Working towards more effective prevention in Bradford's JYIP

Bradford is a city of just under 300,000 people, and is rightly proud of its cultural diversity, rich history, and longstanding reputation for innovation, which led to its industrial dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries and its continuing success in the 21st century too, being a leader in finance, retail and electronics sectors.

So it is no surprise to find that it is the vanguard of change and innovation when it comes to its Junior Youth Inclusion Programme (JYIP). Like JYIPs elsewhere, the Bradford team works hard to prevent children and young people between the ages of 8 and 13 from entering the youth justice system. The difference in Bradford is their ground breaking approach to the analysis of multi agency data.

The aim of the Youth Inclusion Programme across the country is to work with those youngsters who are deemed to be most at risk of involvement in anti social behaviour or crime, providing them with support and diversionary activities to try and reduce the risk of them becoming involved in, and to change their attitudes to, offending.

Working with approximately 200 youngsters at any one time, the team in Bradford are constantly engaged in collating data from a number of agencies to identify those most at risk, establishing what the major risk factors are for these young people and in implementing effective programmes to help them. To make the key aims of this programme a reality the team need to know when such an intervention will make a difference and what type of intervention is needed.

So good information and information systems are key to making all this work. For this crucial element in the mix the team rely on Social Software’s UMIS (Universal Monitoring and Evaluation Information System). This allows them to easily and quickly enter, manage, share and collate the large amounts of data they need to process. So that they can have the means to identify those children most at risk and provide them with appropriate programmes to meet their needs.

As Raj Madhas, Bradford JYIP Coordinator, puts it “IT and data management can do more than simplify existing processes and store data; they can play a role in developing strategy and best practice, through the insights they can provide from the data”. As he summarises, “it’s not just about being able to put information into your system, but about being able to get more information out.” And this is where Social Software’s UMIS comes in.

Bradford’s JYIP has been using UMIS for three years now so they have had plenty of time to prove the value of the system and establish the best ways to get the most from it.

One of the initial attractions of the system was its web-based facility. Being web based meant that it could be easily introduced, without requiring any additional hardware, and can be easily accessed by all those who need it from wherever they are.

Its overall ease of use for inputting, viewing and reporting on data is obviously also another important factor in gathering and using the data. But it was its capacity to enable Raj and his team to do much more than simply enter and store data which was most attractive. UMIS has helped them to make the most of the information available from their data; using it to inform best practice, to make changes to their service provision in order to improve the outcomes for the youngsters they work with and to make the aims of the JYIP a reality for more young people.

For example, the team have recently been using UMIS to compile their Onset reports used to identify and address risk factors, and have found some surprising results which will influence their strategic approach in helping the children and young people they work with. “You would think that for our age group (8-13) the number one risk factor would be family related, but in fact the data we pulled out of UMIS says that it is thinking and behaviour,” explains Raj. Even more surprisingly, when the Junior YIP’s results were compared with those from the youth offending team, not only did the offenders (aged 10 - 18) have the same number one risk factor of thinking and behaviour as those at risk of offending (aged mostly under 10), but in fact the top 5 risk factors for both were the same.

It is information like this, which UMIS allows them access to rapidly and simply, which enables Raj and his team to drive best practice forward and understand how to achieve the best results. As Raj says “by identifying the most prevalent themes across groups we can know which programmes are most appropriate for our young people; the programmes are practically self-selecting from the data”.

But as well as identifying which resources are most needed, UMIS has also helped Raj and his YIP to identify where those resources are most needed. Through UMIS the team were able to easily map where referrals were coming from and identify areas of particularly high density; where youngsters seemed to be particularly at risk.

Armed with this knowledge, when the services were recommissioned last year the team were able to show that they knew which parts of the city needed targeting and were able extend their boundaries to include those areas. “Without UMIS the areas to target wouldn’t have been as easy to identify and the team simply wouldn’t have had time to do it any other way, but with UMIS it is incredibly easy to extract that data,” explains Raj.

And what about the future? For Raj, seamless electronic data exchange is something his team are eagerly awaiting. The prospect of being able to share data between UMIS and Social Software’s YOIS (Youth Offending Information System) through the Social Software Gateway is a particularly exciting one for the Bradford JYIP; “This will be the first step in electronic data exchange for us,” says Raj, “and being able to share with the YOT will dramatically reduce duplications and exchange time, and ensure that everyone has access to the information they need, when they need it.”

But Social Software’s Gateway aims to go beyond simply sharing data between the two systems supplied by the same organisation. Recognising the importance of working with the multi agency / multi system reality, rather than the impossible ICT fantasy of a one system for all approach that has haunted public sector thinking for decades and exhausted local and national agency budgets, the Gateway will also enable users to share data seamlessly with any third party eGov compliant systems.

While there will inevitably be issues surrounding such electronic data sharing, particularly relating to data protection and security, Raj thinks that the benefits will be enormous; reducing duplication, removing the need to literally “cut and paste” information into emails for example, and improving speed of access to data; all of which will speed up the whole intervention process whilst assisting with the drive to ensure better outcomes and, perhaps most important of all, helping to eliminate the risk of serious over-sights.

While sharing and using data in UMIS and through the Gateway technology will help advance best practice, Raj knows that the technology cannot work on its own, without skilled individuals driving it; something which the Social Software team, being former practitioners and social welfare managers themselves, understand well. “Technology needs to adapt to our needs” he explains, “and with Social Software’s knowledge, practitioner background and approach I am confident that the UMIS system will continue to be adapted and updated to meet our team’s future needs, and help to ensure that we do everything possible to achieve best practice and improve outcomes for these vulnerable young people.”

And as Bradford work hard towards being part of the integrated children’s services to be in place by Easter 2008, the insights which UMIS offers are not merely playing a key role for the team now, but are becoming increasingly important. Enabling them to collate evidence not only to help improve their services, but also to prove that these services make a real difference, to the children, young people and families that they work with.

For more information on UMIS and how it can help your prevention services click on the 'Contact' link below.