Search results for ‘Subject term:"child protection"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 10 of 14
The child welfare inequalities project: final report
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, CHILD WELFARE INEQUALITIES PROJECT TEAM
- Publishers:
- University of Huddersfield, Nuffield Foundation
- Publication year:
- 2020
- Pagination:
- 78
- Place of publication:
- Huddersfield
Final report of the Child Welfare Inequalities Project (CWIP), 2014-19, which aimed to establish child welfare inequalities as a core concept in policy making, practice and research in the UK and internationally. Key research tasks were to identify the scale of inequalities in social welfare intervention rates as they affect children in different places, of different ages and identities, and their families, and to begin to understand how different factors in family lives and service responses interact to produce inequalities. A longer term intention was that remedies could subsequently be developed by policy makers and service providers and their impact tested. Key messages from the research include: there are large scale inequalities in child welfare – the chances of children growing up in circumstances, particularly socio-economic circumstance, which lead to them being looked after by the state or being placed on child protection plans or registers are profoundly unequal; the implications of child welfare inequalities for children’s lives are profound; too often professional practice does not address families’ material circumstances in assessment, planning and intervention; local service patterns and funding levels matter; local social inequality also has an impact; significant differences in national patterns are found across the four countries; there is a lack of data to underpin policy making; these inequalities have profound economic significance for over £ 10b of annual public expenditure in the UK; after nearly a decade of austerity, the pressures on families and on public services intended to support families are more widely recognised. The report calls for rethinking the focus and priorities of children’s social care systems in the UK countries and internationally, setting out what this means in practice for policy makers, leaders, practitioners and the service infrastructure. (Edited publisher abstract)
Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: a universal challenge?
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Child and Family Social Work, 23(1), 2018, pp.53-61.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The role that area deprivation, family poverty, and austerity policies play in the demand for and supply of children's services has been a contested issue in England in recent years. These relationships have begun to be explored through the concept of inequalities in child welfare, in parallel to the established fields of inequalities in education and health. This article focuses on the relationship between economic inequality and out‐of‐home care and child protection interventions. The work scales up a pilot study in the West Midlands to an all‐England sample, representative of English regions and different levels of deprivation at a local authority (LA) level. The analysis evidences a strong relationship between deprivation and intervention rates and large inequalities between ethnic categories. There is further evidence of the inverse intervention law (Bywaters et al., 2015): For any given level of neighbourhood deprivation, higher rates of child welfare interventions are found in LAs that are less deprived overall. These patterns are taking place in the context of cuts in spending on English children's services between 2010–2011 and 2014–2015 that have been greatest in more deprived LAs. Implications for policy and practice to reduce such inequalities are suggested. (Edited publisher abstract)
Child welfare inequalities in the four nations of the UK
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Work, 20(2), 2020, pp.193-215.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Comparative international data on patterns of inequality in child welfare interventions, for example, the proportion of children about whom there are substantiated child protection concerns or who are in out-of-home care, are far less developed than data about inequalities in health. Few countries collect reliable, comprehensive information and definitions, methods of data collection and analysis are rarely consistent. The four UK countries (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) provide a potential ‘natural experiment’ for comparing intervention patterns. This study reports on a large quantitative, descriptive study focusing on children in contact with children’s services on a single date in 2015. It found that children’s chances of receiving a child protection intervention were related to family socio-economic circumstances, measured by neighbourhood deprivation, within all four countries. There was a strong social gradient which was significantly steeper in some countries than others. Ethnicity was another important factor underlying inequalities. While inequalities in patterns of intervention between the four countries were considerable, they did not mirror relative levels of deprivation in the child population. Inequalities in intervention rates result from a combination of demand and supply factors. The level and extent of inequity raise profound ethical, economic and practical challenges to those involved in child protection, the wider society and the state. (Publisher abstract)
Child protection in England: an emerging inequalities perspective
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, SPARKS Tim
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Children's Services, 12(2/3), 2017, pp.107-112.
- Publisher:
- Emerald
Purpose: In the past 40 years, both health policy and educational policy in England have adopted commitments to reducing socially created inequalities. However, an inequalities perspective has only begun to emerge in relation to child protection, and child welfare services more widely. The purpose of this paper is to chart evidence of these green shoots of a new policy direction which focuses on two aspects: equalising service provision and outcomes for looked after children. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides an analysis of trends in policies as expressed in official documents, research studies and policy statements. Findings: The paper outlines the argument for a more comprehensive approach to addressing inequalities in child protection and child welfare services, and concludes by suggesting some implications for policy and practice. Originality/value: The paper develops the concept of an inequalities perspective in child protection and outlines key implications. (Publisher abstract)
Identifying and understanding inequalities in child welfare intervention rates: comparative studies in four UK countries. Single country quantitative study report: England
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, JONES Chantel, SPARKS Tim
- Publisher:
- Coventry University
- Publication year:
- 2017
- Pagination:
- 31
- Place of publication:
- Coventry
This report examines the connection between social inequality and child welfare interventions in England. It is based on the analysis of routine administrative data from a sample of English local authorities on the children on child protection registers and in care (looked after) on 31 March 2015. Key findings include: for every increase in the level of deprivation, the rates of children on child protection registers and looked-after by LAs increase; there is no statistically significant difference between boys and girls in terms of child protection and looked-after children rates at each level of deprivation; the youngest age group (0-4) are the biggest proportion on child protection registers at every level of deprivation while the age group most strongly represented among looked after children are 16-17-year-olds; the highest rate of both child protection and looked-after children is in mixed ethnicity children; there is a clear social gradient for neglect, physical abuse and emotional abuse; there was a 14% reduction in spending per child on Children’s Services between 2010-11 and 2014-15. The study focuses attention on children’s unequal chances of involvement with high end children’s services related to, in particular, neighbourhood deprivation, ethnicity and LA level deprivation, and argues that from an inequalities perspective, policy and practice should address the underlying factors that lead to difficult or disadvantaged childhoods as well as providing equal services. (Edited publisher abstract)
Exploring inequities in child welfare and child protection services: explaining the ‘inverse intervention law’
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Children and Youth Services Review, 57, 2015, pp.98-105.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Attempts to record, understand and respond to variations in child welfare and protection reporting, service patterns and outcomes are international, numerous and longstanding. Reframing such variations as an issue of inequity between children and between families opens the way to a new approach to explaining the profound difference in intervention rates between and within countries and administrative districts. Recent accounts of variation have frequently been based on the idea that there is a binary division between bias and risk (or need). Here the authors propose seeing supply (bias) and demand (risk) factors as two aspects of a single system, both framed, in part, by social structures. A recent finding from a study of intervention rates in England, the ‘inverse intervention law’, is used to illustrate the complex ways in which a range of factors interact to produce intervention rates. In turn, this analysis raises profound moral, policy, practice and research questions about current child welfare and child protection services. (Edited publisher abstract)
Inequalities in child welfare: towards a new policy, research and action agenda
- Author:
- BYWATERS Paul
- Journal article citation:
- British Journal of Social Work, 45(1), 2015, pp.6-23.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Over many years, large differences have been observed between local authorities (LAs) in England in the proportion of children who are 'looked after' out of home, or the subjects of child protection plans, with deprivation being identified as the major explanatory factor. This article proposes that such differences be reconceptualised as 'child welfare inequalities' and suggests that drawing parallels with health inequalities would have value in a number of respects. Four aspects of child welfare inequalities are suggested. An analysis of officially published data provides new evidence of inequalities between LAs in two key markers of child welfare, and the relationship with deprivation, measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation scores. Although this correlation is unsurprising, there has been a lack of recent research into the extent and the underlying causes of child welfare inequalities, a reluctance to describe differences as inequalities or to propose action on the underlying social determinants. Reading across from the field of health inequalities opens up new directions for child welfare policy, practice, theory and research internationally as well as creating the potential for alliances with others taking action to reduce health inequalities. (Publisher abstract)
Austerity, poverty, and children’s services quality in England: consequences for child welfare and public services
- Authors:
- WEBB Calum J. R., BENNETT Davara Lee, BYWATERS Paul
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Society, early cite March 2022, pp.1-22.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
In England, the dominant policy narrative recognises no association between spending on children’s services and quality and a limited association between quality and deprivation. This study combined 374 inspection outcomes between 2011 and 2019 with data on preventative and safeguarding expenditure and Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores. A multilevel logistic regression model predicting ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ judgements suggests each £100 increase in preventative spending per child was associated with a 69 per cent increase (95 per cent CI: 27.5 per cent, 124 per cent) in the odds of a positive inspection. A one-decile increase in deprivation was associated with a 16 per cent (95 per cent CI: −25 per cent, −5.7 per cent) decrease. Safeguarding expenditure was not associated with outcomes. Deprived communities have worse access to good-quality children’s services and government policies that have increased poverty and retrenched preventative services have likely exacerbated this inequality. Further, inattention to socioeconomic context in inspections raises concerns about their use in ‘take over’ policies. (Edited publisher abstract)
Identifying and understanding inequalities in child welfare intervention rates: comparative studies in four UK countries. Briefing paper 2: UK four country quantitative comparison
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, et al
- Publisher:
- Coventry University
- Publication year:
- 2017
- Pagination:
- 7
- Place of publication:
- Coventry
This briefing draws on quantitative data relating to inequalities in the proportions of children who are either subject to child protection plans or registers (CPP) or who are being ‘looked after’ in out of home care (LAC) in the four UK countries. The study found that in every country of the UK children in some places are much more likely to be looked after than children in other places. Within each LA or Trust and within each country these differences are systematically linked to how poor they and their families are. There is a strong social gradient in rates of intervention in all the countries. Each step increase in deprivation is accompanied by an increase in children’s chances of being a LAC or on a CPP. The gradient appears to be less steep in Northern Ireland than in the other countries and steeper in Wales than in England. Some substantial differences were found in the proportions of children who were on CPPs or LAC in the four countries with different patterns also found in the ratio of CPP cases to LAC cases. Substantial elements of the differences in overall LAC rates between Scotland, England and Wales can be explained by the differences in deprivation, demography, legal systems and what is counted in LAC statistics. Factors that may be relevant to the lower rates in NI include less inequality, stronger communities and a greater emphasis on community based family support services. Some broad policy directions are suggested: a policy objective of reducing children’s services inequalities, greater attention to the impact of socio-economic conditions on children’s life chances in policy, practice and training and better data, including data about family circumstances. (Edited publisher abstract)
Identifying and understanding inequalities in child welfare intervention rates: comparative studies in four UK countries. Briefing paper 1: England
- Authors:
- BYWATERS Paul, et al
- Publisher:
- Coventry University
- Publication year:
- 2017
- Pagination:
- 7
- Place of publication:
- Coventry
Sets out findings of a study to quantify and understand inequalities in the proportions of children who are either subject to child protection plans (CPP) or who are being ‘looked after’ in out of home care (LAC). Drawing on a literature review and quantitative analysis, the study found that children in some places are much more likely to be looked after than children in other places and in each local authority these differences are systematically linked to how poor they and their families are. In England, children in the most deprived 10% of small neighbourhoods were over ten times more likely to be looked after or on a child protection plan than children in the least deprived 10%. In every LA studied there was a strong social gradient in rates of intervention. Each step increase in deprivation was accompanied by an increase in children’s chances of being a LAC or on a CPP. There were also very large inequalities between ethnic groups which can only be understood when deprivation is also taken into account. LA responses to children and their families were also associated with deprivation. Low deprivation LAs were intervening more when similar neighbourhoods were compared. Processes for managing cases and managerial priorities focused on risk while reinforcing a limited attention to family or neighbourhood socio-economic and environmental conditions. Staff showed limited awareness of the impact of poverty on families’ relationships and behaviours and did not consider part of their role to try to help families maximise their income and deal with their financial problems. The paper indicates some broad policy directions: reducing children’s services inequalities as a policy objective, greater attention to the impact of socio-economic conditions on children’s life chances in policy, practice and training, better data, including data about family circumstances, and a review of the level and distribution of expenditure. (Edited publisher abstract)