How do differing rates and modes of child welfare service interventions impact upon educational and criminal justice outcomes of vulnerable children?

儿童福利服务（CWS）的干预旨在通过改善家庭功能或由于儿童被安置在照顾中，减少遭受虐待、创伤或其他不良经历的机会。尽管CWS参与的意图是积极的，但研究表明，在护理系统内，儿童的教育出勤率和成就差距随着社会护理干预水平的提高而扩大（Berridge et al., 2020; Jay & McGrath-Lone, 2019; Department for education, 2020）。此外，那些有护理经历的人“接受正式青年司法处置的可能性是普通人群中同龄人的三到五倍”（贝特曼，2021年），而在英格兰和威尔士，大约有一半被拘留的儿童在童年的某个时候受到过护理（监狱改革信托基金，2016年）。尽管有如此强有力的证据表明负面结果严重不成比例，但迄今为止，对参与儿童福利制度与未来负面结果之间复杂的因果关系的理解有限。获得教育部和司法部的相关数据为解决这一知识差距提供了一个新的机会，并在此过程中形成政策和实践改革，以改善对一些最弱势儿童和年轻人的支持。这项拟议的研究将首次利用这一新颖的关联数据集来检查CWS干预措施的不同应用如何影响教育脱离和刑事司法参与。利用先进的统计技术，将考虑到社区、学校、家庭和个人层面已知影响负面结果风险和保护的因素的累积影响，以及不同年龄和发展阶段的不同模式的CWS干预措施的具体影响，从而考虑到数据的复杂性。这将包括考虑教育和刑事司法系统内的干预和支持如何影响护理经历和随后的负面结果。它将扩展儿童福利不平等项目的方法和方法，以考虑在高度社会剥夺或不平等的地方当局中增加使用CWS干预措施的影响（cip； Bywaters等人，2020）。研究问题将包括：1)当其他多系统风险和保护因素得到控制时，儿童时期的CWS干预对教育参与和成就，以及后来的CJS参与有什么风险或保护作用？2)儿童教育成就和参与的结果，以及在儿童福利服务机构干预后与CJS的参与，在地方当局之间是否公平？3)首次识别儿童或家庭福利需求的年龄，以及后续社会福利干预的持续时间和程度，对教育成就和参与，以及与社区服务的参与有何影响？除了在学术期刊上发表研究结果的书面报告外，研究结果还将通过创新的数据可视化和专业制作的宣传视频分享，目标是政策和实践社区。这些活动将设法以这种方式宣传分析数据的价值，以及研究的主要发现。与一系列非学术利益相关者建立良好的关系，包括英国社会工作者协会，实践研究和南约克郡教学伙伴关系（七个地方当局的合作），将确保对现有的政策和实践辩论产生直接影响，这些辩论涉及儿童和家庭社会工作的未来，包括对弱势年轻人的支持有效性，社会工作之间合作战略的需求，教育和刑事司法，以及利用数据为地方当局的战略和委托提供信息

Intervention by child welfare services (CWS) aims to reduce exposure to maltreatment, trauma, or other adverse experiences, either through improvements in family functioning or because the child is placed in care. Notwithstanding the positive intent of CWS involvement, research suggests that there is an attendance and attainment gap in education for children within the care system which widens with the level of social care intervention (Berridge et al., 2020; Jay & McGrath-Lone, 2019; Department for Education, 2020). Furthermore, those with care experiences are 'between three and five times as likely as their peers in the general population to be made subject to a formal youth justice disposal' (Bateman, 2021), while approximately half of the children in custody in England and Wales have been in care at some point in their childhood (Prison Reform Trust, 2016).Despite such strong evidence of severe disproportionality in negative outcomes, to date there is limited understanding of the complex causal relationships between engagement with child welfare systems and future negative outcomes. Access to linked DfE and MoJ data provides a novel opportunity to address this gap in knowledge, and in doing so shape policy and practice reform to improve support to some of our most vulnerable children and young people. This proposed research will utilise this novel linked data set to examine, for the first time, how differential application of CWS interventions impacts upon educational disengagement and criminal justice involvement. By utilising advanced statistical techniques, the complexity of the data will be considerd by taking account of the cumulative impact of community, school, family and individual level factors known to influence risk and protection for negative outcomes, and the specific impact of differing modes of CWS interventions, at different ages and stages of development. This will include consideration to how interventions and supports within the education and criminal justice systems may impact on care experiences and subsequent negative outcomes. It will extend the methods and approaches of the Child Welfare Inequalities Project to consider the impact of the heightened use of CWS interventions in local authorities with high social deprivation or inequality (CWIP; Bywaters et al., 2020). Research questions will include:1) What risk or protective effect does a CWS intervention during childhood offer for education engagement and attainment, and later engagement with CJS, when other multisystemic risk and protective factors are controlled for? 2) Are the outcomes for child educational attainment and engagement, and engagement with CJS following intervention from child welfare services equitable across local authorities? 3) What is the effect of age of first identification of welfare needs of a child or family, and the duration and degree of subsequent social welfare intervention, on education attainment and engagement, and engagement with CJS?As well as enabling written reports of findings published in academic journals, findings will be shared through innovative data visualisation and a professionally produced promotional video, targeted at policy and practice communities. These activities will seek to communicate the value of analysing data in this way, as well as the key findings of the study. Well established relationships with a range of non-academic stakeholders, including the British Association of Social Workers, Research in Practice, and the South Yorkshire Teaching Partnership (a collaboration of seven local authorities), will ensure immediate impact upon existing policy and practice debates regarding the future of children and families social work, including the effectiveness of support to vulnerable young people, the need for collaborative strategies between social work, education and criminal justice, and the use of data to inform local authority strategy and commissioning