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ONS research plays key role in children’s social care review

By Chris A Garrington, on 25 May 2022

by Fran Abrams

Three pieces of research using the ONS Longitudinal Study were cited in the recent report of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. The findings from the Looked After Children Grown Up project played a key part in providing evidence to the review – and were reflected in its report and the Government’s response.

The government’s 2019 Manifesto included a commitment to a review of the care system, and in March 2021 the independent review of children’s social care, led by Josh MacAlister, was given a year to produce a report.

The Looked After Children Grown Up project, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and led by Professor Amanda Sacker with colleagues at the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care and Kings College London, had already begun in February 2018 and was able to provide important evidence to the review.

The adverse consequences of being looked after as a child were already well recognised, but this research project was set up to address a lack of evidence on what happened to looked-after children later in life. Studies tended to follow them into early adulthood and no further, but using census data from the ONS Longitudinal Study the researchers were able to explore outcomes for those who experienced care from the 1970s onwards, up to the age of 50.

The study allowed researchers to track those who were children at the time of each census, and to identify whether they were living in residential care,  as an unrelated member of an individual household, as a biological or adopted child in a parental household or as a child in a relative’s household.

By tracking care-experienced children into mid-life, the project was able to look at their later outcomes from a variety of different angles: it was able, for instance, to look at their likelihood of long-term illness, their employment, their education, their housing tenure, the type of family relationships they had and even whether they were at greater risk of dying early.

A fuller picture

The research, which was shared with Josh MacAlister at an event last July, was also able to drill deeper into the later experiences of children who experienced different types of care: it compared the outcomes of those who experienced residential and foster care with those who remained living with relatives, both parental and other.

Findings from the project were shared in an earlier Linking our Lives blog, and were welcomed by Josh MacAlister at the event last Summer.

In his report he focused on many aspects of the research, both citing it explicitly and reflecting its findings in his narrative.

The review

In particular, he focused on a 2021 report from the study which showed lower rates of long term illness and higher rates of employment for adults with a history of kinship care compared to those that grew up in foster or residential care.

He also highlighted  a second report from the team which showed that care leavers who were in residential care had the highest prevalence of limiting long term illnesses (around 32 per cent on average), followed by adults who lived in foster care (around 16 per cent on average) and adults who lived in kinship care (12 per cent on average). This was significantly higher than the average prevalence of limiting long term illnesses amongst individuals who had not been in care (7 per cent) , he said.

The review report also focused on mortality rates among care leavers from different types of care, and cited a 2020 report which used the ONS Longitudinal Study to link childhood out-of-home care status with all-cause mortality up to 42-years later.

It highlighted findings which showed adults who spent time in care between 1971-2001 were 70 per cent more likely to die prematurely than those who did not, and were also more likely to experience an unnatural death through self-harm, accident, mental or behavioural causes.

The review report made a number of recommendations which chimed with the research findings, including:

  • Support for families to cut down referrals and help to keep children in their family homes or with relatives – £2 billion over five years.
  • Unlocking wider family support networks including payments for relatives to act as foster carers.
  • Support for a ‘new deal’ with foster carers to help larger numbers of children to be cared for in families rather than in residential care – 9000 new carers over three years.

The response

In his response for the Government, the Education Secretary Nadim Zahawi promised more support for family hubs which offer early help and intervention. This would add seven new areas to an existing network of centres in 75 areas that receive a £302 million pot of funding for family hubs. A further 5 areas would receive part of a £12 million investment to deliver on a manifesto commitment to a network of family hubs around the country, he said.

Addressing concerns about the educational outcomes of children who had been in care – the research found those in parental care had a 28 per cent chance of achieving an NVQ level 3 qualification compared with just 11 per cent for those in residential care – Mr Zahawi promised funding for local authorities to help them keep vulnerable children in education.

Funding would be provided to local authorities for continued delivery of the Social Workers in Schools and designated safeguarding lead supervision programmes, which launched in September 2020, he added.

An evidence-based approach

In both the review report and in the Government’s response, there was a strong focus on the need for reforms to be underpinned by evidence.

The review suggested the Office for National Statistics should collect and report data on the mortality rate of care leavers and care leaver health outcomes, and that the Government should also launch a new cohort study which tracks the health outcomes of care experienced people and helps to gather other missing data on housing, education and employment outcomes.

In his response, Mr Zahawi promised support to help the most at-risk families to stay safely together, and a focus on early help, preventing them from reaching crisis point.

As part of this, he said, the government would set up a new National Implementation Board of sector experts and people with experience of leading transformational change and the care system. This would boost efforts to recruit more foster carers, increase support for social workers including on leadership, recruitment and retention, improve data sharing, and implement a new evidence-based framework for all the professionals working in children’s social care.

“Everything we do to raise the outcomes for children and families must be backed by evidence,” he said. “This report will be central in taking forward our ambition to ensure every child has a loving and stable home and we will continue working with experts and people who have experienced care to deliver change on the ground.”

The Looked After Children project involved Professor Amanda Sacker, Dr Emily Murray, Professor Barbara Maughan and Dr Rebeccca Lacey. 

Do well-educated children make their parents healthier?

By Chris A Garrington, on 6 January 2022

by Fran Abrams

Adults who have reached higher levels of education have parents who live longer – even when comparing families from similar social backgrounds. But is this a consequence of education? A study using Census data sheds new light on the issue.

Those with better education have better health and live longer – this has been known for a long time. A more recent finding is that this extends across generations: those with better education also have healthier parents. And in times of ageing population and stark generational divides, policies with intergenerational benefits are urgently needed. Improving the education of a younger generation at the same time as enabling an older generation to live longer and healthier lives: if this was possible, it would be very attractive for policymakers.  Moreover, framing education as a family resource could help convince older generations that such investments in young generations are beneficial even for them.

There is a big question about this, however: Is it really adult children’s education that improves parental health, or is it just that healthier parents have better-educated children?  Research using the ONS Longitudinal Study addresses this key question.

Two data sets

The researchers used two sets of UK data to examine the question: the 1958 birth cohort called the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS) based on English and Welsh census data.

First, using the NCDS, a birth cohort data set of all British children born in one week in 1958, they established that in Great Britain, better-educated adult children do have parents who live longer.  The results of this first analysis were striking: Even when comparing parents of similar social class and education, parents whose children stayed in education until age 21 lived two years longer, on average, than the parents of children who left school at age 16.

Other studies have shown similar results: Parents of better-educated children are less likely to suffer depression, for instance, and have fewer disabilities. But few studies have used natural experiments, i.e. constellations that mimic a random assignment of individuals into treatment and control groups in this case, pairs of parents and children, where the children  were born just before or just after the cut-off date at which the school-leaving age was raised.

The ONS Longitudinal Study thus allowed the researchers to answer the crucial question as to whether parental longevity was a consequence of children’s education rather than just a correlate. They used census information from 1971 to analyse the health and longevity of 56,000 mothers and 49,000 fathers whose children were born between 1949 and 1965 and whose children therefore benefited from the educational reform  which raised the mandatory school-leaving age from 15 to 16 years in 1972.  The ONS-LS, which links the census to the civil registration system, the NHS registration systems, and the cancer registries, meaning researchers knew when the parents observed in 1971 died and what their cause of death was.

Six causes of death

Researchers examined six causes of death linked to behaviours: lung cancer, accidents and self-harm, liver disease, ischaemic heart disease, mental and behavioural causes of death, and causes generally deemed preventable. Researchers could thus ask if those parents whose children stayed in education lived heathier lives due to possible changes in health behaviours.

Generally, parents whose children stayed in education longer due to education reform were not found to be healthier than those who didn’t. The study concludes no overall causal link exists between adult children’s education and parental health. This result differed from research in developing countries such as Tanzania, where a causal link had been found.

So why was a link between adult children’s education and parental health not found in England and Wales? Researchers suggest three possible reasons: First, universal health care provided by the NHS might have helped those whose children had fewer years of education. Second, the UK’s strongly class-based society might have benefited those from middle class homes more than educational changes. And third, the focus on the raising of the school-leaving age from 15 to 16 years cannot identify whether going to university, for instance, might have had a more direct effect on ones’ parents’ health behaviour.

Future studies should look at how other factors and educational transitions might affect parents, the researchers say. These might focus on whether having male or female children affects parents’ health, and on whether reforms which enable more young people to go to university might lead to a healthier older generation in those families.

In other words, they conclude, it is too early to dismiss the notion that children’s education can have a direct causal effect on the health and longevity of their parents, yet the evidence for England and Wales so far does not support the notion.

The ONS Longitudinal Study: how does it work?

By Chris A Garrington, on 18 March 2021

 

by Nicola Shelton

Back in the late 1960s there was concern that policymakers had too little information about births and deaths: death certificates recorded only limited information and even the occupation of the deceased could be recorded inconsistently. Similarly it was impossible to use information from birth registrations to look at patterns of fertility – how were children spaced within families, for instance? And so the ONS Longitudinal Study was born.

The 1971 Census had recorded respondent’s date of birth – as opposed to age –  for the first time. And that allowed statisticians to record data on a one per cent sample of the population – all those born on four dates of birth which were, and remain, a closely-guarded secret.

The ONS Longitudinal Study now holds records for more than a million people, none of whom have any idea that they are a part of the study. It’s only possible to join through being born in the UK or through migrating into it, and it’s only possible to leave by dying or emigrating. The study also holds information for those living with its members, but it doesn’t follow them up in the same way from census to census.

Similarly, the information provided on birth certificates did not allow for studies of birth spacing. Although such data could be obtained from the General Household Survey (GHS), the total sample sizes were too small for detailed studies.

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The 2021 Census: What will it tell us about life after Covid-19?

By Chris A Garrington, on 9 March 2021

By Nicola Shelton

When the 2021 census was first planned, we thought some of the biggest research questions to emerge from it would be around the effects of Brexit. But while those are still live, researchers and others will be watching with interest to see what this snapshot of Britain in 2021 will tell us about the effects of Covid-19.

It will be two years before new data begins to emerge from the March 2021 Census – and by then we hope the world will be quite a different place. But what will the ONS Longitudinal Study tell us about the pandemic, and about the changes it has wrought on all our lives?

One of the biggest questions will, sadly, be around mortality data. While the grim daily totals have told us about those who have died, and what their current or last occupation was when they died, the LS can link that mortality data with other information about the whole lives of those who have died. Because we have information going back to 1971, we can know where those people lived, what jobs they had done and what types of families and households they had lived in. It will give us a much richer picture of the complex reasons why some groups appeared to suffer more than others in the pandemic.

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