Using your bespoke early years data profile

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Using your bespoke early years data profile

This page provides a brief overview of your profile and how you can use it.

Using your profile

Your profile is intended as a tool to use with colleagues to help you:

• explore population-level, demographic and child development needs and outcomes, as well as trends in your local authority area over time, and in relation to national averages
• inform your strategic and delivery plans
• identify priority outcomes and population areas for further exploration
• consider how you might adapt or design local supports to maximise their impact on outcomes relating to early childhood development
• make the case for prioritising pregnancy and early childhood within your strategic and delivery plans

You might want to start by reviewing your data profile as a whole to see what stands out for you or you can choose to focus on areas of particular interest.

The data can help you explore strategic questions, including:

• What child outcomes do we need to improve?
• How is our population and its needs changing over time?
• Who do we need to prioritise?
• Which groups face widening or persistent gaps?
• How are we currently meeting the needs of these children and families?
• How can we enhance our current service offer?

The data included here provides just one perspective on your population context and needs. You will likely want to draw on a range of data sources, including the views and experiences of families and colleagues working across your early years services, who are likely to be able to share important qualitative feedback about their experiences.

There are links to other sources of relevant data that you may wish to explore at the bottom of this page in the go further section.

Useful tips

• You can either share the report with colleagues in its entirety via the URL link or by downloading the entire profile.
• You can also download individual charts from within the report and embed them within other documents to share with colleagues.
• Many of the charts have a drop-down menu to enable you to toggle between different information - look out for the tab in the top right-hand corner of the table.
• Above each chart, the data source is provided. You can also find a full list of data sources here.
• Your profile is best viewed on a full laptop or desktop screen.

Go further

Other data sources

Here are links to some other Scottish administrative data sources and dashboards, which you may find useful:

• ELC insights dashboard from the Improvement Service: this dashboard brings together key data to support local authorities in the planning and delivery of funded early learning and childcare.
• Scottish Public Health Observatory profiles: these present a range of indicators to give an overview of health and its wider determinants at a local level.
• Public Health Scotland discovery tool: an online management information system that provides approved users with access to a range of comparative healthcare information.
• Public Health Scotland early child development statistics: a dashboard providing health board and local authority level data on the most recently available early child health reviews.

Further reading

Here are some additional links to information on the importance of early childhood and what babies need most in their earliest years:

• An explainer from Nesta on ‘Why the early years matter’
• NSPCC report on early years policy development in Scotland since devolution
• Resources from Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University exploring key concepts relating to early childhood
• Scottish Government Voice of the Infant: best practice guidelines and infant pledge
• Parent Infant Foundation: 1001 days resources
• Royal Foundation explainer series
• Resource from Scotland’s national early language and communication project
• Nurturing care framework for early childhood development

Get in Touch

If you are having any issues accessing or using your data profile, you want to provide feedback, or you would like to know more about Nesta’s work around pregnancy and early childhood, please email [email protected].

Explore

To get access your profile, search for your local authority from the menu below and click 'Start now'. When in the report, you can explore the data, download the report and download individual charts.

What is your local authority?

Nesta is a charity providing this resource free to local authorities for information purposes only and is not responsible for any reliance placed on its content.