Children in care: Where do children entering care at different ages end up? An analysis of local authority administrative data

Local authorities in England are required to routinely collect administrative data on children in care and cross-sectional analyses of national data are published by central government. This paper explores the usefulness of undertaking a longitudinal analysis of these data at local authority level to determine the care pathways for children entering care, differentiating by age at entry. The sample consisted of 2208 children who entered care in one English local authority over a six-year period, and who were followed up for at least 2 years. A logistic regression model was fitted to explore factors associated with children staying long term in care. Age at entry was a key determinant of where children ended up (return to a parent, special guardianship or residence order, adoption or staying long term in care). Only a minority of entrants (mainly those entering care in their middle years) remained in longer term care. For the vast majority of children, the ‘pre-care family context’ remains important as children will either return to parents or relatives or stay in touch with them. The findings are used to urge service planners to make full use of data on care entrants, especially age at entry, when deciding on the balance between the different placement options needed, and the social work service delivery models

Inadequate child supervision: The role of alcohol outlet density, parent drinking behaviors, and social support

Supervisory neglect, or the failure of a caregiver to appropriately supervise a child, is one of the predominant types of neglectful behaviors, with alcohol use being considered a key antecedent to inadequate supervision of children. The current study builds on previous work by examining the role of parental drinking and alcohol outlet densities while controlling for caregiver and child characteristics. Data were obtained from 3,023 participants via a telephone survey from 50 cities throughout California. The telephone survey included items on neglectful parenting practices, drinking behaviors, and socio-demographic characteristics. Densities of alcohol outlets were measured for each of the 202 zip codes in the study. Multilevel Bernoulli models were used to analyze the relationship between four supervisory neglect parenting practices and individual-level and zip code-level variables. In our study, heavy drinking was only significantly related to one of our four outcome variables (leaving a child where he or she may not be safe). The density of on premise alcohol outlets was positively related to leaving a child home alone when an adult should be present. This study demonstrates that discrete relationships exist between alcohol related variables, social support, and specific supervisory neglect subtypes at the ecological and individual levels