DataDive recap: July 2019
By Giselle Cory, Executive Director
This blog explores the questions presented by three charities at the July 2019 DataKind UK DataDive. The findings themselves are not ours to disclose so you’ll have to keep an eye on the charities for news about what they found!
In July, DataKind UK volunteers helped three social change organisations to better understand their data:
- Street League supports unemployed 16-to-24-year-olds to move into employment using the power of sport
- Mind in the City, Hackney & Waltham Forest supports people experiencing mental distress
- The Mix provides free and confidential support for under 25s
Around 100 people gathered over a summer weekend to tackle a set of data science challenges using the charities’ own data. These challenges had been scoped by the charities themselves, with the support of data science volunteers, during the two months leading up to the event.
The Dive was co-sponsored by the Elsevier Foundation and Teradata Cares — thank you for making this Dive possible!
Street League
During the DataDive, the Street League team focussed on three stages of a client’s journey: being referred, engagement in a programme, and having a positive outcome.
The team set out to understand who has positive outcomes after taking part in a programme — and who sustains these outcomes down the line. They also explored if it were possible to predict the number of referrals that they get in any given month. Finally, the team looked at whether someone is likely to disengage from the programme, using only the data that is available on initial registration.
Director of Strategy and Impact, Lindsey MacDonald, said: “Street League is a really data-driven organisation; we’ve always tried to use data to understand how we’re doing and how we can get better. But I think the strength of the DataDive is having so many different people with so many different perspectives and experiences, looking at that data without the same biases that we might have as a charity or as an organisation, and give us really objective and comprehensive advice and recommendations about our data, our data collection methods and our programmes going forward.”
The data scientists were joined by one of Street League’s former outreach workers, to get a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of outreach, and the impact this has on the data. This focus on data collection — in addition to the sexier data science — is essential.
The Mix
The issues and challenges that young people are facing do not stay the same — but to help young people when they need it, The Mix need to understand how these challenges are changing and how best to respond.
The team began by identifying the issues and challenges that young people are facing now, as suggested by their own data and external data (social media and web search). They then looked at how these change throughout the year and by the service used. They were also interested in which issues tend to appear in pairs or triplets, so as to better provide advice and guidance to the young people using their services.
The team went on to explore cases where The Mix have had to break confidentiality (cases where the law requires them to escalate a situation) in order to better identify the indicators of these crisis moments.
The Mix said the project was “a big learning curve” and that data science is “something we really want to embrace”. They were impressed by the skills of the volunteers at the Dive, as well as “both the quality and quantity of stuff that the team got through.”
Mind in the City, Hackney & Waltham Forest
Mind CHWF had a triplet of questions. They wanted to better understand their current client base and who may be underserved; how their clients engage with their services; and what impact they are having.
Sahil Patel of Mind CHWF said “We want to use a data-driven approach more to shape the way we deliver services and to bring in more funding for the services that we do deliver. And we don’t have those skills internally, so the DataDive is a really great opportunity to get a whole team of people who are very skilled and experienced to give us that kind of insight, and then kick start our journey into doing that more regularly. So it might be that one of the outcomes of this is that we have more data science on a regular basis within the organisation.” We hope so!
About DataKind UK
DataKind UK is a charity that helps social change organisations to use data science. We are a large community of pro-bono data scientists, who donate our skills on projects such as the ones described here — find out more!
