Predictors of Social Service Contact among Teenagers in England

Abstract

Very few UK studies make use of longitudinal general population data to explore social service contact for children and young people. Those that do only look at specific interventions such as care placements. This paper seeks to address this gap by asking to what extent do structural, neighbourhood, familial and individual characteristics predict social service contact? We provide an empirical answer by analysing the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England, which includes data on social service contact in connection with young people's behaviour. Our findings indicate that social class, gender, ethnicity, stepfamily status and special education needs are all significant predictors of social service contact. Difficult parent-child relationships, frequent arguments and parents' lack of engagement with school meetings also matter, as does young people's own risktaking behaviour. We conclude with a discussion of the limitation of the data for social work research and the implications of the findings.

Social work contact in a UK cohort study: Under-reporting, predictors of contact and the emotional and behavioural problems of children

“…These families and children have received relatively little research attention, compared for example with children placed in out-of-home care. This study’s findings are broadly similar to those from our analyses of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the British Household Panel Study and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England ( Henderson et al, 2015 , Henderson et al, 2016 , Henderson et al, 2016 , Zhang et al, 2016 ). Our work using MCS is the closest comparison, since the observed outcome is also SDQ score, albeit change in SDQ over time rather than SDQ scores at particular times.…”

“…Given a relative lack of detailed administrative data infrastructure to identify social work service users in the UK, researchers must rely on data collected from other sources such as longitudinal studies. Examples include the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) ( Zhang, Henderson, Cheung, Scourfield, & Sharland, 2016 ), the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England ( Henderson, Scourfield, Cheung, & Sharland, 2016 ) and—the focus of this paper— Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) ( Sidebotham et al, 2002 ). Even if high-quality administrative data were to exist on social work service users, its purposes would be not aimed towards research and thus would lack many variables of interest to researchers.…”

Assembling life history narratives from quantitative longitudinal panel data: What’s the story for families using social work?

“…More surprising, compared to apparently similar individuals who did not receive social work, those using social work fared worse, and both parental mental health and children's subjective wellbeing appeared to worsen, not improve, over time (Henderson et al, 2015) These findings are not only surprising but potentially highly controversial: taken at face value they appear to suggest that a publically funded welfare service does more harm than good. Our analyses of the other three datasets echoed these findings (Henderson et al, 2016a(Henderson et al, , 2016bZhang et al, 2016). Among the further adversities found leading to social work use were: homelessness, unemployment, divorce or separation and parental depression.…”

“…Our quantitative analyses drew on the BHPS, the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and the Millennium Cohort Study -selected because they asked about social work use and yielded sufficient social work sample size to afford analysis. Our findings have been published in Henderson, Cheung, Scourfield and Sharland (2015), Henderson et al (2016aHenderson et al ( , 2016b and Zhang et al (2016). We summarise them just briefly here, concentrating mainly on those from the BHPS (Henderson et al, 2015) since this is the dataset from which we have crafted life histories.…”

Developmental coordination disorder in UK children aged 6–18 years: Estimating the cost

“…The below-average rates of social services contacts among our sample may be related to respondents’ high level of education (Table 1) and thus their likely above-average socioeconomic status. Social class has been demonstrated to be a strong predictor of social service contact among English young people aged 14–16 (Henderson et al., 2016) and this is likely to be true of younger children, too.…”