Dibben, Chris

Matthews, Benjamin

McGhee, Joseph

Mitchell, Fiona

Playford, Christopher

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Making sense of change and stability in looked after children'scare placementsCitation for published version:Matthews, B, Playford, C, McGhee, J, Mitchell, F & Dibben, C 2018, 'Making sense of change and stabilityin looked after children's care placements: A state sequence analysis' BASPCAN 2018 International ChildProtection Congress, Coventry, United Kingdom, 8/04/18 - 11/04/18, .Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 09. May. 2019INTRODUCTIONLooked after children with out of home placements may experience multiple placements before a stable environment is established for them. As a result, policy changes have aimed to reduce the amount of instability which looked after children experience. However, our current understanding of care placement stability in Scotland, and how this has changed over time, is limited.RESEARCH DESIGNTo develop our understanding of placement in stability in Scotland, our project applies state sequence analysis (SSA) to administrative data on children's care placements from 2008 to 2015 (~75,000 placements and ~19,500 children). SSA is an established method which can describe developmental processes which consist of changes between different states - in this case, types of care placement. SSA can be combined with cluster analysis to summarise placement histories into a groups of children with similar placement sequences, and offers a number of measures to quantify an individual child’s placement type stability.RESULTSFigure One shows the results of a cluster analysis of sequences for children age 2-3 who were looked after in Scotland between 1st January 2008 and 31st July 2015.RESULTS CONT’DEach plot shows the proportion of children in different placements in each month of the 24 month period between their 2nd and 4thbirthdays, with each placement type shown in a different colour. The cluster analysis produced four groups (and so there are four plots), three of which were dominated by placement type - at home with parents, with foster carers, with friends/relatives - and one which was characterized by when the child began to be looked after - late/mixed. Figure Two shows the average number of transitions between placement types for each child in the different cluster groups. The overall picture is one of stability, with all clusters having an average of less than one transition between placement types.  This measure can compare between groups: the at home with parents and with foster carer groups have around 0.2 more placement type transitions than the with friends/relatives group.CONCLUSIONS & NEXT STEPSThese results illustrate how SSA can be used to understand children's care placement type stability. Our project will use these data and methods to examine how placement type stability has changed over time for different cohorts of looked after children aged 0-16.MAKING SENSE OF CHANGE AND STABILITY IN  LOOKED AFTER CHILDREN’S CARE PLACEMENTS: A STATE SEQUENCE ANALYSISBen Matthews1, Janice McGhee1, Chris Playford2, Chris Dibben1, Fiona Mitchell3NOTES Data were accessed via a Data Sharing Agreement with Scottish Government. We would like to thank Celia MacIntyre and Albert King (Scottish Government), Anthea Springbett, Amy Tilbrook, Dave Stobie and Suhail Iqbal (Administrative Data Research Centre – Scotland) for their help in conducting this research. Error bars in Figure Two are bias corrected and accelerated based on 5000 bootstrap replications.AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS 1University of Edinburgh, 2University of Exeter, 3University of StrathclydeCONTACTadrc-s@ed.ac.uk | @adrc_scotlandFIGURE ONE: State distribution plot of care placement types by placement type cluster, children looked after in Scotland age 2-3 (2008-2015)FIGURE TWO: Mean number of placement type transitions by placement type cluster, children looked after in Scotland age 2-3 (2008-2015)Ben Matthews1, Janice McGhee1, Chris Playford2, Chris Dibben1, Fiona Mitchell3

Making sense of change and stability in looked after children's care placements:A state sequence analysis

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Making sense of change and stability in looked after children's care placements:A state sequence analysis

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