Category: News and updates

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The role of public services in addressing child vulnerability

Our response to the House of Lords Public Services Committee call for evidence on the role of public services in addressing child vulnerability.

The House of Lords Public inquiry, ‘The role of public services in addressing child vulnerability’ asked whether reforming public services can address the growing problem of child vulnerability.

The inquiry covers how public services support mothers and families during pregnancy, and how they support children in their early years and school years.

One of the premises of the Committee’s call for evidence is that public services should share data as part of their duty to keep children safe.

Our project team provided evidence that the Committee needs to consider the wider implications and interests of operational data sharing and data linkage for early intervention (which also can be taken as lessons from Covid-19), in particular:

  • The importance of transparency and informed consent to use of their administrative records
  • The wider social legitimacy of and trust in institutions, especially for marginalised social
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Question marks over data analytics for family intervention

by Ros Edwards, Sarah Gorin and Val Gillies

The National Data Strategy encourages the UK’s central and local government to team up with the private sector to digitally share and join up records to inform and improve services. One example of this is the area of troublesome families, where it’s thought that the use of merged records and algorithms can help spot or pre-empt issues by intervening early. But there are questions over this approach and this is something our project has been looking into. In our first published journal article, we have been examining the rationales presented by the parties behind data analytics used in this context to see if they really do present solutions.  

The application of algorithmic tools is a form of technological solution; based on indicators in the routinely collected data, in an effort to draw out profiles, patterns and predictions that enable services to target and fix troublesome families.  But local authorities often need to turn to commercial data analytic companies to build the required digital systems and algorithms.

In our paper we analysed national and local government reports and statements, and the websites of data analytic companies, addressing data linkage and analytics in the family intervention field.  We looked in particular at rationales for and against data integration and analytics.  We use a ‘problem-solving’ analytic approach, which focuses on how issues are produced as particular sorts of problems that demand certain sorts of solutions to fix them.  This helps us to identify a double-faceted chain of problems and solutions.  

Seeking and targeting families

Families in need of intervention and costing public money are identified as a social problem and local authorities given the responsibility of fixing that problem. Local authorities need to seek out and target these families for intervention. And it is experts in data analytics that, in turn, will solve that identification problem for them.  In turn companies are reliant on citizens being turned into data (datafied) by local authorities and other public services.

We identified three main sorts of rationales in the data analytic companies promotion of their products that will solve local authorities’ problems: the power of superior knowledge, harnessing time, and economic efficiency.

Companies promote their automated data analytics products as powerful and transformational.  They hand control of superior, objective and accurate, knowledge to local authorities so that they can use profiling criteria to identify families where there are hidden risks, for intervention.  And their systems help local authority services such as social care and education collaborate with other services like health and the police, through data sharing and integration.

Data analytics is presented as harnessing time in the service of local authorities as an early warning system that enables them quickly to identify families as problems arise.  It is the provision of an holistic view based on existing past records that local authorities hold about families, and the inputting of ‘real time’ present administrative data on families as it comes in.  In turn, this provides foresight, helping local authorities into the future – predicting which families are likely to become risks in advance and acting to pre-empt this, planning ahead using accurate information.  

Another key selling point for data analytics companies is that their products allow economic efficiency.  Local authorities will know how much families cost them, and can make assured decisions about where to put or withdraw resources of finances and staffing.  Data analytic products produce data trails that cater for local authorities to prepare Government returns and respond to future central Government payment-by-results initiatives, maximising the income that can be secured for their constrained budgets.

Questions to be asked

But there are questions to be asked about whether or not data linkage and analytics does provide powerful and efficient solutions, which we consider in our article.  Concerns have been raised about the errors and bias in administrative records, resulting in unfair targeting of certain families. 

Particular groups of parents and families are disproportionately represented in social security, social care and criminal justice systems, leading to existing social divisions of class, race and gender built into the data sets.  For example, there is evidence that racial and gender profiling discriminations are built into the data, such as the inclusion of young Black men who have never been in trouble in the Metropolitan Police Gangs Matrix.  And automated modelling equates socio-economic disadvantage with risk of child maltreatment, meaning that families are more likely to be identified for early intervention just because they are poor.  On top of that, studies drawing on longitudinal data are showing that the success rates of predictive systems are worryingly low. 

All of which raise a more fundamental question of whether or not algorithms should be built and implemented for services that intervene in families’ lives.  In the next stage of our research, we will be asking parents about their views on this and on the way that information about families is collected and used by policy-makers and service providers.  

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Would you like to take part in our research?

We are looking for parents to take part in the project. We want to know your views and experiences of the way that information about families is collected and used by policy-makers and service providers. 

There are two ways you can take part:

  1. As part of a group discussion – If you are a parent (of at least one child aged 16 or under) you can take part in an online group discussion that will last about 45 minutes.
  2. In a one-to-one discussion -If you are a parent (of at a least one child aged 16 or under) and have had contact with family support services (this may be children’s social work services, early years or a voluntary organisation that supports families) you can take part in an individual discussion with us that will last about 45 minutes, either online or by phone.

All group and individual participants will receive a £25 e-voucher in thanks for their time and trouble, and we can provide a top-up voucher for participants using pay-as-you-go.

The research has ethical approval from the University of Southampton.

If you would like to receive further information or talk about the possibility of participating in the research, please contact Sarah Gorin, University of Southampton at s.j.gorin@soton.ac.uk

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Running focus groups with parents in a Covid-19 setting – how will we do it?

In this second project blog, the research team reflect on how Covid-19 and the restrictions it has placed on all our lives, has led to methodological, ethical and practical challenges in working with focus groups on parental buy-in for linking and analysing data about families. They outline the challenges they face and how they’re adapting their approach. 

For the next stage of our project, we’re conducting focus groups to explore how particular social groups of parents understand and talk about their perspectives on data linkage and predictive analytics.  Back in early 2020, we were optimistic about the possibility of being able to conduct these groups face-to-face by the time we reached this stage of our research.  Now though, it’s clear we’ll need to move online, and we’ve been thinking about the issues we’ll face and how to deal with them.

Questions we’re grappling with include:

  • What might moving online mean for how we recruit participants? 
  • How can we best organise groups and engage parents with the project? 
  • How can we develop content for online groups that will firstly, encourage parents to contribute and enjoy the research process, and secondly, be relevant to our research endeavour?

What will moving online mean for recruiting participants?

Our intention was – and still is, to hold focus group discussions with homogenous groups of parents, to explore the consensus of views on what is and isn’t acceptable (social licence) in joining together and using parents’ administrative records.

We’re using the findings from our earlier probability-based survey of parents to identify social groups of parents whose views stand out. These include home-owning parents in professional and managerial occupations, who have stronger social licence, and mothers on low incomes, Black parents, and lone parents and parents in larger families living in rented accommodation, who tend to have weak or no social licence.

Our original plan was to recruit participants for our focus groups by contacting local community and interest groups, neighbourhood networks, services such as health centres and schools, workplaces and professional associations.  We still plan to do this, but we’re concerned that the pandemic is placing huge pressures on community groups, services for families and businesses and we may need to be prepared that helping us to identify parents to participate in research may not be a priority or, as with schools, appropriate.

So we’ve also been considering recruitment through online routes, such as advertising on relevant Facebook groups; using Twitter and putting advertisements on websites likely to be accessed by parents. It’ll be interesting to see if these general reach-outs get us anywhere.

An important aspect of recruitment to our study is how to include marginalised parents.  This can be a conundrum whether research is face-to-face or online.  Face-to-face we would have spent quite a bit of time establishing trust in person, which is not feasible now.  Finding ways to reach out and convince these parents to participate is going to be an additional challenge. Our ideas for trying to engage these parents include the use of advertising via foodbanks, neighbourhood support networks and housing organisations.

And there’s the additional problem for online methods, revealed in inequalities of online schooling, of parents who have limited or no online access. Further, Covid-19 is affecting parents living in poverty especially and we don’t want to add to any stress they’re likely to be under.

Enticing affluent parents working in professional and managerial occupations to participate may also be difficult under the current circumstances.  They may be juggling full-time jobs and (currently) home schooling and feeling under pressure.  Either way, marginalised or affluent, we think we’ll need to be flexible, offering group times in evenings and at weekends for example. 

How should we change the way we organise groups and engage parents with the project? 

We know from reading the literature that online groups can face higher drop-out rates than face-to-face.  Will the pandemic and its potential effect on parent’s’ physical and mental health mean that we face even higher drop-out rates?  One strategy we hope will help is establishing personal links, through contacting participants and chatting to them informally before the focus group takes place.

We’ve been mulling over using groups containing people who know each other, for example if they’re members of a community group or accessed through a workplace, and groups that bring together participants who are unknown to each other.  Because we’re feeling a bit unsure about recruitment and organisation, we’ve decided to go down both routes as and when opportunities present themselves.  We’ll need to be aware of this as an issue when we come to do the analysis though.

We’re also thinking to organise more groups and have fewer participants in each group than we would have done face-to-face (after all, we’re not going to be confined by our original travel and venue hire budget).  Even in our online research team meetings we can cut across and interrupt each other, and discussion doesn’t flow in quite the same way.  Reading  participants’ body language and non-verbal cues in an online focus group is going to be more difficult.  Smaller numbers in the group may help a bit, but it can still be difficult to see everyone if, for example, someone is using a mobile phone.  We’ll just have to see how this goes and how best to handle it.

There’s also a dilemma about how many of the project team to involve in the focus groups. We’ll need to have a team member to facilitate the group, but previous research shows it might be useful to have at least one other to monitor the chat and sort out any technical issues. But with a group as small as 4-6 participants will that seem off putting for parents? It’s all hard to know so may be a case of trying it in order to find out!

What should we consider in developing content that’s engaging for parents and relevant to our research?

What we’ll miss by holding our group discussions online is the settling in and chatting and putting us and our participants at ease – how are you, would you like a drink, there’s some biscuits if you want, let me introduce you to … and so on.  We don’t think that we can replicate this easily.  

But we’ve been pondering our opening icebreaker – should we ask something like….

‘If you could be anywhere else in the world where would you be?’

or

‘What would be the one thing you’d pack in a lockdown survival kit?’ 

And we’re also planning to use a couple of initial questions that use the online poll function.  Here’s an instance where we think there’s an advantage over in-person groups, because participants can vote in the poll anonymously. 

After that, we’ll be attempting to open up the discussion to focus on the issues that are at the heart of our research – what our participants feel is acceptable and what’s not in various scenarios about the uses of data linkage and predictive analytics.

Ensuring the well-being of parents after focus groups is always important, but with online groups may be harder if the participants are not identified through community groups in which there’s already access to support. We plan to contact people after groups via email but it’s hard to know if parents would let us know even if groups presented issues for them. We have also given some thought to whether we could use online noticeboards for participants to post any further comments they may have about social licence after they’ve had time to reflect, but do not know realistically if they would be used.

It’ll be interesting to see if the concerns we’ve discussed here are borne out in practice, and our hopeful means of addressing them work.  And also, what sort of challenges arise for our online focus group discussions that we haven’t thought of in advance!

If you have any ideas that might help us with our focus groups, please do get in touch with us via datalinkingproject@gmail.com