 data and digital priority areas:  Improving Children’s Social Care data collection, and how data is shared to inform decision- making,  Improving case management systems (CMS) to reduce burdens on the frontline and support practice,  Using technology to achieve frictionless sharing of information between safeguarding partners. To support this, in October 2022, the Department for Education (DfE) launched the ‘Data and Digital Solutions Fund’ (DDSF), inviting Local Authorities (LAs) to bid to deliver a range of projects relating to the three priority areas set out above. Project 1c of the DDSF asked for an independent evaluation of data analytics tools within LA settings. This evaluation would seek to understand how effectively data analytics tools can support both operational and strategic decision making within children’s services, and how tools developed in one setting might be transferred and adopted by other LAs. Somerset Council were successful in a bid to evaluate the Think Family Database (TFD) and its associated risk models and to draw out key lessons for how such an approach may be operationalised. They partnered on this project with Bristol City Council and Social Finance. This evaluation sits alongside a ‘replication guide’ for the TFD, which is principally aimed at audiences in other LAs who are considering embarking on this approach. The idea for the TFD initially emerged around 2015 from the Troubled Families Programme in Bristol City Council (see Appendix 1 for more info), later known as the Supporting Families Programme. It was made possible, in part, using the grant received through this programme. Complex cases like the one presented in the Data Ethics Report completed in 2022 as part of the DLUHC Data Accelerator Programme in Avon and Somerset, hig