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.
