Deven Ghelani, founder and Director, Policy in Practice, joined an expert panel of speakers at Public Policy Exchange's Tackling Child Poverty: Building a Positive Future for Britain’s Youth symposium on Tuesday 5 March 2019.
Deven talked about how data analysis can be used to identify children who are vulnerable now and who are likely to be so in the future. He also showed how organisations can use their data to target support and track change.
To find out more visit www.policyinpractice.co.uk, email hello@policyinpractice.co.uk or call 0330 088 9242.
Tackling Child Poverty: Building a Positive Future for Britain’s Youth
1. Policy in Practice
Deven Ghelani
Using data to keep
children out of poverty
At the heart of prevention is
access to and use of data
2. Agenda
• About Policy in Practice (and the power of data)
• Who are the children at risk of being at risk?
• How can data help to keep children out of poverty?
• How can this approach help children in your area?
4. A team of professionals
with extensive
knowledge of the
welfare system who are
passionate about
making social policy
work
We help local
authorities use their
household level data to
identify vulnerable
households, target
support and track their
interventions
We develop engaging
software that helps
people to increase their
income, reduce their
costs and helps them to
build their financial
resilience
5. There are 1.6m children from low
income families.
390,000 are recorded through
referral to care services.
Currently there is very little useful
data to support early intervention
for the 1,200,000 at risk of being
referred to Children’s Services.
“The social indicators of that
violence have remained identical
for almost 200 years.”
“Poverty, domestic abuse,
lack of education”
Who are the children at risk of being at risk?
6. Directors of Children’s
Services capture
information on vulnerable
children and their
interaction with statutory
services.
The two main datasets
they use are:
• The Children in Need
Census
• The Children Looked
After SSDA903 return
What do we know about vulnerable children?
No data is collected systematically about parents.
8. What we want to see happen
73,000390,0001.6m10m
Benefits data
9. The CCO Identified a number of ‘at risk’
indicators:
● Children of lone parents
● Children living in workless families
● Children living in TA / Homeless
● Children living in relative poverty
● Children at risk of food poverty
● Children at future risk of poverty
● Children in families with poor inter-parental
relationships
● Children of prisoners
● Children living with friends or wider family
Who can we help?
Local
authority
Children in
poverty
Children in
TA
B&D 22,467 2,518 11
Tower Hamlets 12,607 3,497 27
Coventry 12,005 494 4
Cornwall 9,602 207 2
Luton 8,297 2,719 32
Newcastle 8,174 21 0
Croydon 7,472 2,077 27
Barnet 6,533 2,327 35
WF 6,295 3,459 54
Lambeth 6,293 1,177 18
Camden 6,069 545 9
Greenwich 6,048 951 15
Haringey 5,655 4,577 80
Islington 4,781 838 17
Newport 4,693 107 2
Basingstoke 3,882 139 3
Denbighshire 2,257 83 3
Exeter 1,687 101 6
Wokingham 854 49 5
11. Benefits data + advanced analytics
Your Housing Benefit /
Council Tax data
+ Arrears
+ Support
Benefit and Budgeting
Analytics Engine
Who is impacted, How
much? What actions can
they take? Are they
better off? What are the
Council-wide effects?
12. The power of pooled data
25% - 33% of the total population
15. We bring multiple
datasets together.
To show the combined
impact of policy – both
now and in the future.
With financial resilience
and arrears risk through
household level income
and expenditure data.
Understand the cumulative impact of policies…
16. Mrs Jones near
Spring Lane is £5,009
in arrears with a
shortfall of £371 per
month, and will be
£54.38 per month
worse off as a result
of the benefit cap
and has high barriers
to work.
Drill down to each individual household….
17. Link the data directly into
our Benefit and Budgeting
support in single system.
Efficiencies avoiding
multiple or repeat data
capture.
Show the impact of
moving into work
alongside personalised
and preventative advice
on actions to increase
income, and reduce costs.
to engage residents with actions they can take
18. Understand the pathways
into and out of debt and
poverty.
Understand the journey
into and out of debt, or
see household in severe,
short term or persistent
debt.
Understand the
effectiveness of
interventions to get
people out of debt.
…to track households over time
19. Causal analysis:
Households affected by the
Benefit Cap are 21% more
likely to move into work,
versus a control group.
Deeper questions:
Is this because of the benefit
cap, or because of the
support local authorities give
to capped families?
The Benefit Cap through administrative data
20. For every child whose parents move into
work as a result of the cap, eight
children are ‘stuck’ on the benefit cap
5,772
Households
impacted by the
benefit cap over
the last 6 months
from Jan 2018
Borough
Percentage of households
currently impacted by the
benefit cap who were
impacted for a 6 month
period
Sutton 74.2%
Croydon 67.8%
K&C 66.6%
WF 65.7%
Southwark 65.3%
Greenwich 64.5%
Lambeth 64.3%
Haringey 63.3%
B&D 62.5%
Islington 62.0%
Brent 61.6%
Enfield 60.4%
Camden 60.3%
Hackney 60.1%
Ealing 56.3%
TowerHamlets 54.4%
Barnet 54.2%
23. Understand the context of the families you
are working with
Use data to understand those who you
aren’t working with that may be at risk.
Give them tools to improve their living
standards and reduce the likelihood that
they need will need your help in future.
Link the data to understand the link
between living standards, poverty and
poor childhood outcomes.
Questions and Next Steps
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