Exploring Demand and Provision in English Child Protection Services

Hood, Rick; Goldacre, Allie; Grant, Robert; Jones, Ray

doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcw044

Cited by 43 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Might you not expect higher expenditure to result in better prevention? Evidence from elsewhere (Hood, Goldacre, Grant, & Jones, ) suggests that high deprivation LAs, because of the greater requirement to ration scarce resources, deflect more children into community support services of one kind or another, whereas low deprivation LAs process children more rapidly through to the most powerful forms of intervention. And, of course, we do not know which children do best or what would be the effect of rebalancing spending away from the very expensive costs of LAC to greatly strengthened support services for the families involved.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

Bywaters

Brady

Bunting

et al. 2017

Child & Family Social Work

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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.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

Bywaters

Brady

Bunting

et al. 2017

Child & Family Social Work

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“…A recent survey of English local authorities found that roughly half reported a rise in the number of children in OHC during the previous year while others reported a fall, with similar variation in relation to the use of CPPs (Brookes et al, 2016). These variations are to some extent influenced by levels of demand, which tend to be higher in more deprived areas, by available resources and by differences in local approaches (Oliver et al, 2001, Hood et al, 2016. For example, research has shown that local authorities in more affluent areas tend to place a larger proportion of children in OHC than those in more disadvantaged areas (Bywaters et al, 2015, Bywaters et al, 2017.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In-home support or out of home care? Thresholds for intervention with abused and neglected children

Biehal

Baldwin

Cusworth

et al. 2018

Children and Youth Services Review

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The number of children referred to the English child protection system and the numbers receiving home-based intervention or placed in out of home care have been rising in recent years. It is difficult to judge whether these changes indicate that thresholds for intervention are low or high, as we know little about the severity of the maltreatment that draws children into the child protection system in England. This study compared the histories, circumstances and pathways of children receiving quasi-compulsory home-based support (under a child protection plan) to those for children ever placed in out of home care. It collected detailed data from the social workers of 390 children and is the first UK study to include a standardised measure of the severity of maltreatment, the Modified Maltreatment Classification System (MMCS). It found that the vast majority of children had experienced multiple types of maltreatment, including at least one type of high severity, suggesting that thresholds for the use of child protection plans and placement were high. The strongest predictors of placement (as opposed to home-based support) were severity of maltreatment, being unborn or under one year old at referral, being disabled and experiencing physical abuse. Findings are discussed in the context of developments in policy and services under the English government's austerity programme.

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“…However, given the limitations in the data outlined above, some caution must be exercised in reaching conclusions. It is possible, for example, that these patterns in the low deprivation neighbourhoods reflect the wider 'Inverse Intervention Law' (Bywaters et al, 2015;Hood et al, 2016) which found that in every quintile of neighbourhood deprivation, low average deprivation local authorities were intervening more frequently than high deprivation ones. Recent evidence suggests that the primary factor underlying the Inverse Intervention Law may be that high average deprivation local authorities have less funding relative to demand than low deprivation local authorities, leading to a greater propensity to deflect referrals away from statutory child protection services (Bywaters et al, 2018a;2018b).…”

Section: Supplymentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradoxical evidence on ethnic inequities in child welfare: Towards a research agenda

Bywaters

Scourfield²,

Webb

et al. 2019

Children and Youth Services Review

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This paper aims to compare developments in theory and evidence about ethnic disparities in the USA with findings from the Child Welfare Inequalities Project in England with a view to identifying key issues for a future research agenda. It has a particular focus on the relevance of the concept of the Hispanic Paradox for disparate intervention rates between ethnic populations in England. Three key theoretical dimensions for explaining such disparities are identified and outlined: artefactual, demand and supply factors. Findings from the study in England are then introduced to explore the relevance of these dimensions in a data set of over 14,000 individual children who were either on child protection plans (with substantiated child abuse or neglect) or who were 'looked after children: in out-of-home care at the 31st March 2015. While some ethnic populations were experiencing much more difficult average socioeconomic circumstances (SEC) than others (using deprivation scores for small neighbourhoods as a proxy measure of family SEC), such factors were only a partial explanation for differential intervention rates between ethnic groups. Overall, large differences in intervention rates were found between ethnic categories and sub-categories which also confounded simply attributing disparities to either cultural differences, such as family patterns, or to individual or institutionalised discrimination. The potential for cost saving if intervention rates could match those ethnic groups with the lowest levels of service use would be considerable. More research is needed to ensure that data is comprehensive, reliable and valid, that there is better understanding of how socioeconomic factors affect service demand and what characteristics of different ethnic populations and different approaches o service provision contribute to differential intervention rates.

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Exploring Demand and Provision in English Child Protection Services

Cited by 43 publications

References 15 publications

Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

In-home support or out of home care? Thresholds for intervention with abused and neglected children

Paradoxical evidence on ethnic inequities in child welfare: Towards a research agenda

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