Overview
The two releases provide an overview of maternity and births, and breastfeeding, in Wales, including analyses of mothers’ characteristics. The Welsh Government uses the statistics to inform its maternity policy and the All-Wales Breastfeeding Action Plan. The statistics also support the Welsh Government’s long-term plan for health and social care, A Healthier Wales, and the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act 2015, which states that every child in Wales should receive the best start in life.
This review focussed on a change to the data sources used to produce the statistics. We also considered, in a broader sense, how well the current statistics align with the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Why we did this review
We first looked at these statistics as part of two assessments covering Statistics on births, infant mortality and teenage conceptions in 2011 and Statistics on health and personal social services in Wales in 2012. Since then, the Welsh Government has considerably changed how it collects and reports on the data. Not only have the data sources from which the statistics are generated changed, but the maternity and births release covers a much wider range of factors than at the time of the initial assessment. Breastfeeding statistics are also now reported separately.
Given the change of data sources, we were asked by the Welsh Government to carry out a compliance review of both sets of statistics to determine whether the accredited official statistics status is still appropriate for the releases.
Findings
The team takes appropriate steps to ensure that the data sources are suitable for their intended use, so users can be confident in the quality of the statistics. The maternity and birth statistics quality report provides comprehensive details of the steps taken to quality assure and validate the data, as well as its strengths and limitations. The team continues to strive to address any data quality issues, for example by working with health boards to address issues relating to inconsistent recording practices.
The statistics and their quality are clearly communicated. Both statistical releases and the accompanying data quality documents are clear and well written, enabling users to understand and use them appropriately.
The team is engaged and proactive, both in identifying and resolving issues and in developing the statistics. For example, the team is exploring the feasibility of calculating confidence intervals to accompany the rates presented in the breastfeeding release, in response to user requests. However, there is currently no published information about planned developments.
The team engages well with policy users and ministers through regular meetings to discuss their needs for the statistics. However, it but could be more proactive with its approach to wider user engagement, for example by proactively identifying and seeking feedback from users from a wide range of backgrounds, such as charities and academia.
The team has effectively implemented the principles of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP) into its work and offers opportunities for training and sharing good practice on this topic. Most of the processes for the maternity statistics are already automated, with work ongoing to complete this for the breastfeeding data.
Our judgement
Based on the findings of this review, it is our view that the statistics comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should retain their accredited official statistics status. To further enhance the quality and the value of the statistics, we recommend that the Welsh Government should:
- Continue to explore and evidence uncertainty and communicate any areas of uncertainty clearly in the text.
- Publish details of the development plans for the statistics, either as sections within the next outputs or as a separate document on the webpages for the releases.
- Develop a user engagement plan specific to these statistics. This plan should include proactively identifying and engaging users from a wide range of backgrounds.
Next steps
We will continue to engage with the Welsh Government and expect it to consider implementing our recommendations to enhance the public value of the statistics and in turn increase users’ confidence in them.