Last year ONS Local, in partnership with the Improvement Service (IS) and Scottish Government, developed a new dataset to support local authorities and partners to understand child poverty in their area.
The dataset provides a unique perspective by allowing comparison with local authorities across Great Britain (GB). Using the drivers of child poverty, Scottish local authorities are grouped together with a list of the most similar areas across GB. This widens the range of potential comparators and provides new opportunities to identify good practice and learn from other areas.
The dataset combines information on the drivers with child poverty data and wider contextual factors. This provides local authorities a broad range of factors to identify the most useful comparators for their own context. The goal is to support Scottish local authorities to:
- Benchmark performance against similar authorities across GB.
- Support policy development by identifying shared challenges and successful interventions.
- Facilitate peer learning and collaborative working between councils with similar profiles and facing similar challenges.
- Inform local child poverty strategies, funding bids, and service redesign by providing a comprehensive and standard set of data. To support use of this dataset, ONS Local and the IS have now developed a new guidance note. The guidance provides an overview of the data, outlines a practical approach to interpreting the results for your area, and provides a worked case study.
The case study provides a practical step-by-step guide, demonstrating how to arrive at a shortlist of comparator areas across GB using the example of West Lothian Council. The approach can be applied by any local authority seeking to make effective use of the data.
We hope this guidance will help local authorities to derive the most value from the dataset. If you require any support or would be interested in discussing how it has been used in your area, please get in touch.