Case Study: Brighter Futures for Children and Social Kemistri

Gary Pyke, Interim Head of Transformation and IT at Brighter Futures for Children (BFfC), commissioned Social Kemistri to create the top-up funding modeller. BFfC is a not-for-profit organisation which delivers children’s services in Reading.

Social Kemistri took 140 EHCPs from BFfC and did cluster analysis against the population of 1,400 EHCPs across the whole of Reading.

Pyke explained the challenge that BFfC and other local authorities are facing and why he commissioned the project: “We have a schools education top-up funding challenge. We are spending a lot of money and a lot of that money is spent on a small number of children, so we need to find a way of allocating that money better,” he said. The organisation also wants to move away from a model which is cost-driven to one which is needs based.

“We have got to create a model that is more efficient, taking time out of the system of people who are having to read a twenty-toforty-page document to determine funds allocation. I think the technology has now developed sufficiently that this is a viable use of AI to help the person in the loop to make better decisions. With a system like this, we can defend why an award is as it is. If we have something that acts as our base determinate, we can vary it up or down as required but it gives us something that is a very good starting point that can be developed very quickly and efficiently,” Pyke said.

BFfC found that the product did what was required but was unable to invest the required amount to make it a viable product at this stage due to prioritising other needs.

To find out more about Social Kemistri and their offerings, go to page 8 of Transform Issue 25 - October 2021 edition: https://issuu.com/ksagency.co.uk/docs/iese_transform_025_social_care_online_issue