aftercare or continuing care at the time of their death. The Hub’s focus is to use evidence to inform practice to reduce the number of child and young people’s deaths in Scotland and to report annually on its findings.

In February of this year, Scottish Government published revised guidance which clarifies it is the responsibility of Local Authorities to notify Scottish Ministers when there has been a death of a 'looked after' child or young person. This information is not published by Scottish Government but is shared with Scottish Ministers who have powers to request further information if it is required. In March 2024, Health Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate published an overview of learning arising from the first year of the National Child Death Review implementation. They have also published a data overview report.

The Promise Collective was established in 2022 in order to help align the improvement work impacting on children and families in Scotland. The group is co-chaired by The Promise Scotland, COSLA and Scottish Government, and the current membership includes CELCIS, Who Cares? Scotland, Improvement Service, Care Inspectorate, Public Health Scotland, Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. The Promise Collective enables partnership working and sharing of information, and activity is underway across organisations to monitor and report progress.

In June 2022 Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR) published the full report of Engaging With Children, delivered by Children in Scotland. This project was aimed at exploring and understanding young people’s views about their data.

The Promise Progress Framework has been developed by COSLA, Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland to assess ‘how is Scotland doing in its progress towards keeping the promise?’. The Promise Progress Framework uses multiple data sources to guide a high-level understanding of the national story of progress across initial key aims of the promise. It uses existing data to avoid adding to the data collection burden and it will be openly available to support collective understanding and accountability for keeping the promise. The initial key aims have been aligned to Plan 24-30.

Scottish Government’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 contains 45 actions, intended to improve the equality evidence. It includes improvements to the Children Looked After in Scotland, Child Protection, Growing Up in Scotland and School Leaver Attainment datasets.

As part of this strategy, Scottish Government has committed to:

  • Work with data providers to improve the completeness of the equality data they have access to for analysis.
  • Improve data utility, including data linkage.
  • Produce more detailed analysis of data already collected.
  • Carry out new analysis of substantial data sources, such as the Census, where new data is expected to come on stream.
  • Share good practice to increase the confidence and competence in the collection, analysis and use of equality evidence.

The National report on Core Wellbeing Indicators of the Children, Young People and Families (CYPF) Outcomes Framework was published in September 2023. Phase 2 of the CYPF Outcomes Framework includes developing data focused on more specific aspects of wellbeing, including care experience and family support.

The Information Commissioner’s Office are looking at information rights of care experienced people. They are committed to improving the support they provide to both people who grew up in the care system in the UK and the organisations that hold their information.

The ‘What Matters?’ questions were created from what children and families told the Independent Care Review about what was important to them. The ‘what matters’ questions provide a way of interrogating data that is currently used for its value in relation to what matters to children and families and can be used as an improvement tool for both data and practice.

Administrative Data Research UK (ADRUK) have created ‘The Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset’. This dataset brings together data of care placements and the legal basis for children being in the care of Local Authorities across Scotland. It covers 2008-2019 and includes 60,000 school-aged children over 70,000 episodes of care. The Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset can be linked to a wide range of other data available in Scotland, including data on children attending publicly funded schools.

New experimental statistics from the Scottish Government released in August of 2023. This data set was used to identify children who have been 'looked after' at point, for any duration throughout childhood, rather than just in the previous year. There is more work to be done to determine how to best use and interpret this data in the annual statistics, but it gives Scotland access to more nuanced information than ever before.

This dataset is also being used for ongoing research, including:

  • Permanently Progressing? Building secure futures for children in Scotland.
  • Investigating health outcomes for care experienced children.
  • Growing up in kinship care.
  • Stability of patterns of care for Children in Scotland.
  • Infants born into care in Scotland.

As a result of data work through the Staying Together and Connected National Implementation Group, and in collaboration with Local Authorities, four new data items have been agreed and will be included in the annual national data collection 'Children Looked After in Scotland' (CLAS) from 2023-24.

The first Health and Wellbeing Census 2021-22 of school aged children and young people was published in February 2023, including experimental statistics that form part of the Children, Young People and Families Outcomes Framework Core Wellbeing Indicator Set.

The Local Government Data Platform is a programme to deliver improvements in the way Local Government manages and uses data. It will support streamlined and automated collection, exchange, validation, enhancement, visualisation and presentation of data.

Data Hub, run by Improvement Service, is an online data matching and cleansing solution for the Scottish public sector. The Data Hub is free to use for Scottish Local Authorities and partner organisations.

Data Loch is a service that works to bring together health and social care data in the South-East of Scotland. The partnership between the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian launched in July 2022, with the goal of understanding and improving their data, as well as to providing safe access for researchers.

Research Data Scotland is a partnership between the Scottish Government, some of Scotland’s top universities, and several public bodies. These partners are working together to make it easier and quicker for researchers to access and use public sector data. Projects include designing a ‘Researcher Access Service’ intended to simplify and speed up access to existing public sector data for researchers, the creation of an Equalities Protected Characteristic Dataset, the Scottish Safe Havens Steering Group, and the Scottish Data for Research Alliance.

Who must act?

Here is what matters to children and families

People who make decisions that impact my life are making sure that they use the best possible information to do so.

People who support me are making sure they know what information they have, and they are using it to make my experiences better.

People who support me are making sure that information is shared at the right time, with the right people so it can really help and make a difference to me.

The information that is used to make decisions that impact me, my family and the support we receive, is information about things that actually matter to us.

I have ownership of my information, I can access and shape my records easily and I can decide who I want to share it with or not.

My views and experiences, and the views and experiences of people who are important in my life are recorded, included and acted on in a meaningful way.

Find out more about the what matters questions here.

Also connected to this theme

Mapping

This is how Plan 24-30 relates to other frameworks and plans

Independent Care Review conclusions  Plan 21-24 priority area
the promise pg.114 Building capacity
  Planning
  Supporting the workforce

 

 

UNCRC GIRFEC
Articles 3; 20 Safe
Concluding observations 12a-e; 22a-d Healthy
  Active
  Nurtured
  Achieving
  Respected
  Responsible
  Included