This guest blog brings together reflections from the ADR England Community Catalyst, drawing on collaboration between researchers, policymakers and practitioners across the UK. It offers a timely perspective on the opportunities and challenges of using administrative data in children’s social care.
Why administrative data holds promise for evaluation - and why we must unlock it for children’s social care
Over the past two years, the ADR England Community Catalyst: Children at Risk of Poor Outcomes has brought together researchers, analysts, policymakers and practitioners across the UK to explore how administrative data can inform children’s social care research and better understand what works for children and their families.
The Community Catalyst aims to promote the use of linked, routinely collected administrative data to strengthen the evidence base and inform evaluation – generating insights that improve practice and policy and, ultimately, benefit the children and families whom services exist to support. Despite its potential, these data remain underused in children’s social care research, though trusted research environments are beginning to enable greater access. These records can help evaluate policies, preventative programmes, and service models, offering a powerful means of understanding what works to drive better outcomes for children and families.
From evidence to action: what have we done so far?
So far, the Community Catalyst has focused on:
- mapping existing evidence using administrative data to spotlight gaps and opportunities
- gathering insights from practitioners, policymakers and academics
- outlining urgent research priorities
- hosting a series of workshops and webinars
- building a community for peer learning and discussion across disciplines
These activities support and equip the research community with tools and connections to address key knowledge gaps.
A new phase: funding to focus on evaluation
We’re now entering an exciting new phase. Thanks to additional funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Community Catalyst is expanding its focus to evaluation research over the next year. This enables us to explore how administrative data can be used specifically to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions for children at risk of poor outcomes.
We already see the value of evaluations of programmes such as Sure Start and the Family Nurse Partnership, where linked administrative data provides insight into impact overtime. Yet there is still considerable scope to apply these approaches to social care interventions.
What’s next: events, webinars and building capacity
Over the coming year, we are running a series of webinars focused on evaluation, bringing together experts from across the UK to share methods, challenges, findings, lessons learned and examples of best practice.
Our forthcoming event on 25th February welcomes David Westlake (Cardiff University), who presents an innovative evaluation of the Welsh Basic Income for Care Leavers pilot. This webinar will explore how administrative data is used to assess impact in a real-world policy setting, across a range of outcomes including health, education, and the labour market.
We are also pleased to announce an additional event, Using Administrative Data for Policy Evaluation Research: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Watch Out For! Join Will Cook (Manchester Metropolitan University) on 23rd April to hear about the practical challenges of working with administrative datasets, from navigating missing data to applying robust quasi-experimental methods.
Looking ahead
The need for robust evaluation is more pressing than ever. As the UK’s evaluation landscape continues to grow, learning how to use rich, readily available data in meaningful ways is crucial.
By bringing administrative data and evaluation together, the Community Catalyst aims to support a more informed and actionable evidence base. One that supports better decisions for children, families and communities across the UK.
If you’re interested in sharing insights or presenting work, we’d love to hear from you. You can also sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date.
Join the community: Children at Risk of Poor Outcomes – ADR UK
ADR UK is made up of four national partnerships (ADR England, ADR Northern Ireland, ADR Scotland and ADR Wales), and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which ensures data provided by UK Government bodies is accessed by researchers in a safe and secure form with minimal risk to data holders or the public.
The partnership is coordinated by a UK-wide Strategic Hub, which also promotes the benefits of administrative data research to the public and the wider research community, engages with UK Government to secure access to data, and manages a dedicated research budget.
