This report explores how local authorities can use information about children, young people and families ethically and effectively. Drawing on four years of research, it introduces a practical framework to support responsible data use, improve decision-making and strengthen outcomes for children and families.
Report: What Is Ethical and Effective Use of Children’s Information in Local Authorities, and How Can It Be Improved
Article: Attending to Care Leavers’ Voices: The Educational Imperative to Encourage Young People to be ‘Grown-Up’
This article examines how the voices of care-experienced young people are attended to within an English ‘leaving care’ service. Distinctively, it applies the work of the educational theorist Gert Biesta to the field of children’s social care. Biesta argues that education extends beyond providing knowledge and socialising young people into responsible citizens to include an emphasis on the existential burden of encountering the world in a ‘grown-up’ way. The article draws on an in-depth study of a leaving care service committed to hearing young people’s voices, which employed a qualitative and ethnographic approach. It illustrates how such voices emerge from everyday encounters with their personal advisers as relational, negotiated, situated and contingent, being expressed discursively and materially, including through digital technologies. The analysis surfaces the tensions between the advisers’ educational and administrative roles when responding to young people’s wishes and feelings and how such tensions limit the possibilities to challenge young people to question and probe in ‘grown-up’ ways that which they desire. The article argues for broadening the aim of leaving care services beyond supporting young people to transition to independent lives so that they might work out the kind of life they want to live together with others.
Report: Seen, Heard and Understood: Unlocking the Potential of Children's Information Systems to Improve Outcomes - Early Lessons for Government from the Children's Information Project
The Children’s Information Project has released a new report Seen, Heard and Understood: Unlocking the Potential of Children’s Information Systems to Improve Outcomes, highlighting a framework for the government to assess and improve the quality of children’s information use.
Children’s services collect large volumes of data, but often, the benefits and uses of it are unclear, and children’s needs remain hidden. The ‘Framework for ethical and effective information use’ helps assess whether children’s information systems truly serve children and families, offering practical, evidence-led ways to improve them.
Policy Brief: Measuring Outcomes for Care Leavers
July 2024
On Thursday 25 July the Department of Education hosted a workshop on the topic of ‘Measuring outcomes for care leavers’. Funded by the Oxford Policy Engagement Network, the workshop brought together researchers, policy-makers, charities and practitioners with a shared interest in improving the ways in which local and national government measures care leaver outcomes.
It was led by four care-experienced facilitators (supported by the charity Become), who chaired the research presentations and directed group discussions about what information might be most useful and feasible to collect. The research team are now producing a Policy Brief based on the workshop discussions, which includes recommendations about how outcome measures for care leavers might be improved.