Report: Identifying Inequalities in Child Welfare Intervention Rates

‘Something to just be ticked off on a care plan’: organisational professionalism and procedure-based decision-making in practice with children who go on to be adopted

“…The findings of this study add to existing evidence about the uneasy relationship between theory and practice in social work (Hicks, 2016). Anti-oppressive or "emancipatory" approaches (Dominelli, 1998:3), poverty-aware practice (Krumer-Nevo, 2020) and community-based perspectives can all make useful contributions to understanding the experiences of families and communities from which children are non-consensually removed (Bywaters et. al., 2020;Featherstone et.…”

“…Recent research has identified that within the current context, social workers can overlook the impact of living in conditions of material poverty on parenting capacity (Bywaters et. al., 2020;Cummins, 2018;Featherstone et.…”

“…Justified on the basis of necessity following the global financial crisis of 2007-8 (Edwards and Gillies, 2016;Lavalette, 2019), Local Authorities saw a 14% reduction in expenditure per child on Children and Young People's Services between 2010 and 2015 (Bywaters et. al., 2020), with the most deprived areas experiencing cuts of 21%, compared with cuts of 7% in the least deprived areas.…”

Toward Full Integration of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Case Study Research: Insights From Investigating Child Welfare Inequalities

“…These case studies generated rich data concerned with poverty and interventions, with outputs that had direct relevance for policy and practice (Bywaters et al, 2017b; Morris et al, 2018). The following section provides an integrated account of some pertinent case study findings alongside points of learning derived from our approach to site selection and the management of confirmatory, expansionary, and discordant data.…”

“…Our sample included 100% of children in Wales and Northern Ireland, 50% of children in Scotland and a representative 12% of children in England. These different national sampling frames were designed to ensure that there were sufficient numbers of children in each country, to allow for meaningful comparison and statistical analysis (Bywaters et al, 2017a, p. 3). Analysis revealed a strong social gradient in rates of intervention across all U.K. nations, with each step increase in deprivation accompanied by an increase in children’s chances of being in state care or on a CPP (Bywaters et al, 2017a).…”