The Impact of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) on Children Looked After (CLA) and Children in Need (CIN): Pathways and Pitfalls of Improving O

就国际教育成果而言，与护理系统接触的儿童是表现最差的群体之一（Sebba和Luke，2019）。与更广泛的人口相比，他们的就业前景（Hook & Courtney, 2011）和健康状况（Dixon, 2008）也更差，而且在无家可归者（Davison & Burris, 2014）和监狱人口（Centre for Social Justice, 2015）中所占比例过高。自2014年9月起，为有复杂特殊教育需要和残疾的儿童（SEND）推出了ehcp，旨在改善这些结果。大约一半的受照顾儿童（CLA）和有需要儿童（CIN）有确定的特殊教育需要（SEN），比所有儿童更有可能有EHCP （Nat. Stats）。, 2022)。EHCPs的目的是协调对儿童的支持，以一种侧重于预期结果的方式，包括随着他们长大，为成年做好准备。如果成功，这将为这些孩子带来更好的结果——这是一篇论文，该博士研究试图通过一种混合方法——差异中的差异研究设计——来检验，该研究结合了政府持有的行政数据和先进的定量方法，辅以跨学科的混合方法。虽然有一个新兴的研究机构对ehcp（如Ahad etal）。， 2022)，目前还没有研究评估EHCPson儿童结果的影响，因此这是第一次进行此类研究。

Children who come into contact with the care system areone of the lowest performing groups in terms ofeducational outcomes internationally (Sebba and Luke,2019). They also go on to have poorer employmentprospects (Hook & Courtney, 2011) and health outcomes(Dixon, 2008) than the wider population and are over represented in the homeless (Davison & Burris, 2014) andprison populations (Centre for Social Justice, 2015). SinceSeptember 2014, EHCPs were introduced for children whohave complex special educational needs and disabilities(SEND), which aim to improve some of these outcomes.Around half of Children Looked After (CLA) and Children inNeed (CIN) have an identified special educational need(SEN) and are much more likely to have an EHCP than allchildren (Nat. Stats., 2022).The aim of EHCPs is to coordinate the support for the childin a way that focuses on desired outcomes including, asthey get older, preparation for adulthood. If successful, thisshould lead to better outcomes for these children - a thesisthis PhD study seeks to test through a mixed methodsdifference-in-differences research design, using acombination of administrative data held by government,and advanced quantitative methods, complemented withan interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach. While thereis an emerging body of research into EHCPs (e.g. Ahad etal., 2022), no study has yet evaluated the impact of EHCPson children's outcomes - making this the first study of itskind.