As Nesta’s Fairer Start Local partnership enters its third year, we have built up a wealth of evidence of how we can best support local authorities to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children aged 0-5. Through this work and other supporting Nesta work, we have found that improving data usage and access is the key to unlocking better targeted support and improved outcomes.

In our second year of the partnership, we worked with a large-linked dataset which covered education, health and other local authority data and evaluated demographic data such as geographic location, special educational needs and Healthy Start or funded education eligibility. We found that presenting visualisations and analysing the demographics of children who were not reaching age-related expectations allowed York’s team to make better-informed decisions about where to provide enhanced support to their 0-5 population. York used their Raise York family hubs and their award-winning Early Talk for York programme as part of this network of support.

To further this work, we want the data analysis we have done in York and our other Fairer Start Local partnerships to be more locally sustainable and scalable to other local authorities. With the expansion of the childcare offer, the development of family hubs and the requirement of local authorities to use their budget in the most efficient way possible, there are a multitude of areas where data can add value by informing better decisions. Many local authorities are stretched thin and lack the capacity or time to analyse their data. Therefore, Nesta is in a unique position with the skills, expertise and knowledge to develop a tool which can help to fill this gap in local authorities – enabling them to make better, more timely and informed decisions.

Our goal is to close the outcome gap between children growing up in disadvantage and their peers. However, if local authorities don’t know where their children with the poorest outcomes are, it is difficult to ensure they receive the support they need. If we can help support local authorities to better understand the landscape of their 0-5 population, they can make better and more informed decisions.

Currently, local authorities are not using their data to its full potential. There are many reasons for this, with a lack of resources to fund data teams and tools being some of the greatest barriers. We want every local authority to be able to use their data better in an easy and accessible way. Therefore, by providing a platform where councils can upload their data and have this translated into useful visualisations and analysis, local authorities can make more informed, impactful decisions to provide support to their children who have the poorest outcomes.

Working with York has resulted in their team having a better grasp on using their data. So far, we have built a data dashboard and an application which generates ward profiles, but we are keen to continue innovating and bringing learnings from across our work at Nesta. York are engaged in this work across all aspects of the early years, from their funding team to the Healthy Child Service, as well as their Raise York family hubs board which means they are an excellent place to do rapid testing and learning. By working across all of the services which form the early-years ecosystem, we can more accurately find the analysis and visualisations which will have the most impact on decision making and children’s outcomes.

Our ambition for the next year is to build scalable data products which inform high-impact decisions in the early years. 

To do this, we will begin with an iterative design process. This will start with a range of prototypes informed by the learning we have taken from past work. We will use rapid speed testing to understand how these prototypes would support local authorities to make decisions about the early years. We will identify the prototypes with the highest potential to inform high-impact decisions. 

Once selected we will build the tool, developing a product which can be sustainably used in York. As we move to this stage, we will then tackle the question of scaling. We are working in partnership with Social Finance, using their experience and building on their own platform to ensure we have a feasible route to scaling.