Our analysis of Birmingham City Council’s outcomes and service use data demonstrated how data can be better used to produce novel insights and a more complete picture of need in the early years. Our analysis of the data found that, when judged by a combination of performance on early years outcomes and take-up of early educational entitlement, the most in-need areas were not on the radar of the services in a position to provide any additional support. We also found that the most in-need areas may require different solutions. By combining locally held data with census data, we found that these areas were not homogenous in terms of their sociodemographic characteristics. This has important implications for how solutions and services are designed in response to findings.

Our co-design methodology enabled Birmingham City Council and its health and care partners to agree key use cases and a process for creating an early years data tool which combines the most up-to-date early years outcomes and service use data and enables a wider range of people access to this data. Nesta worked with the council and its partners to ideate, test and prototype an early years data tool through a series of interviews and co-design workshops, building on learnings from the data analysis. The team focused on several key use cases and functionalities for ‘version 1’ of a locally held tool. This included bringing together different and currently siloed data to provide a holistic view of early years outcomes and service use as well as detailed profiles and maps to identify areas of highest need.

Building this early years data tool would be one step closer towards harnessing the power of early years data already held by different parts of Birmingham’s system. This tool is now being built by Birmingham City Council and deployed locally. However, to maximise the value of the tool and ensure its sustainability, a rigorous evaluation of its implementation and further development of the tool with a user-led approach will be crucial.