In April the Improvement Service (IS) and West Lothian Council Child Poverty Accelerator Fund (CPAF) Round 2 project came to an end. This project focused on using data to identify unmet need and support action to tackle child poverty across West Lothian. The project demonstrated how local and national data can be brought together to help target support where unmet need is greatest.
What we set out to do
The project was funded through CPAF to build on earlier work between West Lothian Council and the IS that explored differences between expected and actual uptake of support for families with children. The underlying aim was to go beyond describing child poverty with data, to providing practical insight into where services and benefits may not be reaching families most likely to need them.
In particular, the goals of this project were to:
- Accessing a wider range of data to understand unmet need,
- identify the places with potential unmet need, defined as lower‑than‑expected uptake of benefits or services,
- make this analysis accessible to officers across the Council, and
- support more targeted, place‑based interventions aligned with local child poverty priorities and learn.
The Dashboard
Alongside working with West Lothian on data access and use, the main deliverable for the Improvement Service has been development of an Unmet Need Dashboard. This interactive tool is designed to facilitate exploration of data analysis to support decision‑making.
The dashboard brings together and analyses council-held and publicly-available data, providing maps and tables to highlight where uptake differs from what might be expected. This is intended to inform use of local intelligence and engagement to understand and respond to this. West Lothian Council have used the tool to support discussions about where and how to focus interventions to improve take-up.
Access to the dashboard is password protected and can be arranged by emailing us directly at research@improvementservice.org.uk.
What’s next
CPAF Round 3 projects are now underway nationally, continuing to test and embed practical approaches to reducing child poverty across Scotland. The IS is working with two of these projects in partnership with City of Edinburgh Council and West Lothian Council. The projects both build on the Round 2 approach to unmet need, with a focus on turning evidence into action and supporting specific priority groups.
We are also keen to support other councils to apply the Round 2 approach in their own areas. The dashboard has been designed with scalability in mind and can be replicated for any local authorities interested in exploring unmet need in a more granular way.
Councils interested in a demo of the dashboard, developing a similar dashboard for their own data, or in discussing how data can better support local child poverty action, can get in touch by emailing research@improvementservice.org.uk.
