Helping local authorities make better use of information on children in need: Data Analysis Network for Children's Services
Wales Office of Research and Development for Health & Social Care (National Assembly for Wales).
Six Welsh authorities were participating members of the Network: Pembrokeshire,
Swansea, Rhondda-Cynon-Taff, Newport, Wrexham and Gwynedd.
The Data Analysis Network was established to assist local authorities to improve the ways in which they gather, analyse and make use of information about their services to children in need, in particular those children who are placed in care or accommodation.
Questionnaires, spreadsheets and workshop discussions were used to identify problems and suggest ways in which local authorities can improve their use of information.
- Most local authorities use a range of different paper- and computer-based systems for recording data on looked after children. These disparate systems co-exist uneasily, with frequent incompatibilities and discrepancies in the
data.
- Computer-based information systems in current use are often structured around a series of bureaucratic processes which do not reflect the needs of practice.
- Data entry tends to be an additional, separate, repetitive and rather onerous chore, whereas it should be simply a part of the normal way of achieving a particular task such as taking a referral, making a placement, or assigning a case.
- Practitioners are less likely to record information accurately and keep it up to date if the systems they use do not enable them to make use of that information in their daily work.
- More priority needs to be given to defining and obtaining outputs from computer-based information systems and to
their use in day-to-day practice and management. Case
summaries, chronologies, practitioner caseloads, lists of
reviews due and similar routine outputs should be available directly from system menus.
- Statistical returns tend to be perceived as a periodic research chore conducted by specialist policy staff to
satisfy the demands of senior management or an external
authority rather than as a routine function of management
at all levels to monitor and improve outcomes.
- Most of the data in ‘management information systems’ are generated and gathered by practitioners and would be more accurate and complete if those systems served practitioners better and they themselves were involved in interpreting the results and applying them to improve
practice.
- Local authorities can generally aggregate and report the numbers of children whose cases do not reach a particular performance target but do not always put in place the feedback loops to ensure that the individual children who make up the numbers are monitored so that their
outcomes can be improved.
This project helped member local authorities to analyse and improve their
information systems, both paper- and computerbased, in order to achieve better
outcomes for children in need, particularly for those who are looked after.
It
played an active role in the Welsh Assembly Government’s Performance definition of indicators for national statistical returns. It also examined the use of information within authorities for department- and team-level management and planning. DAN contributed to the development work for the Integrated Children’s System.
Click here to download CCFR Evidence Paper 2 for more information on this project
Professor Harriet Ward, Mike Gatehouse (CCFR); Professor David Quinton (University of Bristol) and Jean Soper
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