Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

Organization

Household

Event/process

Geographic Unit

1) Court data: Data were collected on a recording schedule by trained researchers from legal department files for cases initiated during 6 months of 2009 and 9 months of 2014/15. The files contained notes of advice given by LA lawyers, minutes of legal planning meetings, the letters before proceedings (LbP), minutes of pre-proceedings meetings (PPM) etc, and court documents, including statements, assessments, directions and orders. Data were entered into a database for analysis using SPSS. Cases were sampled randomly to obtain a sample of 30-40 in each LA. 2) Administrative data: Children identifiers used in annual social care data returns were obtained from Local Authority Children’s Services based on information supplied by the researchers (DOB, gender). For children identified, the Department for Education extracted selected variables from the SSDA 903 Children Looked After and the Children in Need (CiN) databases of the National Pupil Database (NPD). The researchers derived variables combining information from court data (see 1 above), episodes in care and CiN episodes. The critical court data information were dates of s.31 application and date of end of proceedings.3) File study: To assess various dimensions of the child’s wellbeing, the researchers used a rating scale devised by Elaine Farmer and Eleanor Lutman, for their study on working with neglected children and their families (Farmer and Lutman, 2012). Using their guidelines, we made researcher ratings of the child’s health, educational progress, educational and behavioural difficulties, peer relationships, relationships with current carers, relationships with birth parents if the child was not living with them, social skills and social interaction. There was also an ‘overall child wellbeing’ category, with ratings ‘good’, satisfactory’, ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’. This overall category was rated by the field researcher and the two investigators, independently, and an agreed rating decided. (There was in fact very little disagreement about the ratings: in only four cases did the three researchers each give a different rating, and these were easily clarified in discussion afterwards). 4) Qualitative Interviews: In each LA, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to explore informants’ understanding and experience of changes in care proceedings after the introduction of the PLO. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed for analysis using NVivo11. 5) Re-applications study: Data were extracted from the Cafcass databases about any subsequent public or private law applications that the sample children were made subject to. Information was collected about the type of application, date of application, other subject children not involved in the original care proceedings, legal outcome and date of case closure.