Homeless charity teams up with tech firm to identify positive factors for youngsters
A charity which helps homeless youngsters in the Black Country has teamed up with a technology company to discover how data can help create positive outcomes for those who need help.
St Basils and Decision Lab are hoping to improve their understanding of the factors that influences young people who need support.
The project will 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 program in 2022, where they investigated the factors that lead 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 are impressed by their focus on long-term impact for individuals, and their commitment to collecting data to track their progress and inform their work. We believe that our data analysis skills in machine learning, simulation, and optimisation are a natural fit for supporting St Basils in their work, and we are excited to work with them to support and discover ways to help young people avoid homelessness.”
It is hoped that that the results of this work will be another step along St Basils’ journey in using evidence-based analysis to shape their work.
St Basils works with young people aged 16-25 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, helping over 4000 young people per year across the West Midlands region. They aim to help young people find and keep a home, grow their confidence, develop their skills, increase opportunities and prevent homelessness.
