What you get when you join our LIFT community
Tylor-Maria Johnson Published on 12th July 2023
The power of Policy in Practice’s Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) platform goes beyond using data analytics to improve lives and manage demand for council services.
LIFT connects you to a community of local authorities who are using data for good and working hard to tackle and prevent hardship in their areas. Here’s how.
1. Quarterly workshops to connect with other LIFT clients
Every three months our Client Services team hosts the LIFT community workshop where leading local authorities come together to share best practice about how they are using their data to tackle challenges in their local area, learn about new features and enhancements to the software, and shape its future development.
The team has a combined total of over 40 years of local authority experience. They bring tried and tested insights on how to use LIFT to identify vulnerable households, deliver support to them and see the impact of these interventions over time.
The latest LIFT community workshop introduced our new LIFT debt screen which goes live this summer. This screen can help councils to deliver wrap around support to people struggling to meet priority debts.
Over 79% of people in England owe other creditors an average of over £800. The new screen visualises the size of debts held across residents and shows how households’ debts have changed over time. LIFT users can create groups they want to target with support.
As someone who worked for local authorities for over two decades, I have managed various teams who collect debt. Some have targeted low level debts and others have tackled large trouble debt. LIFT allows you to target both while also using the vulnerability, affordability and benefit take up markers to inform outreach campaigns.
Paul Garlick, Strategic Client Services Manager, Policy in Practice
The next LIFT community workshop will be on housing and homelessness prevention in September. Ask us more here.
2. Dedicated expert support to help you achieve your goals using LIFT across the lifetime of residents
From goal setting to analsying results of campaigns, every LIFT client has both a dedicated account manager and policy expert who work closely with you to achieve your aims. They share what’s worked well for other local authorities, and what’s not, giving you a shortcut to success.
We bring our analytics tools to life with live demos. You don’t need lots of resources to make a big difference in your resident’s lives when using LIFT.
Our team walks you through the practical ways one council officer can easily identify residents to proactively help before crisis hits. The platform lets you build groups for campaigns that address homelessness prevention, arrears, benefits take up, employment support and childcare, amongst others.
To hear more about LIFT and what it’s like to be in the LIFT community schedule a call here.
3. Access best practice and be recognised for your work
We showcase the work of our LIFT clients through case studies and testimonials. Their impressive stories of the impact they’ve achieved illustrate how data analytics can change people’s lives in big ways with comparatively small investments.
In the LIFT community workshops we open the floor to clients to share how LIFT has helped them achieve their objectives via practical insights into their approach. Community members have plenty of opportunities to help each other and partner together on collaborative efforts to support residents.
We also support LIFT clients with award submissions, with many shortlists and wins.
We won the Data for Good consulting initiative in the 2023 British Data Awards with LIFT. We partnered with councils to target the 30% of eligible pensioners missing out on unclaimed Pension Credit, worth £1.7 billion. Because many people eligible for Pension Credit can also get related benefits, boosting take up is particularly important.
LIFT has been instrumental in helping many local authorities to accurately target eligible households using their administrative data. In this way over £52 million in financial support has been successfully given to pensioner households to date.
Case study: Kent County and District Councils collaborate with data to tackle poverty
Kent County Council was a finalist for the Digital Impact award at the 2022 LGC Awards. Their collaborative work on poverty prevention, all facilitated by the LIFT platform, is an incredible achievement and example of local government leadership.
The 12 district councils in Kent worked with Kent County Council to support over 1.6 million residents following increases in unemployment and social isolation after the pandemic.
The councils have launched 50 different poverty programmes, with 25 campaigns completed in 2021 – 2022. The campaigns have delivered £1.2 million of extra income to Kent residents to date.
