Insight Bristol and the Think Family Database

Information about Insight Bristol, the Think Family Database, the Children and Families View and Think Family Education, and other helpful links.

Insight Bristol

Insight Bristol is a Bristol City Council data team. It was set up in 2015 in response to the national Troubled Families Programme (now known as the Supporting Families Programme). 

Insight Bristol uses information from safeguarding partnership agencies to support vulnerable families across Bristol. By combining this information, we can work together to better support the city's most vulnerable people.

Since 2015 Insight Bristol has developed some innovative products, including:

• Think Family Database (TFD)
• The Children and Families View (app)
• The Think Family Education application (app)
• Think Family Notifications

These products transform the way data can support safeguarding professionals and are recognised nationally.

Think Family Database (TFD)

The data collected and collated by Insight Bristol is securely held in the Think Family Database (TFD).

The information is from approximately 55,000 families across Bristol and is pulled from the following sources:

• Bristol City Council (Children Social care, Early Help, Education, Early Years, Children Centres, Housing, Youth Justice System)
• Avon and Somerset Police
• Department for Education
• Department for Work and Pensions
• South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCWCSU)
• Barnardo's
• NHS

The TFD includes factors such as:

• those working with social care, early help, homeless prevention, youth justice or Barnado's BACE services
• police events such as offences, domestic incidents and anti-social behaviour for young persons
• attendance, suspensions and exclusions at schools
• GP registration details
• receipt of benefits 
• those accessing drug or alcohol support services

For a detailed list of information held spreadsheet read the list of TFD indicators (27 KB) . 

Children and Families View (CFV)

The Children and Families View (CFV) is a web-based Power BI report used by safeguarding professionals in Bristol City Council. It displays information from the Think Family Database.

It gives practitioners accessing the system and working with families and young people an understanding of:

• immediate family 
• the family's immediate need 
• previous service involvement and event history
• which services or partner the need comes from

The practitioner can contact the relevant service. This helps the practitioner better support the family because:

• they can discuss the family's immediate issues with the agencies involved
• the family does not have to repeat the same story 

This embedded approach helps practitioners coordinate support for families who are most in need.

The safeguarding professionals using the report include:

• social workers
• youth justice workers
• Families in Focus workers,
• personal advisors,
• family support workers
• independent reviewing officers
• education welfare officers
• special educational needs and disabilities workers
• safeguarding in education team workers
• first response advisors,
• along with other safeguarding roles.

The report is designed to make information retrieval quicker for these safeguarding professionals.

The CFV displays a single view of a person with information such as lead practitioner (where applicable), and GP and education details for the person. It shows the numbers of recent events, and vulnerabilities for the person and immediate family. Professional involvements are shown where relevant, and events are displayed from Avon and Somerset Police.

This informs safeguarding professionals of events that have occurred within the family, to significantly reduce the time spent sourcing information. All safeguarding professionals are trained to use the report and access is removed when no longer required.

View the  pdf training materials (573 KB) which are used to upskill safeguarding professionals before they access the CFV.

Think Family Education (TFE)

Insight Bristol has developed the Think Family Education (TFE) application (app). It helps designated safeguarding leads and pastoral teams in education settings by providing accurate and timely data relating to their pupil wellbeing, safeguarding, and vulnerability, including information about any social care involvement.

The data is provided by Bristol City Council, Avon and Somerset Police and other partners. There is less detail provided to settings than in the internal CFV as agreed through extensive information governance developed through the initial pilot stage.

The TFE shares data with these education settings showing items such as numbers of pupils:

• receiving support, for example: families working with local authority support services, in care, or having a child protection plan 
• falling into various risk factors, for example: persistently absent, at risk of ‘NEET' or being a young carer
• having experienced events, for example: missing person incidents, crime incidents, suspensions

This enables the education setting to understand vulnerability for their own pupils, and put interventions in place that will help those pupils to be successful. Education settings can also search for their own admission data.

There is an obligation for a local authority to share this data with schools, and the TFE application speeds up the process of this information sharing. Further information about TFE can be found on Bristol Safeguarding in Education.

TFE was piloted at 4 schools in Bristol and developed with input from:

• safeguarding staff
• education inclusion managers
• safeguarding education teams
• information governance consultants
• school consultations

Approximately 130 schools in Bristol will have access to the TFE app. ARC West researchers have helped Insight Bristol evaluate the impact of the TFE in education settings. The feedback so far from education settings about the TFE has been overwhelmingly positive.

View the  pdf user charter (112 KB) which schools sign to access the application.

Think Family Notifications

Insight Bristol has created proactive automated notification emails to lead professional staff at Bristol City Council who work with families with children.

The notifications promptly alert lead professional staff of events that are occurring within the families they are working with, so the staff can be aware of these vulnerabilities and can act on the information immediately. These events may include incidents such as crime events, anti-social behaviour, missing person events and domestic abuse. 

Risk of 'NEET' data model

Using targeted analytics, the Risk of ‘NEET' data model identifies children who are at risk of becoming ‘not in education, employment, or training after finishing school' (NEET), by using school attendance, attainment and vulnerability data to identify this risk. The information supplements the wider council Think Family approach and supports the council's post 16 team.

This analysis does not replace professional judgement or decision-making. It guides and supplements the work of professionals and provides information about children at risk that professionals may not easily see. This early identification means that support and interventions can be put in place to stop problems turning into crises.

Social Finance evaluation 

Insight Bristol commissioned Social Finance Limited to undertake an evaluation of the Think Family Database and the Think Family Education application. They carried out quantitative and qualitative research to determine the outcomes delivered, and how the outcomes might be enhanced in future.

Social Finance reported that the Think Family Database delivers a range of outcomes, including providing a comprehensive view of vulnerability for a family, saving significant amounts of practitioner time, and helping staff offer more timely and appropriate support to families where required.

Information governance and ethics

We have robust privacy and sharing agreements with all partners and related agencies.

The ICO has reviewed the documentation and confirmed our compliance with the relevant data legislation.

Sharing data requires robust information governance. See the pdf Insight Bristol privacy notice (162 KB) .

Insight Bristol has a risk log to make sure risks are mitigated and that we follow all relevant data protection laws, including the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

Insight Bristol Data Flow, Indicator List and Legal Gateways shows:

• how the data flows through the Think Family Database and the Think Family Education
• what the information is (the indicator list)
• the legal gateways that allow us to share this information

Ethics

Insight Bristol is working with the Responsible Technology Adoption Unit (previously the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation) within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to: 

• support the National Data Strategy
• provide transparency
• provide clear information to the public and interested stakeholders about the algorithmic tools it uses, such as the targeted analytic models

As part of this, Insight Bristol has completed an Algorithmic Transparency Standard and this is available on GOV.UK.

We've consulted the Bristol City Youth Council to get their views on how Bristol City Council and our partners should share information. The Bristol City Youth Council is an elected group of young people, aged 11 to 18. See pdf Insight Bristol Ethics Youth Council report (250 KB) .