MAIS Standards Working Group - Meeting 1 - 10th July 2025

[andjnewman]

Please find the papers for the meeting linked below:

1. Briefing (June25) Data Standards and Interoperability in Children's Social Care.pdf
2. Standards Working Group - Terms of Reference.pdf

[andjnewman]

Hello,
I am writing with an update on next week's Standards Working Group Meeting.

When and Where

The meeting will be on Thursday 10 July from 15:00 to 16:30 in MS Teams. Joining Link.

The Tech
We will be using Microsoft Teams and a web app called Mentimeter, you can access this at www.menti.com on any device. We suggest using a mobile. Further details will be provided at the workshop.

We will also be using GitHub, this is a collaboration platform used extensively in the tech sector. GitHub can be a bit complex but don't panic, we are working hard to make this as easy as possible for you (more details below!).

The Agenda

1. Welcome to the working group.
2. Introductions and expectations.
3. Programme overview.
4. Draft person specification introduction and review.
5. Ways of working and what next.

10 Minutes of Pre-work

Before the meeting please could you:

1. Review the documents we have already shared. (5 minutes estimated)

Documents can be found on GitHub in the meeting discussion. Please feel free to ask any questions here as well!

2. Read and comment on our Draft Person Data Standard. (5-10minutes estimated)

The Draft Person Data Standard can be found on our website. Please read the specification, if you want to comment on it simply click the appropriate 'Raise an Issue' link. This will enable you to create an issue in GitHub.

You will need a Github account to raise an issue, if you don't have an account or aren't logged in you will be prompted to login or create an account. This is really easy but if you need help please let me know!

You are welcome to comment on the standard even if you can't make the workshop.

Please note that our website is under development so please excuse any gremlins - feedback is welcomed!

I look forward to meeting you next week, let me know if you have any questions.

Andrew

[andjnewman]

Social Care Standards Development Working Group

Session 1, Microsoft Teams, 10 July 2025, 3pm to 4.30pm

Agenda:

1. Welcome to the working group
2. Intros and expectations
3. Programme Overview
4. Draft People Spec Review
5. Ways of working and expectation setting

Meeting notes:

1. Welcome to the working group

• Programme Context: Tom Rintoul (Programme Director, Social Finance) outlined the programme's context, focusing on interoperability standards to ensure information created in one system can be accessed in another without technical barriers. He highlighted the importance of safeguarding, productivity, data analysis, and power sharing with families and children.

2. Intros and expectations

• Programme Expectations: Andrew Newman (Principal Data Specialist, The ODI) invited participants to introduce themselves and share their expectations of the programme using the Mentimeter tool. He emphasised the importance of understanding participants' roles and organisational backgrounds to tailor the programme and future working groups effectively.

Summary of responses
Organisations types: Local Gov: 12 Central Gov: 5 System vendor: 6 Consulting/Advisory: 8 (includes programme team) Other: 1	Role Types (multi-choice allowed): Social Worker/Principle SW: 4 Data Analytics / Reporting / Performance: 13 Data Architecture / Engineering: 8 Data Management / Governance: 12 Product Management: 6 Systems Design Development: 14 Systems config: 7 Executive: 6 Other: 4

• Data Challenges: Andrew Newman facilitated a discussion on data challenges, with participants highlighting issues such as data protection, lack of standards, and information governance. He emphasised the importance of building standards that respect privacy by design.
  • Data Protection: Participants highlighted data protection as a significant challenge. Andrew Newman emphasised the importance of building standards that respect privacy by design to address these concerns.
  • Lack of Standards: The discussion revealed a lack of standards as a major issue. Participants noted the difficulties in integrating systems and sharing data due to the absence of common standards.
  • Information Governance: Information governance was identified as a critical challenge. Participants discussed the need for clear governance frameworks to ensure data is shared and used appropriately.
• Success Criteria: Andrew Newman asked participants to define what a successful standards programme looks like. Responses included measurable outcomes, adoption of standards, and social workers spending more time with families.
  • Measurable Outcomes: Participants agreed that a successful standards programme should have measurable outcomes to track progress and impact.
  • Adoption of Standards: The adoption of standards across the sector was highlighted as a key success criterion. Participants noted that creating standards is relatively easy, but driving their adoption is challenging.
  • Social Worker Efficiency: Participants emphasised that a successful programme should enable social workers to spend more time with families, addressing the current issue of technology preventing sufficient family interaction.

3. Programme Overview

• Programme Overview: Harry Angus (Project Manager, Social Finance) provided an overview of the programme, explaining the four key benefits - improved safeguarding decisions, better strategic analysis, increased productivity, and power sharing with children and families. He also discussed the importance of open standards for data.
  • Improved Safeguarding: Harry Angus explained that the programme aims to improve safeguarding decisions by ensuring that critical data is available to the right practitioners at the right time.
  • Strategic Analysis: The programme seeks to support better strategic analysis and decision-making by providing managers with the data they need to make informed decisions.
  • Increased Productivity: Harry Angus highlighted the goal of increasing productivity by reducing the time social workers spend on administrative tasks and improving their access to necessary tools and data.
  • Power Sharing: The programme aims to increase power sharing with children and families by ensuring they have access to the information held about them by various agencies.
  • Open Standards: Harry Angus discussed the importance of developing open standards for data that are publicly available and can be adopted by anyone, ensuring scalability and broad adoption.
• Standards Development: Harry Angus explained the process of identifying use cases for standards development by the team and how the first two use cases for pilot development have been selected:
  • Use Case 1 Multi-Agency Information Sharing: to facilitate the exchange of data about young people between different agencies. This requires the development of a person standard, data exchange standard and a children’s social care taxonomy, all fundamental standards that will unlock other use cases as well.
    • Person Standard: defines the fields to be standardised about a person, including children, adults, and potentially other actors within the system.
    • Data Exchange Standard: focuses on the best ways to move standardised data between different systems, ensuring seamless data sharing.
    • Children's Social Care Taxonomy: defines key steps, processes, and interventions within children's social care, providing a structured way to categorise and describe these elements.
  • Use Case 2 Placements: to improve the sharing of data between local authorities to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the care market. This is a defined problem where a “single” standard can solve a problem which will help make the case for data standards and allow us to learn quickly about what it takes to implement a standard.
    • Market Challenges: Madeline Goldie (Associate Director, Social Finance) discussed the challenges in the children's social care market, including rising placement costs and the issue of children being placed far from home.
    • Regional Market Intelligence: She emphasised the need for coordinated regional market intelligence to understand placement provision needs, spot supply gaps, and forecast future demand.
    • Shared Data Language: The workstream aims to develop a shared data language to allow neighbouring local authorities to describe placements and costs in a like-for-like manner, facilitating better regional collaboration.
    • Implementation and Piloting: Madeline outlined the plan to pilot the placement standard to understand implementation challenges and success factors, refining the standard based on feedback from these pilots.

Q&A

• Andrew Newman and Tom Rintoul addressed questions from participants on topics such as the use of UPRNs for geographical records, the concept of a single identifier, and data governance. They emphasised the importance of addressing these issues in the standards development process.
  • UPRNs for Geographical Records: A LA representative asked about using UPRNs for geographical records. Andrew Newman confirmed that UPRNs and USRNs are included in the model for addresses.
  • Single Identifier Concept: A LA representative raised concerns about the single identifier concept. Tom and Andrew discussed the need for multiple identifiers due to practical challenges and the importance of having a flexible system to accommodate various identifiers.
  • Data Governance: A LA representative also highlighted the importance of data governance. Tom acknowledged the need for a machine-readable assertion system to ensure scalable and compliant data sharing, indicating that data governance is a critical area for development.
• In the meeting chat, other issues raised and discussed:
  • A preference to use existing standards where they exist and meet our needs. We have researched many standards in this area but welcome further contributions.
  • The general principle we're proposing is that we should use NHS standards by default, and only extend or create anything new if there is a good reason (and sometimes there will be). Aligning with FHIR version 4 will often be the default for this work.

4. Draft People Spec Review

• Person Specification Discussion: Andrew Newman facilitated a discussion on the person specification, focusing on identifiers, addressing, and descriptors of people. Participants provided valuable insights on the practicalities of issuing identifiers, the nuances of addresses, and the importance of clear guidance.
• The draft specification can be found at: https://socialcaredata.github.io/spec/person
• ACTION: The specification is open for review please read the specification and raise issues using the links provided.
• ACTION: Please review the open issues raised by contributors and add your thoughts at: https://github.com/SocialCareData/person-standard/issues/

5. Ways of working and expectation setting

• Standards Working Group: Andrew Newman explained how the standards working group will operate, including the governance model, meeting frequency, and the use of GitHub for collaboration. He emphasised the importance of clear agendas and detailed notes to facilitate effective participation.
• Next Steps: Andrew Newman outlined the next steps, including iterating the person specification, working on the data exchange standard, and prioritising standards development. He emphasised the importance of ongoing collaboration and participation from the working group.
• Andrew asked the audience what was required to help them participate in the working group three key issues emerged from the feedback:
  • Forward Look: a calendar of future meetings and anticipated meeting topics
  • Improved programme communications: to enable stakeholders to easily track the programmes progress
  • Simple ways to engage for example ensuring tools (GitHub etc) are optimised and clear instructions on how to contribute are provided.

Follow-up tasks:

• Future Meetings: Set up and circulate a list of dates for future meetings and discussion topics. (Andrew Newman, Harry Angus)
• Meeting Notes: Produce and publish a note of this meeting on the GitHub thread for the meeting. (Andrew Newman)
• GitHub Support: Provide coaching and support to help participants use GitHub effectively. (Andrew Newman)
• Person Specification Iteration: Iterate the person specification based on feedback and bring a new version to the working group in September. (Andrew Newman, Howard Askew)
• Data Exchange Standard: Develop and present the data exchange standard at the next meeting. (Andrew Newman, Howard Askew)
• Address Data Guidance: Develop clear guidance on how to use different types of addresses in the specification. (Andrew Newman, Howard Askew)
• Technical Structure Diagram: Create and share a diagram that articulates the technical structure of the person specification, including relationships between tables. (Howard Askew)