Youth homeless charity teams with tech company on project

St Basils, a youth homeless charity based in the West Midlands, has teamed up with Decision Lab, an award-winning technology company that solves real-world challenges for some of the biggest and most respected businesses in the UK, to work on a project that will help develop their understanding of the factors that influences positive outcomes for the young people they support.

The aim of this project is to identify if there are inherent characteristics about young people that make it more or less likely that they will get good outcomes after working with St Basils. They also aim to see if there are aspects of the way St Basils interacts with young people that make it more or less likely they will get good outcomes.

Chris Harper, Director of operational support for St Basils, said: “We dipped our toe into the waters of data science and machine learning with the wonderful Data Science for Social Good programme in 2022, where they investigated the factors that led to different probabilities for the young people we work with.

“Whilst it gave us some good insights, we also realised that maybe we weren’t framing the problem correctly, so the opportunity to work with Decision Lab on this same problem with a more coherent data set and more nuanced outcomes was too good to miss.”

David Buxton, CEO of Decision Lab, said: “We are proud to be partnering with St Basils to help tackle youth homelessness because we believe in their multifaceted and integrated approach to addressing this complex issue.

“We would love people to send us some of their favourite recipes for cakes. They might be from their childhood, something they have made themselves, or once eaten and really loved.

“Our kitchen team will then go through the suggestions, assess which ones would be most popular and are practical for us to create, and then start testing them.

“We will then let people know when we are serving their particular recipe, and they will be able to pop in and have complimentary tea or coffee – and of course a slice of their particular cake.”

People can send their recipes or suggestions to info@telegraph-hotel.com

The Telegraph Hotel, which has 88 individually designed air-conditioned bedrooms including loft-style penthouse suites, has an all-day cocktail bar and restaurant that features a seasonal and locally-sourced menu, rooftop bar with views over Belgrade Plaza and versatile function rooms that can cater for up to 140 guests for conferences, weddings and parties.