Children & Young People
Childhood plays a pivotal role in who we become as adults: from our educational attainment and progression into work, to how we form relationships with others.
Children and young people are two of the most vulnerable groups in society, and forming a more complete understanding of their lives and of how early experiences affect later life is vital. Investing in research and policy around children and young people will allow us to not only safeguard and support the next generation, but enrich their lives and allow each child and young person the opportunity to excel.
Children and Young People is one of ADR UK’s flagship research themes. It is aimed at enabling a more comprehensive assessment of the experience of childhood in the UK to in turn develop a better understanding of what does and doesn’t work in public sector services for children and young people. This includes assessing trends in vulnerability, wellbeing and welfare in early life and their impact upon later life experiences.
There are several ambitious new data linkage projects – as well as research projects using existing linked data – being undertaken across the partnership within this theme. These include, for example, linking together 2011 Census data with attainment data from the Department for Education (DfE) to create an anonymised longitudinal dataset on children in England: the ‘Growing Up in England’ dataset.
ADR Scotland is leading on the ‘Understanding Children’s Outcomes’ project, which is linking pupil census data for Scotland with Scottish Government data on looked-after children, children’s health, births and deaths, and the 2001/2011 national census.
ADR Northern Ireland (ADR NI) and ADR Wales are conducting important work examining the lives of looked-after children. In Northern Ireland, 30 years’ worth of individual-level social services data from Social Services Care Administrative and Records Environment are being linked to prescribed medication data, hospital data, the registry of self-harm and death records and the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS), creating the UK’s first historical, population-wide cohort of those known to social services as children.
You can find out more about these projects and others underway within this theme by exploring the links below and visiting the ‘Projects’ page.
Children & Young People Projects
-
Shaping and testing the GUIE dataset: Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children case study
22 June 2020
This project aims to shape, test and demonstrate the value of the newly linked Growing Up in England (GUIE) dataset in addressing data gaps and building up new quantitative evidence with a focus on Roma, Gypsy and Traveller (RGT) children and young people.
Read more
-
The relationship between social exclusion and educational attainment
28 April 2020
This project is the first of its kind to use large-scale longitudinal data to explore the relationship between social exclusion and educational attainment for pupils in England.
Read more
-
Infant health and mothers’ exposure to air pollution
28 April 2020
This project investigates whether different levels of exposure to air pollution during pregnancy can affect a baby's birth weight.
Read more
Children & Young People News
-
Funding opportunity (coming soon): linked justice and education data
12 January 2021
ADR UK will soon be launching a funding call for applications to conduct research using the MoJ-DfE linked dataset.
Read more
-
ADR UK event showcases potential of linked public sector data for informing policy
17 December 2020
The ADR UK Strategic Hub held its first Showcase Event on 9 December 2020, presenting several flagship Hub-funded projects in partnership with government and academia.
Read more
-
Patterns of school non-attendance over the educational lifecourse
10 December 2020
This blog accompanies a Data Insight from ADR Wales that uses data linkage to explore absenteeism over an 11-year period for a single birth cohort in Wales.
Read more
Find out more
If you are a researcher interested in working with admistrative data within this theme, or a policymaker interested in how ADR UK work can improve your insights and support your decision making in this area, please get in touch.