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Child Welfare Research Group

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Themes and projects

The Child Welfare Research Group conducts research and provides consultancy on a wide range of child welfare topics. These include:

• Child protection
• Children who are looked after (in out of home care)
• Children and young people on the edge of care
• Foster care and residential care for children and young people
• Reunification of children in care
• Transitions from care (young people leaving care at age 16 or over)
• Abuse in care
• Adoption
• Special guardianship
• Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children

Projects

Our work is funded by research councils in the UK (the ESRC) and Europe (Norface), central government, local authorities and charities. Current and recent projects include:

• Care leavers' transition into the labour market in England
• Children looked after and mental health (CLAMH) co-production project
• The house project 2: An evaluation of the House Project Hub model
• Break - Staying close, staying connected project
• Brighter futures for care leavers: A Consultation on Outcomes and Aftercare for Young People Leaving Care in Ireland
• Evaluation of Bradford B Positive Pathways (BPP)
• Strengthening child protection in England through knowledge-exchange and co-production
• Bright futures
  
• Home or care? Pathways and outcomes for maltreated children in a multi-ethnic cohort
• The Hestia study: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands
  
• Permanently progressing: building secure futures for children in Scotland
  
• Reunifying abused or neglected children - Publisher
• Evaluation of the Action for Change 'Step Change' project
• Abuse in foster care  
• The house project: Evaluation of a housing co-operative for young people leaving care
  
• Evaluation of the Right Home Project
  
• Fostering unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people: Creating a family life across 'a world of difference'
• Evaluating and analysing communication in child protection conferences
• Trauma treatment and violence prevention for adolescent girls in the US child welfare system
• How does the Signs of Safety approach affect participants' discourse and experience during child protection conferences?

External consultancy 

• A comparative analysis of child support systems across four countries (UK, US, Australia and NZ)
• The Educational Progress of Looked After Children in England: Linking Care and Educational Data (with the Rees Centre at University of Oxford and the University of Bristol)
• The Educational Progress of Looked After Children and Children in Need (with University of Bristol)
• The Siblings Together evaluation (with The Rees Centre for Research in Fostering and Education, University of Oxford)
• Access to and experiences of early years education for looked after children – A Scoping Study (with Department of Education, University of Oxford and the Family and Childcare Trust)
• Researching care leavers involvement in Social Action - (a Catch22 Social Action Project)
• The Children's Society Adolescent Neglect research programme
• Evaluation of Foundation’s Springboard Leaving Care project (Big Lottery Youth in Focus programme)
• ‘Forgotten Australians’ research project (identifying long term outcomes of people who lived in institutional and other out-of-home care) - Australian Research Council

PhD Studies 

• Decision-making and intervention in child protection cases involving parental substance misuse - Helen Baldwin
• The social networks of unaccompanied young people leaving care: a life course perspective - Kelly Devenney (completed 2016)