Thurrock Council

Supporting
Families

In 2018, Xantura was commissioned to support Thurrock Council in improving their data function within the Troubled Families programme. Whilst Thurrock were providing strong support and interventions to their families, they were struggling to evidence this work and to meet their targets for Payment by Results.

Thurrock’s Brighter Futures Children’s Partnership Board asked Xantura to complete an initial review of their existing data and Troubled Families operating model and develop an options paper for how to move forwards with the programme and help evidence the work that was being done by front line teams and at a strategic level by the partnership.

The Challenge:

In order to transform and deliver on the new strategy, Thurrock recognised the need to overcome a number of challenges:

The Thurrock Troubled Families Team wanted to accelerate the programme from a data maturity perspective and were managing the programme by manually matching spreadsheets from multiple different sources. There was no consistent view of the programme and there were a number of challenges with quality, duplication and overall cohort management.

The Troubled Families Outcome Plan was based on the London wide version and was not specific to the data available to Thurrock, meaning families were being missed from the programme and demand was not being monitored consistently.

Fantastic work being done with families by the services was not being properly evidenced and this resulted in an inability to showcase success and claim deserved outcomes income. The programme was significantly behind its target figures and was missing out on income for the Council.

The Solutions:

The initial focus of the project was to support Thurrock in understanding the outcome metrics that they were looking to achieve and supporting them in identifying and collating the different data extracts that could be used to achieve this and providing an options paper on how to move forward.

Once Brighter Futures had reviewed the options paper, they decided to move forward with the implementation of the xantura OneView service. This enabled all of the data extraction to be automated and matched using a unique pseudonymisation approach and embedded information governance.

A range of operational tools were then delivered enabling Thurrock to see all their data at an aggregate level to identify relevant cohorts & risks as well as identifiable case summaries for front-line staff and payment dashboards for management.

Xantura have delivered a Managed Service for Thurrock Council for the delivery of their Supporting Families Data function for the past 3 years.

Automation of data extraction

Pseudonymisation approach to data anonymity

Data observation at both aggregate and individual case levels

Managed Service delivery for 3+ years

The Outcomes:

The Brighter Futures Board used the foundation work on Troubled Families to transform their partnership delivery of services with a shared vison, with a view to driving strategic decision making and planning.

One of the strategic priorities was to ensure the partnership use data and intelligence within their decision making, service development and commissioning. Thurrock’s Business Intelligence teams have created a new outcomes framework that uses a range of performance indicators and draws on OneView data feeds.

The Brighter Futures Partnership is now able to identify changes in family profile, needs and outcomes, and adjust priorities accordingly because Thurrock’s Business Intelligence teams are able to report information that is timely, relevant and accessible for all partners and stakeholders with robust and effective information sharing used. This partnership has ensured that data drives continuous business model innovation and links into high level strategies like the Joint Strategic Needs Assessments.

Thurrock’s Supporting Families programme finished top of the region in 2020 delivering outcomes that were higher than the national average. Thurrock achieved 100% of their available payment by results target and received complimentary feedback as part of their government audit. The Brighter Futures Partnership is fully established and is held up as an exemplary example of cross partnership working at governance level and on the ground with families.

Regional position out of 11 councils

PbR claimed and targets met

“We were particularly impressed by the pace of change and the investment that Thurrock has made to improve performance and strengthen transformation. In particular the use of Xantura to build strong data and things like Brighter Futures Newsletter to share stories with partners and embed a culture of change.

Thurrock’s data processes seem effective and robust, and features such as your button in Liquid Logic to create the single family view is an area of innovation.

It is clear your focus is on building strong data systems and making sure everyone including your partners can access a single view of the family. In addition we liked your focus on thinking about legacy and using data analytics in a very meaningful way to design delivery models.”

Alima Qureshi – Head of Spot Checks and Data, National Troubled Families Team

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