D2I news for December: Updates and downloads
- alistairherbert
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
Please find below another bundle of news, within which I hope you’ll find something of interest. As always, if you want to talk about this stuff, or have ideas for how we can do useful things – or how you’d like to get involved – then reply to this email and let us know what you’re thinking about.
NEW MEMBERS: Please note that some links below will only work for LA employees with a D2I website account. If you are receiving this email by forward, and are not currently a D2I site member, you can join our mailing list and website by navigating to www.datatoinsight.org and using the Log In / Sign Up link towards the top right of the screen.
RIIA and EH benchmarking - Q2 datasets now available
ChAT and BmT - Fostering data added, and some technical fixes
Families First systems guidance shared with LAs
Centre of Excellence - first newsletter now live
SEND data development with RIIAs and DfE
Upcoming events
Next open house
Python workshops
NVEST quarterly events
Credits
1. RIIA and Early Help Quarterly Benchmarking
We’ve now received back RIIA Q2 data from all regions, so we’ve updated the RIIA Quarterly Benchmarking Tool accordingly. We’re also sharing our first cut of Q2 data for the Early Help data partnership, featuring data from 100 LAs. This return is open to all LAs who would like to participate, if you’re interested or would like more information please get in touch.
2026 Q2 v1.1: Data updated for one region
2026 Q2 v1.0: Q2 data added & hard-coded references updated
EH2026Q2 v1.0: Q2 data added & hard-coded references updated
EH2026Q2 v1.0: Population updated for Jersey
If you see anything amiss, or have any feedback for potential future improvements, please let us know so we can keep things working for everyone.
Happy benchmarking!
2. ChAT and Benchmarking Tool - Fostering data and technical fixes
This week we launched updated versions of the ChAT and Benchmarking Tool, with some minor bug fixes and two more substantial additions.
(4.06) Added Fostering in England data
(4.05) Amended CLA @ 31/3 data following DFE reissue
(9.13) Added Fostering in England Dataset
(9.13) Bug fixes
(9.12) Amended CLA @ 31/3 data following DFE reissue
Firstly, the DfE's original Children Looked After statistical release from November contained errors in the 'CLA at 31/3/25' table. The actual numbers were correct, but the percentages were incorrect for some LAs, for some measures. Helpfully, it was members of the D2I community who spotted the error and we were able to feed this back and DfE quickly turned around a corrected version which we've now included here.
Secondly, Ofsted recently released their Fostering in England dataset, which we've added to our tools. To note, some measure have been discontinued at LA level, such as the ethnicity of Foster Carers.
3. Families First informal overview document
We recently worked with DfE, local authorities, and CMS providers on guidance for the implementation of the FFP reforms. The document is a guide to the changes that are required to case management systems used in children’s services to support the Families First programme of changes, and is available to download from knowledge hub above. You'll need to be a knowledge hub member and logged in to access the guide.
4. Centre of Excellence - first newsletter and FAQ
You'll hopefully by now be aware of our project to help DfE introduce a Centre of Excellence for data and digital work in children's social care. We're maintaining an email newsletter specifically for this project, and the first email went out this week. If you'd like to get more frequent updates about this work, you can sign up at the above link.
In the newsletter, we welcomed Alison Birch who has joined D2I from Derby City Council, asked colleagues to check in if they weren't aware of someone in their LA completing our data and digital maturity survey, and offered up the contact email address d2i.coe@eastsussex.gov.uk for any colleagues wishing to get in touch directly.
5. SEND data development with RIIAs and DfE
We've also just welcomed Vanessa Good, formerly of North Tyneside Council, as a new D2I team member, to lead on developing a D2I support offer for SEND.
Vanessa's first priority, with support from the RIIAs (regional improvement and innovation alliances) and multiple teams inside DfE, is to understand what each region is doing around SEND data benchmarking, and try to help the regions arrive at a standard SEND benchmarking dataset similar to our RIIA CSC quarterly dataset.
We know it's going to be a challenge for some LA colleagues to think about , especially with the scale of change occurring around children's services and elsewhere in the public sector, so we're keen to engage widely as we develop this towards an achievable and useful data activity for LAs, with DfE backing. If you'd like to get in touch about this project, please do reach out.
6. Upcoming events
D2I open house / core tools workshops
(Next open house: Wednesday 21st January at 13:00)
Python workshops
(Running weekly on Thursday and Friday afternoons)
NVEST third event (featuring Ofsted)
(Thursday 14th January 13:30 – 16:00)
Our “open house” meeting is a regular chance to drop in on a D2I team meeting where we share what we’re working on and talk about how best to help with data work. We try to cover a mix of “technical” and other work. If you'd like to request a topic for discussion, just let us know.
Separately, Will continues to run Python drop-in workshops on Thursday and Friday afternoons, covering a range of subjects advertised in advance. For more information, please get in touch.
Finally, our platform-agnostic IT systems workshop, branded as the NVEST network, will hold a fourth event on the 14th January, and we really encourage systems managers, users, and overseers to join that if they can, especially if they have any interest in multi-agency information sharing. You can sign up for updates about NVEST at the link above.
7. Credits
Credit for recent improvements to our data tools and project work is due to colleagues in:
Thurrock
Derby
West Northamptonshire
Knowsley
Northumberland
DfE
Bury
South Gloucestershire
Essex
Department for Education
York
Southampton
Brighton
Birmingham
Derbyshire
Newcastle
Oxfordshire
Barnsley
Haringey
That’s it! If you have any comments, queries or ideas that you want to share, just get in touch.
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