A major new project will draw on the expertise and infrastructure of Swansea University’s SAIL (Secure Anonymised Information Linkage) Databank to provide much-needed information about the family justice system in England and Wales, to help support best possible outcomes for children and families.
A joint project between SAIL Databank of the Swansea University Medical School and Lancaster University has been awarded a grant of £2.2m from the Nuffield Foundation to create the data partnership at the heart of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (Nuffield FJO).
The four-and-a-half-year project will combine the infrastructure and technical expertise of the SAIL Databank with the leading family justice research capability at Lancaster University to provide a vast source of data to improve understanding of how the family justice system is performing and how it could be improved.
The data partnership will be a vital component of the Nuffield FJO’s operation, enabling analysis and linkage of existing datasets, as well as providing training and support for researchers and analysts.
Professor David Ford, Director of SAIL Databank at Swansea University Medical School, and Professor Karen Broadhurst of Lancaster University, will jointly lead this project, heading a highly skilled interdisciplinary team of data scientists, statisticians, and family justice and social policy researchers.