National Public Protection Leadership Group: workplan

Priority 5: Tacking the difficult issues of having the right data for improvement and assurance and risk escalating at local and national level

Rationale for inclusion in workplan: Clarity around what data is needed at local level to support service delivery and continuous improvement, and what assurance data is needed at national level. The lack of outcomes data is an issue across Public Protection and needs to be addressed in a coordinated way so that we understand - across the lifespan and across policy areas - if our public protection services are making a positive difference. To ensure we have surveillance around new emerging harms as well as the escalation of harms being observed e.g. online harm.

Relevant extract from NPPLG term of reference: Outline measures of implementation and measures of effectiveness for the delivery of public protection arrangements. Support COGs to understand from a whole system perspective the continuum between and across prevention, universal provision, early support and public protection. Support sharing of learning and best practice between Chief Officer groups and multi-agency partners, lifting the performance of areas to those who are considered to be implementing advanced practice, and to better understand variation.

NPPLG sponsor: Sophie Gwyther and Carron McDiarmid

Objective of NPPLG workstream: To provide clarity on the data being used nationally and locally to identify and track the risk factors which can lead to harm, as well as the data being used nationally and locally to measure the quality of response to the identification of harm to an individual when it occurs.

Priorities for the NPPLG Workstream

Short term priority

Undertake a critical review of the data currently being collected to create national datasets for the Scottish Government including the Improvement Service LGBF.

Review to include:

• Consider data at three levels– risk factors, processes and outcomes. Consideration of the completeness of data collection across all the public protection strands and
• Extent to which the datasets relate to risk factors which are common across all strands of public protection, public protection process measures or outcome measures
• A sampling of the data currently been used within local public protection partnerships
• Consideration of whether existing national datasets are still fit for purpose, clear consideration of what is beneficial at a national level (including issues of time lag)
• Consideration of timelines of data returns and alignment of datasets

Develop a process for working with COGs and multi-agency partners to identify emerging risks and issues and then co-develop solutions. This would not be focused on the performance of COGs.

Distinction made between the data the NPPLG would like to regularly look (considerations as to development of a public protection dashboard) at versus the data work to be progressed in conjunction with COG's in order to support their efforts to become data informed

Medium term priorities

From the review of existing national and local, develop proposals for next step of building data maturity in this area, including use of new technology

Significant amounts of data available, in ‘silos’. Consideration to how we progress interconnectedness of strands to inform policy and practice, including who might be at risk, and how best to respond, given that many people are affected by more than one type of ‘harm’. Connect with Public Health Scotland on their work on combining datasets.

Explore whether we have sufficient data to inform prevention and early intervention. Discuss potential for involvement of / learning from Public Health Scotland.

Long term priorities

Consideration of where we might want to explore the linking of anonymous data.

Devise a statistical approach to identify ‘special cause variation’ to inform analysis of future national datasets

Establish a new NPPLG Sub group

NPPLG to consider whether we establish a new group or is there a way we can work across existing data groups?

Complementary work being progressed by existing groups now in the ambit of NPPLG

There are a range of data groups which still need to be mapped some of which will likely sit in the ambit of the NPPLG and others we will want to be aware of. These include the ASP data reference group; CP data group; and equivalent groups for VAWG, Justice Social Work, Alcohol and Drugs, Suicide Prevention as they exist. PHS work on combining datasets etc

Complementary work being progressed through local COG's which we want to support with a view to supporting the spreading of innovation

One area at least has developed a Public Protection Dashboard Reporting.

Public Protection Performance and Assurance Quality Assurance Framework

• strategic tool used to monitor and report progress regarding the delivery, quality and effectiveness of public protection activity.

Dedicated PowerBI data dashboards across CP, ASP, VAWG.

VAWG minimum dataset in place.