Inclusive Data Principle 2: Systemic Working
About Principle 2: Take a whole system approach, working in partnership with others to improve the inclusiveness of UK data and evidence.
There are 44 commitments under Principle 2. Figure 3 shows the distribution of the commitments by their RAG status. 77% of commitments were completed or green (59% and 18% respectively). Below we describe a collaborative project between Cabinet Office and Department for Education which takes a whole system approach to improving the availability of data.
Figure 3: RAG status of all 44 IDTF commitments under Inclusive Data Principle 2
Case study: Improving the quality and availability of ethnicity data and evidence for looked-after children, Cabinet Office and Department for Education
Commitment:
Using lessons learnt about ethnicity data quality in relation to health data, the Cabinet Office’s Race Disparity Unit will make recommendations to improve data quality in different data collections. A prototype report for a specific data area will be developed through 2022 and will be expanded to other topic areas in 2023, depending on the response to the prototype.
The Cabinet Office’s Equality Hub and the Department for Education (DfE) have developed and published a strategy to improve the quality and availability of ethnicity data and evidence for looked after children, and their routes out of care.
There are differences in outcomes and experiences between looked-after children of different ethnic groups, which cannot be explained by deprivation alone. The looked after children data strategy, published in April 2023, can help improve the evidence base, understand these disparities and make progress towards addressing them.
The looked after children data strategy, published in April 2023, provides an overview of what data are currently available, and an assessment of the quality of available data. It also covers data quality areas and user needs, such as characteristics, outcome indicators, further exploratory analysis and the possibility of applying national results to the local authority level.
Based on the assessment of the availability and quality of the data, and user needs, priorities were identified including understanding the important metrics required for a new Children’s Social Care Dashboard to help support learning and improvement; understanding what real-time data DfE and the sector would benefit from collecting directly from management information systems; and more detailed breakdowns of categories including ethnicity and outcomes.
Some of the actions to address these priority areas have included adding ethnicity breakdowns to the data within annual releases. This includes data on looked after children, including those who go missing, care leavers, and information on placement stability and school stability, and outcomes at Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4.
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