Insight Bristol is a data analytics team comprising Somerset and Avon Police and Bristol City Council. The team includes a number of data scientists, developers, and analysts who harness the latest technologies and processes to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges facing vulnerable families in Bristol. The team carried out ground-breaking work by developing an early intervention strategy that proved to be highly effective. It also created several modern analytical tools that played a crucial role in serving a whole range of public sector workers. These tools are currently used across the city daily since they can generate real and sustainable output for hundreds of vulnerable families.

Insight Bristol is currently focused on producing tools to fight increasing youth violence, criminal exploitation, and knife crime in Bristol. With that in mind, Insight Bristol created two separate tools: A model that examines criminal exploitation risk factors in police data and cross-references them to council data and a tool for understanding peer-to-peer relationships in cases of serious violence. A new team was then formed to employ both tools to scan and identify the potential harm. Within a short period of time, Insight Bristol witnessed a drop in crime. A set of transformational procedures and measures were put in place, resulting in better outcomes for youth.

Insight Bristol’s work is centered around Think Family, a leading database that gathers data from around 30 different public sector sources to establish a rich and diverse database covering 54,000 families across Bristol. This database is used to help a whole range of public sector staff, from case triaging to frontline workers, which helped identify at-risk families and better coordinate support efforts.

The data in the Think Family Database is related to a number of indicators within these categories:

• Parents and youth involved in crime or antisocial behaviors;
• Children who have not been attending school regularly;
• Children who need help;
• Unemployed adults or those at risk of losing their income, and unemployed youth;
• Families affected by domestic violence and abuse;
• Parents and children suffering from health problems.

By gathering, processing, and presenting data related to these categories, a deeper understanding of the vulnerabilities facing families in the city can be acquired. Moreover, it enables a more effective allocation of resources and allows predictive risk modeling to support categories in need.

The Insight Bristol team’s work with the Think Family Database has proven to be one of the best achievements within the Troubled Families program. The database has also been nominated for a number of awards and won the iESE Public Sector Transformation Award in 2019.

In addition to the Think Family Database, Insight Bristol is working to create a full range of risk prediction models that rely on the latest analytics, study a group of people (such as victims of sexual abuse), identify common factors, and employ several complex algorithms to understand the similarities between the examined group and others in the city. Consequently, workers are better prepared to tailor their approaches to manage cases and gain a strategic understanding of vulnerabilities.

The team collaborated to develop a number of predictive risk models that have impacted organizational change. The child at risk of sexual exploitation model is being actively used by the police to identify and help hundreds of vulnerable children in the city. Thanks to these efforts, the team was nominated for a number of local awards.

Insight Bristol is a collaborative approach that involves a team from Bristol City Council and Avon and Somerset Police. This approach is based on the importance of collaboration and partnership, as all models are developed based on shared data extracted from a range of sources. Moreover, maintaining the relationship between partners is essential in this approach. The result is a unique data hub that can be used to protect youth and children in a variety of ways.

Insight Bristol has attracted a number of talents and added new capabilities to frontline workers, which in turn benefited the community. Over 150 frontline workers perform an average of 5,000 searches each month on the Think Family Database. These workers now have a better understanding of the youth they are worried about and are now capable of more effectively intervening to generate better outcomes for society as a whole.