Mapping after-school care in Edinburgh
At a glance
Student: Greta Lyon
Host organisation: Lothian Association of Youth Clubs
Project: Whole Family Wellbeing Project, supported by the City of Edinburgh Council and NHS Lothian
Methods and tools: Club-manager survey, descriptive statistics, Excel, R and an interactive map using leaflet
The project
Greta explored parent-led after-school care provision across Edinburgh. Her questions covered how many families use the clubs, where they live, their backgrounds, fees and waiting lists. A particular focus was the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and whether families from more deprived areas were using after-school clubs.
What Greta did
Greta designed and sent forms to club managers and received responses from 27 of 33 clubs. She assembled the data in Excel, imported it into R as a CSV file, and produced descriptive statistics and visualisations. She also used the R package leaflet to make an interactive map of club fees across the city.
What she learned
Collecting consistent information from busy organisations took more time than Greta expected, especially when respondents had different levels of familiarity with data. She also learned to write a report for city councillors that put the main findings up front and made the evidence accessible to readers with limited time.
The project’s underlying figures and maps are not reproduced here because permission for web publication has not been confirmed. The accompanying image is illustrative and does not show project data.