The Department for Education (DfE) has said it wants to raise the capabilities of digital systems used in children’s social care in order to overcome current shortcomings in data sharing.
It has highlighted the plan as one of three strategic objectives within its Children’s Social Care Data and Digital Strategy, published last week.
The others are to support a strong data culture and leadership and to improve the data that is collected and shared. There is also a plan for a national dashboard.
These come in response to findings from the department’s dialogue with social care practitioners that systems and technology often fail to meet their demands, making it difficult to retrieve and use information and develop a holistic view of a child.
Its objective for improvement in the field involves establishing standards and principles to provide move consistency in systems, data and sharing processes. While it has already evaluated relevant data analytics tools and tests how open data and technology standards can be used in the sector, it is now planning a series of further measures.
Working with councils
These include publishing guidance developed with the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation on the responsible use of analytics, building its understanding of digital systems for social care, working with local authorities to understand what they need from case management systems, and supporting innovation in the sector.
The DfE will also evaluate existing resources such as the NHS Spine and the Child Protection – Information Sharing (CP-IS) service, and how automated data collections might reduce the administrative burden and increase the frequency and timeliness of data.
“Children, young people, and families will be better able to share their stories through improved technology, which can capture their voice,” the strategy document says. “Improved data and case management systems will reduce the need for them to repeatedly tell their story, and ease their transition between services, for example from children’s to adult social care.”
Efforts to strengthen the data culture and leadership will include updating advice on information sharing for practitioners, helping local safeguarding partnerships to use data sharing agreement templates and governance arrangements, and evaluating existing tools, advice and training products.
The DfE will also carry out an assessment of the sector’s digital and data capacity, capability and skills, and look at how to support local authority leaders.
Family courts and kinship care
Work on the objective to improve the collection and use of data will include a pilot of a resource linking DfE and family courts data to better understand the national picture of permanent kinship care arrangements. Also, when parliamentary time allows and subject to agreement by the Information Commissioner’s Office, it will work with Social Work England to develop its ability to share information.
In addition, the department plans to publish a children’s social care dashboard, including indicators on the day-to-day delivery of care, which brings data together in one place to help understand the whole system progress. The indicators are expected to evolve over time, moving towards a focus on outcomes rather than processes.
The document says the dashboard will be used by local authorities, the future regional care co-operatives, safeguarding partners and central government bodies.
All of the data types used in the first iteration are already collected and deemed suitable for publication.
The minister for children, families and wellbeing, David Johnstone, emphasised the importance of the strategy in response to a parliamentary question on the collection of data on parents whose children have been removed from their care.
Relevant to experience
“The department appreciates the need to improve the data available about children’s social care, including by making it more relevant to the experience of children, young people and families,” he said.
“That is why the department has published a data and digital strategy for children’s social care. This strategic approach will provide the opportunity to map and understand the data needs of the children’s social care sector as a whole and seek to address this over time. This will enable a better understanding of the system and support the planning and delivery of services.”
He added: “Existing statutory data is captured about the child and does not capture the complex nature of families such as, for example, where siblings to not live in the same family home.
Addressing data gaps in children’s social care will be a long term endeavour due to the need to agree data definitions and standards, as well as redesign local authority and departmental systems before rolling out nationally.”
