Council tackles youth unemployment using data from IT systems

Coventry City Council uses Capita's One system to identify factors leading to unemployment

People not in employment, education or training cost the taxpayer £97,000

Coventry City Council has begun using data to identify the key factors that lead to young people in the city who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), and will be taking action based on this.

Research undertaken by the London School of Economics showed that each person classed as NEET costs the taxpayer £97,000 over the course of their lifetime.

The authority has begun using data collected by the Capita's One management information system, which was implemented in 2008, in a new drive to offer assistance to alienated young people.

The software manages almost every aspect of contact with a child by the local authority from nursery age or younger and the same core data is used by schools in Coventry. The data includes attendance records, details of exclusion and help from social services.

Ray Arber, information systems manager at Coventry City Council, explained that the council is using its software to build up data to create a profile of each person and that this will be used to help increase the opportunities they are offered in the future.

“The first thing was we took some NEET data from the Connexions team, a government advisory service for 13 to 19-year-olds, and we matched that against the data related to young people in our systems,” he said.

The advantage of using Capita's One is that it is used across various services in Coventry, including all of the children’s services. All local authority schools use a similar system, also produced by Capita, that can talk to the management information system used by the council. This enables Coventry City Council to build up a bigger picture of each individual from their attendance data and exclusions, right through to a change of address.

With data being updated with just a one-day lag, Coventry City Council’s teams can act on the information knowing that it is up to date, said Arber. The council uses the data to feed into various smaller projects that will help prevent young people in getting into NEET.

“The data can be used to supply attendance records and predict attendance rates for schools. We can talk to schools about individuals and identify patterns of attendance – we can identify whether there are issues of attendance around certain days,” Arber said.

He added that the data enables the council to map hotspots, where attendance is poor and there is a high proportion of NEET or youth offenders.