Child Level Data Project

Project Goals

Local authorities have a wealth of data that they use to manage the services that they provide to Londoners. Within each local authority, this data is used to ensure that the right services are delivered to the people who need it most when they most need it. A considerable amount of this data is supplied to the departments of the Government who have responsibility for the various elements of service delivery within a local authority. The data that these departments publish only partially serves the regional needs for data to help identify and inform regional issues.

There is great potential therefore within the ALDCS if this data can be organised securely, ethically and legally in a way that will enable the LIIA to maximise its use to:

• Give a deeper understanding of the problems DCS’ are trying to address
• Identify areas where, by working together, LAs can achieve synergies
• Highlight good practice which can be adapted and adopted regionally and locally
• Track the impact of changes on the outcomes that matter
• Provide an early warning of building pressures within the region
• Navigate a safe course through a crisis like the pandemic
• Work with partners to improve services delivered in partnership

Phase II of the child-level data project has two core elements:

1. Develop and roll out the Infrastructure needed to make the sharing of child-level data from the 33 LAs in London possible within an ethical, legal and secure framework
   • Produce standard Information Governance (IG) documentation in consultation with Information Governance for London (IGfL).
   • Prepare the ‘pipeline’ to take in and clean large datasets ready for analysis.
   • Develop a pan-London data network to allow for the safe transfer of data from LAs to the LIIA data & intelligence team using our own secure data -processing platform developed with and hosted by Social Finance.
2. Develop Analyses Valued by London’s Children’s Services Leaders
   • Supporting the LIIA Workstreams on Adolescent Safeguarding and Workforce. This would mean supplying more detailed analysis than it is possible to do from the SFRs alone (eg segmentation by age, ethnicity and gender of London adolescent cohorts for our Adolescent Risk work including Child Exploitation).
   • Expanding analysis possible
   • Supporting other programmes
   • Supporting research and work with partners in this region and sector

The plan for the CLD project is to use the infrastructure created (or platform) to take existing structured datasets and produce sophisticated analysis to support the aims of the LIIA. This will be done by sharing the data in four ways;

• Back to each LA in a form that they can use for their own analysis
• Through a Power BI platform allowing a London-wide view of the data down to an LA level
• As a dataset (which may be partially or wholly pseudonymised) to be used by approved researchers for the benefit of children, young people and their families in London
• To support other work, programmes and initiatives in London at the direction of the LIIA Steering Board and ALDCS

Milestones

Partners

Information Governance for London (IGfL)