Data linkage for early intervention in the UK: parental social licence and social divisions

Abstract

Electronic linking of public records and predictive analytics to identify families for preventive early intervention increasingly is promoted by governments. We use the concept of social licence to address questions of social legitimacy, agreement and trust in data linkage and analytics for parents of dependent children, who are the focus of early intervention initiatives in the UK. We review data-steered family policy and early intervention operational service practices. We draw on a consensus baseline analysis of data from a probability-based panel survey of parents, to show that informed consent to data linkage and use is important to all parents, but there are social divisions of knowledge, agreement and trust. There is more social licence for data linkage by services among parents in higher occupation, qualification and income groups, than among Black parents, lone parents, younger parents, and parents in larger households. These marginalised groups of parents, collectively, are more likely to be the focus of identification for early intervention. We argue that government awareness-raising exercises about the merits of data linkage are likely to bolster existing social licence among advantaged parents while running the risk of further disengagement among disadvantaged groups. This is especially where inequalities and forecasting inaccuracies are encoded into early intervention data gathering, linking and predictive practices, with consequences for a cohesive and equal society.

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ORCID for Rosalind Edwards: orcid.org/0000-0002-3512-9029

ORCID for Sarah Gorin: orcid.org/0000-0002-0721-3880

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