Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

Abstract

The role that area deprivation, family poverty, and austerity policies play in the demand for and supply of children's services has been a contested issue in England in recent years. These relationships have begun to be explored through the concept of inequalities in child welfare, in parallel to the established fields of inequalities in education and health. This article focuses on the relationship between economic inequality and out-of-home care and child protection interventions. The work scales up a pilot study in the West Midlands to an all-England sample, representative of English regions and different levels of deprivation at a local authority (LA) level. The analysis evidences a strong relationship between deprivation and intervention rates and large inequalities between ethnic categories. There is further evidence of the inverse intervention law (Bywaters et al., 2015): For any given level of neighbourhood deprivation, higher rates of child welfare interventions are found in LAs that are less deprived overall. These patterns are taking place in the context of cuts in spending on English children's services between 2010-2011 and 2014-2015 that have been greatest in more deprived LAs. Implications for policy and practice to reduce such inequalities are suggested.

Child welfare inequalities in the four nations of the UK

“…The UK offered the possibility of a kind of natural experiment in comparing policies and services for child protection (Bywaters et al, 2017a) although only these two types of state intervention within the wider range of provision were examined. The UK countries share a common language, government and history.…”

“…We had previously identified three main kinds of limitations in the administrative data sets currently produced by the four UK governments (Bywaters et al, 2016a(Bywaters et al, , 2016b(Bywaters et al, , 2017a. First, there are large gaps in the data that are collected.…”

Protective support and supportive protection for families “in the middle”: Learning from the Irish context

“…The necessity for this consideration to not only be about the child and family agency itself but also about related government departments is emphasized. The need to address structural factors such as poverty, homelessness, inequality, and discrimination is evident especially in light of recent research in the United Kingdom, which helps to differentiate child welfare with regard to the impact of social inequality and disadvantage (Bywaters et al, ; Morris et al, ) and a shift in thinking about child protection not just as an individual but a wider social issue (Featherstone, Gupta, Morris, & White, ). The need for greater investment in organizational factors including inadequate services for many adult parents with substance abuse problems, mental health needs, or disabilities as well as improvements within the child welfare system is another priority.…”

“…We recognize that there are a number of ways one might consider this, bearing in mind the international literature discussed above, but for the purposes of our argument, we will focus specifically on adapting Hardiker et al () along the lines depicted in Figure . Throughout the child welfare system, there is a need for better differentiation between concerns, needs, and risk resulting from between micro‐meso causes such as individual/family factors and wider exo‐macro causes (socio‐economic and environmental factors in order to direct responses more accurately (see Bywaters et al, ; Morris et al, ).…”

“…Throughout the child welfare system, there is a need for better differentiation between concerns, needs, and risk resulting from between micro-meso causes such as individual/family factors and wider exomacro causes (socio-economic and environmental factors in order to direct responses more accurately (see Bywaters et al, 2018;Morris et al, 2018).…”