Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England

Abstract

This article addresses some potential limitations of key findings from recent research into inequalities in children's social services by providing additional evidence from multilevel models that suggest the socioeconomic social gradient and 'Inverse Intervention Law' in children's services interventions are statistically significant after controlling for possible confounding spatial and population effects. Multilevel negative binomial regression models are presented using English child welfare data to predict the following intervention rates at lower super output area-level: Child in Need (n = 2707, middle super output area [MSOA] n = 543, local authority [LA] n = 13); Child Protection Plan (n = 4115, MSOA n = 837, LA n = 18); and Children Looked After (n = 4115, MSOA n = 837, LA n = 18). We find strong evidence supporting the existence of a steep socioeconomic social gradient in child welfare interventions. Furthermore, we find certain local authority contexts exacerbate this social gradient. Contexts of low overall deprivation and high income inequality are associated with greater socioeconomic inequalities in neighbourhood intervention rates. The relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and children looked after rates is almost five times stronger in local authorities with these characteristics than it is in local authorities with high overall deprivation and low income inequality. We argue that social policy responses addressing structural determinants of child welfare inequalities are needed, and that strategies to reduce the numbers of children taken into care must address underlying poverty and income inequality at both a local and national level.

Income inequality and child welfare interventions in England and Wales

“…There are no international replications of Eckenrode et al's study to date, however, Webb et al's English study 13 found that greater income inequality in the local administrative region was associated with greater inequalities in child welfare intervention rates between more deprived and less deprived neighbourhoods. However, the sample size of local authorities was only 18, and there was no analysis of the relationship between income inequality and state interventions more generally.…”

In Defence of Ordinary Help: Estimating the effect of Early Help/Family Support Spending on Children in Need Rates in England using ALT-SR

“…IMD scores were standardised for all analyses. A one-standard deviation increase in IMD score is approximately equal to an increase of 10 per cent of the population with equivalised household incomes that are less than 60 per cent of the median national income (Webb, et al 2020). (Jones, 2014).…”

Towards a critical decision-making ecology approach for child protection research

“…For example, what proportion of a national budget goes to preventive services as opposed to statutory services, or to what extent Indigenous people can access resources and power to create independent services. Bywaters et al (2019) and Webb et al, (2020) for example found that the inequalities relating to family deprivation were the largest effect on outcomes, although other institutional level factors did have an effect, while Hood et al (2020) found through qualitative methods that cuts to community services and a more pro-active attitude to child neglect were key drivers of demand from 'external' factors. Understanding how these are produced by the political decisions of the day are key to a complex understanding of how decision outcomes happen.…”