Opportunities and challenges around joining-up education and childrens’ social care data

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done Hackney Council is using data to design and deliver excellent services for our residents. As part of this we are exploring ways we can use data as effectively as possible across education and social care teams to both understand and respond to the needs of children and young people but also to 'manage' our services - tracking trends and performance so that managers can quickly identify, understand and respond to pressures and challenges. Children’s social care has a track-record of innovation with data. We worked with Xantura to explore how to use data from multiple sources to inform more rounded decisions about early intervention and adopted a ‘contextual safeguarding’ practice model to consider the peer group, school and neighbourhood contexts for safeguarding. We want to understand the available opportunities if our data was easier to join-up and the insight teams could work more closely together; the challenges associated with achieving this (capacity, skills, technology, culture) and the potential costs of greater collaboration (eg. technical, loss of specialist expertise). A recent Ofsted inspection of children’s social care found its use of data and insight to have improved, but we know that more work is needed. Problem to Be Solved Hackney Learning Trust (the Council’s education department) and children’s social care department have separate insight teams responsible for the production of MI and statutory returns. These glean data from separate systems (eg. Synergy and Mosaic) and present these through spreadsheets, reports and Tableau (HLT) or Qlik, the council’s business visualisation tool. The ICT team has supported children’s social care through the production of operational dashboards to support resource planning and operational decision making. In response to COVID it has joined up data from numerous business applications to build a picture of vulnerability, linking data predominantly via UPRN. Recent investments in APIs have enabled development of single views of people for better decision making. At the moment, we don’t routinely join-up education and social care data for this type of research or development, limiting our ability to have a holistic view of a young person and their family. Different priorities, skills, systems and cultures make this sort of collaboration hard. However, there may be opportunities to improve outcomes through better collaboration - for example, in the design of early help, understanding the impact of temporary accommodation on educational outcomes or supporting the transition of care leavers post-16. Who Are the Users As a social worker I need a complete view of the child and family so that I can make informed decisions about how best to support them As an education professional I need to understand the educational attainment of children and other factors affecting their life, including social care input, so that I can support school improvement As a head of service I need to understand the performance of my team so that I can prioritise improvements As a manager I need to understand the volume of demand and capacity so that I can plan the resources accordingly As a senior leader I need to understand trends so that I can anticipate demand As an insight specialist I need to understand the business problem and the data so that I can help colleagues understand what’s happening As a decision maker in another council service I need to support children and families by making the right decisions with them As a responsible officer I need to ensure returns to central government are completely accurate and timely Early Market Engagement N/A Work Already Done The following information helps explain some of the context for this work: Overview of business intelligence work across the council (Feb ‘19) (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14RMqWZq5_6Eqp2FrJ1fC3QcDYuSluD8EQ6AGmRN_nls/edit) COVID analysis - how we’re understanding vulnerability (Mar ‘20) (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c_Iennul2UI3mws3qN3XrEKEWEswqa7GRk6krIjknsA/edit) Review of business intelligence (Sept ‘18) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jm98LbcFj2pPsjoEjfUt3xWlqof_7nZNV23qWI6Op-o/edit Existing Team Given the nature of the work we do not anticipate providing a dedicated project team. However, we would expect involving the three data & insight teams (education, children’s social care, ICT), frontline practitioners and decision makers (eg heads of service), information governance and finance professionals. Current Phase Live Work Location Hackney Council offices in Mare Street, E8 Working Arrangments This work can be done remotely but will require fortnightly reporting (eg via show & tells) to involve key stakeholders and regular engagement with practitioners through video conferences. We will provide access to key systems to project team members where required. Security Clearance Additional T&Cs Skills & Experience Demonstrate an understanding of the education and social care context Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches to delivery Have experience of assessing an organisation’s current approach and developing actionable recommendations for improvement Share their work freely and openly with the Council and the wider community Demonstrate a track record of successful capability building with internal teams Nice to Haves Demonstrate an understanding of Hackney’s approach to technology and data Demonstrate an understanding of existing good practice in the sector No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria Understanding of the brief Clarity of the approach Experience from a similar project Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them Cultural Fit Criteria Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service Hackney Council is a diverse organisation, reflecting the diversity of our borough. Describe how you would successfully work as a team with Hackney and other suppliers in a diverse environment. Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers Budget range we expect to invest £30-50,000 in the project but this can vary if we identify project outputs that would deliver tangible value as we ‘learn through doing’ (eg a specific piece of business intelligence or data science that is co-produced). therefore, we are procuring to a potential value of £80,000 + vat.