Over the ten years of the study, accessing, securing, and maintaining the
engagement of the parents of the children who were identified as suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm has involved many challenges (see Appendix One for an overview). The parents of only 84 eligible children from the 10 local authorities responded to the original recruitment drive for the study, only 57 of these children could be included in the initial sample. Table Three below summarises the
longitudinal sample, and the rate children have been lost from it over the years.
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Table 3: Summary of the longitudinal cohort and attrition
Longitudinal sample group Number Attrition
from
The study team were able to collect some initial data concerning 57 children whose parents formally agreed to participate in the study.
57
Third year follow-up
The research team were able to maintain 43 of the original 57 children in the sample until their third birthdays. The research team lost contact with 14 sets of parents/carers during this phase, most commonly because parents/carers chose not to respond to letters/calls/texts etc, or because they changed mobile numbers/addresses.
43 25%
Fifth year follow-up
The fifth year follow-up cohort comprises 29 children who had been traced from birth, and eight who had been lost to the study after the initial interview, but were then re-recruited.
The research team lost contact with 14 sets of parents/carers during this phase. The majority of attrition at this point was in relation to children being placed with adoptive parents or kinship carers who declined to participate in the study or could not be contacted (six children), or parents/carers who could not be contacted because their mobile
numbers/addresses had changed (eight children).
37 35%
Eighth year follow-up
The seven/eight year follow-up comprises 34 children whose parents/carers have taken part in the study over prolonged periods and two children whose parents/carers have intermittently participated. Three children were lost to the sample between the ages of five and eight.
36 37%
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Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of the cohort composition and attrition
Original sample recruited
(28 with birth parents; 7 adopted; 7 kinship care; 1 foster care)
(27 with birth parents; 3 adopted; 7 kinship care)
(20 with birth parents; 3 adopted; 8 kinship care; 5 foster care)
year follow up. 8 living with birth parents who could not
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The small numbers involved in the study mean that findings should be approached with caution: more evidence is needed concerning their reliability and generalisability to a wider population. In addition, the composition of the sample has been skewed by two underlying sets of circumstances.
The first is in relation to the parents who were likely to take part in the study. Letters were sent to over 1000 parents of children who had been the subjects of a core assessment or section 47 enquiry before their first birthday. Although 84 parents responded, only 57 took part in at least an initial interview with the research team. To explore bias within this sample of 57 children, anonymised management information for all children who met the sample criteria from four of the ten participating local authorities was scrutinised. This showed that the sample children, whose parents chose to participate in the study, were significantly more likely, than those who did not participate, to have been referred before birth, to have received services following a core assessment, and to have become looked after before their first birthdays (see Ward, 2012, p.222). This indicates that the original sample of children was skewed towards those who were more likely to suffer significant harm than the eligible population of children whose parents chose not to participate. Our qualitative data corroborates this, suggesting that at around the time of the children’s birth, the parents were in receipt of high level intervention from children’s social care and the courts. Parents wanted to share their experiences; either because they had had their baby removed from them, and were feeling isolated and disempowered; or because they were able to overcome substantial difficulties in their lives and were providing a nurturing and safe environment for their new-born baby. These parents were very proud of what they had achieved and wanted to share this.
The second set of circumstances contributing to bias within the sample relate to attrition, and how it has affected certain groups of children more than others. This includes the following factors:
• Of the original sample of 57 children, by the age of eight, 26 (46%) were separated from their birth parents, including 19 who were removed before they were three, and seven children who were separated at around the ages of six to seven years. Of the 26 separated children, 12 were adopted, nine were in kinship care, and five (of the late separated children) were in foster care. Ten (38%) of these children have been lost from the sample, including nine who were adopted and one child in kinship care. Therefore, only three adopted children were accessible for the eighth year follow-up, in contrast to children in kinship care, where all but one were accessible. Adoptive parents have chosen, by and large, not to take part, whereas kinship carers have
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shown a keen interest in the study, and have mostly all remained extremely committed to participating.
• The dynamic whereby parents and carers have opted in and out of the study:
some parents have been inaccessible at times when their personal difficulties have overwhelmed them, and have then re-joined the sample when their circumstances have improved (in some cases years later). Other parents however, have shown a greater willingness to participate when their personal difficulties have deteriorated, and they therefore have been under heightened surveillance from children’s social care and the courts.
• Kinship carers and parents who have overcome substantial personal difficulties in their lives and have been able to sustain such changes have remained relatively accessible throughout the study.
Other factors which have contributed to the limitations of the study include the
accessibility of data. At the outset ten local authorities were recruited to the study, all agreed to participate, and provide the research team with access to data held on their social care case files about the children in the study (where parental consent was provided). However, over the years, accessing data held by local authorities has become increasingly problematic, despite having continued consent from those with parental responsibilities for the children. Delays often arise because of impromptu inspections or changes to senior personnel. For this phase of the study, all ten local authorities agreed to continue their participation in the study, and provided the research team with written confirmation of this. However, despite having parental consent and following 18 months of negotiation, attempts to collect data from two local authorities had to be aborted because there was no longer time left within the study parameters. On one occasion, the researcher arrived at a local authority’s offices on an agreed day and time and with all relevant consents in hand. However, the local authority denied access on the grounds that the matter would need to be confirmed (again) by senior management. Local authority staff were particularly nervous about allowing the research team access to children’s case files.
Occasionally parents also found that there were barriers to participating in the research, as one birth mother described:
My social worker didn’t like me talking to you lot…Yeah, he didn’t, he didn’t want me talking, because he didn’t want me to talk to you. I thought, Why not? He’s scared because they’ll find out the truth what you all are like, that’s what, that’s what I said to him.
Birth mother of study child: at entry interview
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As one might expect, over the course of the study, the number of children in receipt of ongoing services from children’s social care has reduced. Therefore case files have been closed and increasingly we are more reliant on the views of birth parents and carers. These are undoubtedly biased - the reader should take this into account.
The findings from this study should be approached with caution and more evidence is needed concerning their reliability and generalisability. Nevertheless, this study presents a unique opportunity to learn about these vulnerable families, including the challenges they face in bringing up children with inadequate material resources and in an often hostile environment as well as their experiences with mental health problems, domestic abuse, substance misuse, their own experiences of childhood abuse, and the permanent removal of children; their expectations of their social worker; and their capacity to change the behaviour which undermines their parenting capability. The children in the sample are now mostly all in their seventh or eighth year, the study for the first time can provide an even rarer opportunity to capture their own views and expectations. Furthermore, because this study is prospective, it follows these seldom heard experiences and perspectives forward in time and can therefore provide reliable information on what factors have changed and what has influenced the life trajectories and developmental progress of each child.
Qualitative enquiry of this nature can provide rich insights into the lives of these families with whom social workers are involved and help us to understand their subjective experiences. This study is reliable in demonstrating child safeguarding scenarios and investigating them reflexively in detail by triangulating data from different sources over prolonged time periods. While the study cannot show the prevalence of any situation nor be certain about its cause and effect, the prospective research can provide hypotheses, theories and raise important new understandings which can then be further explored in larger, less detailed, quantitative studies.
These types of subjective experiences cannot be generalised to the wider
population, but they can provide an insight into the inner lives of parents who abuse or neglect their children, and improved understandings of ways to effectively engage them with services, the agonising decision-making processes in complex child protection cases, and how these can affect the welfare of the children involved.