Educational outcomes of children in contact with social care in England: a systematic review

Matthew A Jay,Louise Mc Grath-Lone

doi:10.1186/s13643-019-1071-z

Abstract

BackgroundIn England, the state intervenes in the lives of children through Children’s Social Care (CSC) services with the aim of supporting and maintaining their welfare. It is known from government cross-sectional data that children who experience these CSC interventions (such as state care) have consistently poorer educational outcomes than the general population. However, these data are limited in providing crude estimates of association and in ignoring longitudinal histories. This systematic review aimed to appraise the extant research evidence from longitudinal studies and answer the question: how do educational outcomes differ between children in contact with CSC and the general population in the UK?MethodsAccording to a pre-defined protocol, we searched 16 health, social care, education and legal databases for population-level quantitative studies conducted on UK children with exposure to CSC, a general population comparison group and an educational outcome. We also conducted snowball searches and searches of Google Scholar and grey literature. Data on whether each study met inclusion criteria were extracted, and findings of included studies were synthesised narratively. Risk of bias was assessed using the National Institutes of Health Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies.ResultsIn total, 5482 sources were screened which resulted in seven studies being included in the narrative synthesis. Only three were published in peer-reviewed journals. All but one used administrative education data and five used administrative data from CSC services. In all studies, exposure to CSC interventions was measured crudely, ignoring heterogeneity in the experiences of children. All agreed that children in contact with CSC services perform worse than their peers on all outcomes (variously: exam results, absences, exclusions, school moves, being missing from school, higher education aspirations and quality of school).ConclusionsDespite employing a search across 16 databases supplemented with additional searches of other online sources, we found only seven studies that met our inclusion criteria. This review throws into sharp relief the urgent need to conduct more population-level research into the educational prospects of children in contact with CSC services.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42018089755

Highlights

In England, the state intervenes in the lives of children through Children’s Social Care (CSC) services with the aim of supporting and maintaining their welfare
This systematic review had one broad question: how do educational outcomes differ between children in contact with CSC services and the general population in the United Kingdom (UK)?
Thirteen full texts were assessed for eligibility and 12 were excluded: three were not primary quantitative studies, contact with CSC was not the main exposure in four, four had no comparison group, and one was conducted on a non-UK population

Summary

Introduction

In England, the state intervenes in the lives of children through Children’s Social Care (CSC) services with the aim of supporting and maintaining their welfare It is known from government cross-sectional data that children who experience these CSC interventions (such as state care) have consistently poorer educational outcomes than the general population. A CiN is essentially any child who is disabled or unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development (or whose health or development is likely to be impaired) without the provision of local authority services. This can include children subject to child protection plans because they are thought to be at risk of harm. Local authorities are involved with families for a range of different reasons such as poverty, disability or illness and abuse or neglect

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