Care experienced children and young people: Research insights from administrative data

This report summarises some key insights on children’s experiences with social care, which have been generated through research using administrative data. It serves as a source of evidence for policymakers and practitioners working to support children. It also provides a rich example of the power of administrative data to enable critical research evidence that can improve lives.

Read publication

Summary

As this diverse showcase of research studies demonstrates, care experienced children and those born into care require a multi-pronged approach to receiving support that can truly enable them to flourish. The effective use of administrative data can produce greater understanding for researchers which in turn helps identify critical themes for policymakers, such as persistent inequalities, regional variation, evolving care practices and long-term impact. Research using administrative data has been critical in developing these insights.

Administrative data in this report tells us that:

• In Northern Ireland, inequality of entry into care is widening, with children from the most deprived areas nine times more likely to enter care.
• Over an eighteen-year period in Wales, there was shift in use away from voluntary arrangements and towards court orders, with 63% of voluntary arrangements becoming compulsory within two years.
• Kinship care in Scotland increased from 13% of care arrangements in 2006 to 34% in 2023. This arrangement has positives for children and young people but can be burdensome on carers and is not a panacea. Additionally, administrative data reveals that while there are 4,000 such children in Scotland, an additional 9,000 are ‘informally’ (i.e. not care-registered) in this arrangement.
• One in three care experienced children in England have received a youth caution or conviction and custodial sentences are at least eight times more common among care experienced children. This disparity was even more pronounced for certain ethnic minority groups.
• Increased contact with social services in childhood is correlated with increased risk of suicide or early death, with admin data useful in linking to such longer-term outcomes, whether negative or positive.

Researchers and policymakers alike know that poor outcomes are not inevitable with the right resources. A key strength of administrative data is the ability to produce data-driven insights to identify where more support is needed and pinpoint examples of success. Many care experienced children lead happy and fulfilled lives. Embedding administrative data into research and policy development will have realworld implications for care experienced children to ensure they all can thrive.

Administrative data is versatile, information-rich, and securely accessible for public good research. Working with government, researchers and the public, we must continue to make this data available to generate policy-relevant insights – and to ensure these insights are used to inform change and improve people’s lives.

View the infographics from the report

Watch a video of the launch event