Permanently Progressing? Building secure futures for children: Phase 2 Middle Childhood

Abstract

The study explores whether and how permanence has been achieved for the cohort of 1,836 children who became looked after in Scotland between 1 August 2012 and 31 July 2013 when they were aged five and under. Information on children’s pathways and permanence status over time is primarily drawn from analysing Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS). CLAS provides the ‘bigger picture’ - it tells us important information about where children are, their legal status and what changed/remained the same by 20229, but it doesn’t provide rich detail about their day-to-day experiences or those of their families. As permanence involves ‘feeling’ secure as well as ‘being’ legally secure, we explore children’s experiences through qualitative interviews with 19 children, 34 caregivers (for 29 children in 25 families) and ten birth parents. We also draw on information from surveys of social workers (for up to 727 children10) and caregivers (for 98 children). Education administrative data was also utilised to consider children’s additional support needs and school exclusions. Using these combined data, we map children’s pathways to permanence (or impermanence), explore their experiences, wellbeing and outcomes, identify contact and connections with people who are important to them, and the supports they, their caregivers, and birth parents received, or would have liked to receive. We identify what children, caregivers and birth parents told us was more and less helpful. Our aim is to build an understanding of the lives of children and their families, and report this in a way that treats them and their stories with care and respect. We hope our findings will contribute to the evidence base about permanence and children’s wellbeing, and influence policy and practice. Children, caregivers, birth parents and social workers talked about hard things, as well as joyful experiences. Reading their stories and seeing the picture painted by interviews, surveys and administrative data is likely to elicit a range of emotions.