Better data for better justice:Towards data-driven analyses of Family Court policy

and practice

Thursday 4th May 2017Karen Broadhurst and Stuart Bedston

Long-standing concerns:Transparency, openness and intelligence

Concerns:

• Long-standing concerns about transparency in family court-decision-making – regional variability/impact of policy and legislative change (e.g. LAPSO).

• Parties to cases - decisions are being made behind closed doors, with much media coverage of the “the secret family courts”.

• Justice system until very recently largely paper-based!

What greater openness can achieve?

• Address questions of fairness/equity in child and family outcomes

• Deliver system ‘intelligence’ to enable service, policy and legislative development

• Optimise positive impact on children and families

Overview of data held by Cafcass

Application

ApplicationMember

Person

• CCFJR, demonstrating value of admin data.

• CAFCASS contains applications made to the family courts for a court order.

• Our research focuses on applications under public law.

App typeDate receivedDate closedLocal AuthorityCourt RefCourt

Party/respondentLegal outcomes

NameDoBGenderEthnicityAddressParental relationship

Working with Cafcass data:Opportunities and challenges

Opportunities:

– Security requirements in-line with LU standards and available storage facilities.

– LU/Cafcass benefits and system-wide benefits.

– Improvement on the quality of the CAFCASS national datasets.

– Raised the profile of this national data asset.

– Encourages government investment in Cafcass.

Challenges:

– Family justice is a highly sensitive and contested space.

– Potential for Class Action on part of the users; privacy threat.

– Are permissions processes and security standards sufficiently robust – consent?

– Immediate challenge is data linkage.

• Receive from NHS Digital• Store at UCL

• Store at Lancaster and at UCL

• Send to NHS Digital

Linking court records withhospital episode records

CAFCASSEventdata

CAFCASSPerson

data

HESEventdata

HESPerson

data

ID linktable

Working with controlled data at Lancaster: what needs to change

• Huge potential for growth in pioneering interdisciplinary research using controlled-data here at Lancaster, but

• We lag behind our competitors in terms of certified, secure data storage and governance.

Current options:

• External data storage / handling services:

– Examples: SAIL databank, AIMES data centre

– Provide both the technology and the governance

– Experienced, but potentially expensive

• Certified cloud computing services:

– Examples: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure

– These provide the technology infrastructure only, no governance.