Abstract
AbstractThe relationship between poverty and child maltreatment and by extension of being placed in out-of-home care is a well-established one. However, this study goes beyond recent UK studies on the scale of child welfare inequalities in the likelihood of being placed in out-of-home care by considering such inequalities over time. The study is an analysis of longitudinal administrative data on children ‘looked after’ with a specific focus on children entering care in the two years that followed the death of Peter Connelly in 2007, a period that saw a rapid increase in numbers of children entering care. The analysis considers these increases using a child welfare inequalities lens. There is a ‘social gradient’ present within the overall rates of children entering care, with children in the most deprived neighbourhoods almost twelve times more likely to enter care than those in the least deprived. Such inequalities are compounded further in times of rapidly increasing entries to care with children entering care being disproportionately drawn from the poorest neighbourhoods, illustrated by a 42-per cent increase in rates between the two years in the most deprived neighbourhoods whilst rates in the least deprived neighbourhoods fell or remained the same.
Highlights
This article will consider child welfare inequalities and what happens to those inequalities in relation to children ‘looked after’ during a period www.basw.co.uk# The Author(s) 2019
What the figure illustrates is the presence of an overall ‘social gradient’ (Marmot, 2010) in the rates of entries to the care system within Wales
The overall premise of the child welfare inequalities approach is based on illustrating the presence of a ‘social gradient’ in the rates at which children are subject to child welfare interventions, such as being placed in care
Summary
This article will consider child welfare inequalities and what happens to those inequalities in relation to children ‘looked after’ during a period www.basw.co.uk# The Author(s) 2019. Page 2 of 17 Martin Elliott of significant, rapid increase in the numbers of children entering care. This will be done by exploring inequalities during a significant period in the UK for statutory children’s services, the period from April 2008 to March 2010, which covers the events surrounding the death of Peter Connelly (Baby P) and their immediate aftermath. This study aims to go beyond the small, but growing, body of literature in the UK that seeks to describe the ‘social determinants’ of child welfare and highlights the current lack of consideration given to the socio-economic drivers of contact with child welfare services by looking at such inequalities over time
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