Understanding permanence for looked after children: a review of research for the Care Inquiry

This briefing paper reviews research relevant to understanding permanence for children who are ‘looked after’ under the auspices of the Children Act 1989. It aims to inform the objectives of the Care Inquiry, a collaboration between eight specialist charities which was established in 2012 to investigate how best to provide stable and permanent homes for children in England who cannot live with their birth parents (whether temporarily or permanently)

Research governance in children's services: the scope for new advice (Research report DFE-RR072)

"In 2009, following a period of informal consultation with key stakeholders, the former DCSF commissioned the work reported here, with the following overarching aims: to identify and evaluate existing arrangements for research governance and ethics review in children’s services in England; and to make recommendations for the future development of those governance arrangements, with the overall goal of ensuring a more coherent and transparent system, that is proportionate to the governance needs and ethical risks in research with users of children’s services." - Page iii

Evaluation of the Parentline Plus helpline: key findings

This report describes an evaluation of the Parentline helpline, carried out in 2006. It builds on the findings of an earlier evaluation, conducted by the authors between August 2002 and March 2003. The current evalaution focused on callers' perceptions of the helpline service, in order to determine whether the characteristics of callers using the service, and their reported perceptions of using the helpline, differed from callers interviewed in the original evaluation four years ago. More broadly, the evaluation aimed to inform the future development of Parentline services, by gathering detailed information on the extend to which callers' perceived needs were met by the universal helpline service

Combining thematic and narrative analysis of qualitative interviews to understand children’s spatialities in Andhra Pradesh, India

One of the foremost questions for any researcher setting out on a qualitative study is which form of analysis to use. There are a diverse range of qualitative analytical methods, each offering different forms of insight. In this paper, we discuss our experience of combining two distinct but complementary analytic methods – thematic and narrative analysis. We provide a worked example that combines the two approaches to analyse secondary data from the Young Lives study (see www.younglives.org.uk), in a project carried out as part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Node, NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches, see www.novella.ac.uk). We reflect on the challenges and benefits that result from our combined approach, aiming to illuminate the ways in which the integration of narrative and thematic analysis can support and enrich understanding of a complex dataset

The ethics of secondary data analysis: learning from the experience of sharing qualitative data from young people and their families in an international study of childhood poverty

This working paper focuses on secondary analysis, an aspect of research practice that is sometimes assumed to pose few ethical challenges. It draws in particular on the experience of a collaborative research project involving secondary analysis of qualitative data collected as part of an ongoing international longitudinal study, Young Lives (www.younglives.org.uk), and sets this alongside a wider review of regulatory guidance on research ethics and academic debates. Secondary analysis can take many forms, and bring many benefits. But it is more ethically complex than regulatory frameworks may imply. Whether or not data are publicly archived, ethical considerations have to be addressed, including responsibilities to participants and the original researchers, and the need to achieve a contextual understanding of the data by identifying and countering risks of misinterpretation. The considerations raised here are intended to aid ethical research practice by supporting planning and reflection – for primary researchers who are planning to archive their data, as well as for researchers embarking on a qualitative secondary analysis. Not least, our experience highlights the importance of developing and maintaining trusting relationships between primary and secondary researchers

European Perspectives on Social Work: Models of education and professional roles

Comparative research undertaken by the Thomas Coram Research Unit found that social workers in England have more responsibility and a wider remit than many of their continental European counterparts. Social workers in England have responsibility for all aspects of case management and direct contact with families, but in much of continental Europe these responsibilities are split between several different highly-trained professionals. In England, most direct work with children and families is undertaken by support staff, many of whom have no specialist qualifications. In Denmark, Germany and France, most of this work is undertaken by professionals highly qualified in therapeutic and direct work, working alongside social workers. The report’s authors, Dr Janet Boddy and Professor June Statham, called for a fundamental reassessment of what social workers can and should be expected to do

Reducing inequalities in school exclusion: learning from good practice

The research reported here was commissioned by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s to inform the second year of their on-going School Exclusions Inquiry. The first year of the inquiry culminated in the publication of the report They Never Give Up On You which included an analysis of recent national data on recorded exclusions from school that provided stark evidence of inequality for particular groups. Concerns about the disproportionate impact of school exclusion on specific groups of young people are not new and there have previously been attempts at policy level to reduce inequalities. However, the relationship between exclusion and other educational and social processes is complex and these inequalities persist. The over-arching objective of the research was therefore to identify characteristics of good practice in addressing inequalities in school exclusions, with particular attention to the following factors: Free School Meals; gender; ethnicity; and Special Educational Needs (SEN)