Justice Social Work Statistics in Scotland: 2021-22

Annex C Consultation and accreditation

C.1 A working group involving data providers and other internal/external stakeholders was formed in early 2010 as part of a Scottish Government review of justice social work statistics. The group met during 2010 and 2011 and agreed to collect unit level data for community payback and drug treatment and testing orders from 2012-13 onwards. The data collected has helped to provide better information on the process and outcome of these orders.

C.2 The statistics collected on justice social work have a wide range of uses. They contribute to policy development, as well as the monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation. Keeping in regular contact with local authorities is also advantageous as this enables the Scottish Government to ensure it is kept up to date on matters which affect implementation and delivery. Meetings of the Local Authority Social Work Statistics: Justice (LASWS:J) group are generally held on an annual basis to discuss relevant data collection and other matters.

C.3 Some examples of how these data are being used include:

• determining annual funding allocations for local authorities,
• supporting local authority workload planning exercises, performance management and the allocation of staff resources,
• assessing the uptake of specific preferred options in justice social work reports,
• benchmarking demand on local authority service to compare how different authorities operate.

C.4 The United Kingdom Statistics Authority (UKSA) designated the statistics in this publication as National Statistics. Under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, UKSA had a statutory responsibility to conduct periodic assessments. This was to ensure compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. UKSA confirmed the National Statistics designation of justice social work statistics in assessment report 128 on the UK Statistics Authority website. The UKSA evolved into the Office of Statistical Regulation (OSR) in November 2016.

C.5 A data user review of justice social work statistics will commence in 2023. It is our aim to engage with a wide range of users and potential users of this publication so that we can better adapt our outputs to suit user needs. If you are interested in being involved, you can contact us direct on email Justice_Analysts@gov.scot or register your interest under Crime & Justice via the Scotstat register.