Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset - Scotland
This dataset brings together data of care placements and the legal basis for children being in the care of local authorities across Scotland. This allows understanding of changes in the patterns of care over time and geography, and the relationship with children’s characteristics including ethnicity, disability, and religion. Information on the type of accommodation for the young person at the end of their episode of care is also provided in the data.
The Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset can be linked to a wide range of other data available in Scotland including data on children attending publicly funded schools. See the ADR Scotland Data Catalogue for further information on available education datasets that can be linked for research purposes.
Component datasets and linkage
This dataset shows information on 60,000 looked after children in Scotland.
| Timeframe | 2008 - 2019 |
|---|---|
| Update Frequency | The dataset will be updated in 2025. |
| Population | Looked after children |
| Coverage | Scotland only |
| Size | 60,000 children, 70,000 episodes of care, 147,000 care placements, 195,000 legal reasons |
Examples of research questions
- How do rates of ill health compare between care experienced children and young people and those who have not been in care?
- How does health service use, such as in completing childhood vaccinations and attending doctors' appointments, differ between care experienced children and young people and those who have not been in care?
- What are the pathways out of formal kinship care? How do these differ over time?
Core documentation
Other supporting resources
| Resource | Description |
| Data Explained | This Data Explained summarises experiences and learning from working with the longitudinal CLAS dataset in the course of producing research into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s care journeys in Scotland. It provides an outline of the CLAS dataset, summarising the variables available, issues within the dataset, and current processes for data access. |
| Webinar recording | A webinar recording is available providing an outline of the dataset, background information and examples of research use and linkage. |
| Research resources | Researchers are encouraged to visit the RDS "Information for Researchers" page. |
Research highlights
Research projects:
- Permanently Progressing? Building secure futures for children in Scotland
- Investigating health outcomes for care experienced children
- Growing up in kinship care
- Stability of patterns of care for Children in Scotland.
Research reports:
Accessing the data
To find out about accessing this dataset:
Information on access to Scottish Government data can be found at the Statistics Public Benefit and Privacy Panel.
Policy research priorities
The Scottish Government published the Getting it right for looked after children and young people strategy in 2015, which outlines the steps being undertaken to improve the experiences and outcome of all looked after children.
You can find out more about existing evidence and gaps in the evidence base in the Evidence Framework by the independent care review.
“This significantly enhances the research potential of statistical data on children with experience of care. By making available anonymised individual-level data, academic research is possible exploring young people’s journey through the care system. Crucially, the potential to link to other datasets means that analysis of the experiences and outcomes of care-experienced people can be better understood, and this can inform future policy development.”
Find out more
More information about the Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset and potential linkages can be found on the Research Data Scotland website, ADR UK project page, and the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR) website. You can also email adr.datateam@gov.scot.
