This post summarises a research article that explored whether Ofsted judgements over the past ten years were associated with local authority expenditure and levels of deprivation. The inspectorate has previously maintained that funding and deprivation pale in comparison to leadership, but is this true? Our research suggests that higher spending on early help and family support and lower poverty is associated with a greater likelihood of positive ratings.
This submission has been compiled by a group of university researchers whose work has addressed similar themes and issues, with a common concern being the relationship between children’s social care services, socio-economic factors such as poverty and deprivation, and avoidable inequalities in child welfare interventions. It builds upon a previous submission made by the authors in response to the Call for Evidence.
Let's clear up some misconceptions about data on local authority children's services spending over the past ten years. I've seen this discussion pop up now and again in relation to the Independent Review of Children's Social Care's Case for Change, but also in internal and external reviews of academic journal articles.
Things seemed to be going well. There was a general acknowledgment in the room that family support services and early help interventions were well worth investing in. And then, very slowly, the focus of the conversation started to change.
One of the articles we had published in Children and Youth Services Review this year highlighted a new finding that the social gradient in child welfare interventions was predicted to be as much as five times stronger in local authorities with both lower-than-average deprivation and higher-than-average income inequality than it was in local authorities with higher-than-average deprivation and lower-than-average income inequality. This blog post explores one reason why this might be.
The programming equivalent of a hair's breadth stands between the code required to analyse trends, associations, and inequalities in data and the code required to turn these into contextless, essentialist predictions.
Our new research published in Children and Youth Services Review shows how the social gradient varies based on ethnic population, and what sociological theories and policy analysis might explain why this happens. This blog discusses some of the key messages for social work.
Anyone can now use and test the Child Welfare Inequalities App version 2. This blog post provides a link to the new version of the app, plus a brief description of its features.
Charts that show how unequal children looked after rates appear to be across ethnic groups in local authorities in England.
How much time do you want for your progress?
Adventures into automating my CV and creating a tool for collating citations from Google Scholar and education and employment details from ORCID.
A common myth that seems to stem from interpretations of the NAO's analysis of children's social care is that most differences between local authorities are down to local policy and practice, and that structural disadvantage explains comparatively little. Our research challenges this interpretation.
It is a mathematical fact that the larger the gap between the resources needed and the resources provided is, the more inequitable a relative funding formula becomes, regardless of how accurate its proportioning is.
Which animal crossing villagers look most alike? Which villagers are the most popular? What personality types are most common for each species and how do they like their coffee?
Using audio features to create "perfect pairings" of popular songs? Pretty dendrograms using ggdendro.
Personal blog and website of Dr. Calum Webb. Quantitative social science, child welfare, social policy, and occassional Rstats.