Phase 2
Permanently Progressing? Building secure futures for children: Middle childhood builds on the findings of Phase 1. It revisits the 1,836 cohort children to find out where they are living, their legal status, experiences, what enhances wellbeing and bolsters resilience, and what sources of support are available to them and their families.
Permanence includes ‘being’ legally secure, as well as ‘feeling’ secure, and the study draws on different forms of data (information about children and their lives) to explore children’s experiences. This includes administrative data collected by the Scottish Government about children who are looked after, surveys of carers and social workers, and interviews with children, carers, adoptive parents, and parents whose children are no longer living with them.
The research team are:
Dr Helen Whincup (Principal Investigator) University of Stirling
Dr Linda Cusworth (Co-Investigator) Lancaster University
Dr Maggie Grant (Co-Investigator) University of Stirling
Dr Alison Hennessy (Lecturer) University of Stirling
Jade Hooper (Research Fellow) Universities of Stirling and Lancaster
Dr Adele Laing (Research Fellow) University of Stirling
The team will treat any information we receive with the utmost care and sensitivity. The study has been approved by the ethics panels at the University of Stirling and Lancaster University.
We will analyse information to map children’s pathways to permanence (or impermanence), explore their experiences, wellbeing and outcomes, identify contact and connections with people who are important to them, and the supports they receive. We want to build up a picture of children’s experiences in order to:
Mapping children’s pathways and permanence status: where children are living, their legal status, whether and how permanence was achieved, and what influences route and time to permanence.
Exploring children’s experiences, wellbeing and outcomes: children’s wellbeing, relationships, physical and mental health and education; what factors influence and bolster children’s wellbeing, outcomes and feelings of belonging and security.
Identifying contact, connections and support: the connections and contact children have with significant people they don’t live with, support that has or would have helped, and whether legal status plays a role.
