Comment on the use of data in children’s social care

Steve Crocker, Chair of the ADCS Standards, Performance & Inspection Policy Committee, said:

“The intelligent use of data is really important to local authorities. This report rightly highlights the burden placed on us in terms of national data collections, the significant lag in the publication of this data impacting on its usefulness and our diminishing capacity to collect and analyse data as specialist staff continue to be lost as a result of falling budgets. However, what is missing from this analysis is an insight into the work done locally via regional improvement and innovation alliances, such as benchmarking and peer challenge, and other sector-led innovations like the ‘children looked after analysis project.’ This project brings together social care and education data in real time to allow virtual school heads to put in place bespoke support to help children in care achieve better outcomes and its development was sector-led. Projects such as this highlight the value of data to authorities that can be nimble and work in real time with accurate data to improve the quality of services to, and outcomes for, vulnerable children.”

ENDS

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