Sonia Jackson

Educating Children in Residential and Foster Care

abstract Among the many disadvantages suffered by children looked after by local authorities, low educational achievement probably has the most serious consequences for their future life chances. This article reviews research over nearly twenty years which consistently shows that children in residential and foster care fall progressively behind those living with their own families and leave school with few qualifications, if any. Until recently child‐care agencies and social workers have shown little interest in the educational progress of children for whom they are responsible. Findings from a study of young people previously in care who have been educationally successful confirm that education is crucially important for the quality of their adult life. However, this and other consumer studies indicate that at present the care system is more likely to put additional obstacles in their way than to make any particular effort to compensate for their earlier disadvantages. It is suggested that local authorit...

Case–control study of the health of those looked after by local authorities

AIMS To assess the health needs and provision of health care to school age children in local authority care. METHODS A total of 142 children aged 5 to 16 in local authority care, and 119 controls matched by age and sex were studied. Main outcome measures were routine health care, physical, emotional, and behavioural health, health threatening and antisocial behaviour, and health promotion. RESULTS Compared with children at home, those looked after by local authorities were significantly more likely to: experience changes in general practitioner; have incomplete immunisations; receive inadequate dental care; suffer from anxieties and difficulties in interpersonal relationships; wet the bed; smoke; use illegal drugs; and have been cautioned by police or charged with a criminal offence. They also tend to receive less health education. They were significantly more likely to have had a recent hearing or eye sight test, and reported significantly less physical ill health overall. CONCLUSIONS The overall health care of children who have been established in care for more than six months is significantly worse than for those living in their own homes, particularly with regard to emotional and behavioural health, and health promotion. In contrast to uncontrolled observational studies we have not found evidence of problems with the physical health of these children.

Foster care and higher education

Sonia Jackson and Sarah Ajayi report findings from the first UK study of young people in care who go to university. They suggest that foster care could play a major role in enabling more looked after children to access higher education and complete their courses successfully

Development of a parent version of the Manchester-Minneapolis quality of life survey for use by parents and carers of UK children: MMQL-UK (PF)

BackgroundAlthough it is now widely endorsed that children should as far as possible rate their own health related quality of life (HRQL), there are situations where proxy information on child HRQL may be useful, especially where a child is too ill or young to provide their own HRQL assessment. There is limited availability of generic HRQL scales that have a parallel child and parent version and that are reliable, valid, brief, comprehensible and suitable for use in UK populations. The aims of this study were therefore to develop and validate a parent version of the anglicised Manchester-Minneapolis Quality of Life child form (MMQL-UK (CF)) and to determine the level of association between the child and parent versions of this form.MethodsThis study was undertaken concurrently with the anglicisation and validation of the MMQL, a measure of HRQL developed for use with children in North America. At that time, no parent version existed, so the MMQL form for children (MMQL-UK (CF)) was used as the basis for the development of the MMQL-UK parent form (PF). The sample included a control group of healthy children and their parents and five exemplar groups; children diagnosed with asthma, diabetes or inflammatory bowel disease and their parents, children in remission from cancer and their parents and children in public care and their carers. Consistency of the MMQL-UK (PF) components were assessed by calculating Cronbachs alpha. Validation of the parent questionnaire was undertaken by comparing MMQL-UK (PF) component scores with comparable components on the proxy PedsQL™ quality of life scales, comparing MMQL-UK (PF) component scores between parents of healthy and chronic disease children and by comparison of component scores from children and their parents or carers. Reproducibility and responsiveness were assessed by retesting parents by follow-up questionnaires.ResultsA total of 874 children (completing MMQL-UK (CF)) and 572 parents or carers (completing MMQL-UK (PF)) took part in the study. The internal consistency of all the MMQL-UK (PF) components exceeding the accepted criterion of 0.70 and the construct validity was good with moderate correlations being evident between comparable components of the MMQL-UK (PF) and the proxy PedsQL™. Discriminant validity was demonstrated with significant differences being identified between parents of healthy children and those with chronic conditions. Intra-class correlations exceeded 0.65 for all MMQL-UK (PF) components demonstrating good reproducibility. Weak to moderate levels of responsiveness were demonstrated for all but social functioning. The MMQL-UK (PF) showed moderate parent-child correlation with the MMQL-UK (CF) for all components. The best correlations were seen for those components measuring the same construct (Pearsons r ranged from 0.31 to 0.61, p < 0.01 for equivalent components).ConclusionThe MMQL-UK (PF) showed moderate to good correlations with the MMQL-UK (CF) component scores. The MMQL-UK (PF) will be of use when comparing child and parent/carer perception of the impact of a childs condition on their HRQL or where the child is too ill or young to provide their own report.

Adaptation of the Manchester-Minneapolis Quality of Life instrument for use in the UK population

Introduction: The availability of health-related quality of life (HRQL) measures that are reliable, valid, brief and comprehensible and appropriate for use with UK children is limited. We report the validation of a HRQL measure suitable for UK use in healthy children, children with chronic disease conditions and socially disadvantaged children. Patients: A total of 1238 children took part in the study, including healthy children as controls (n = 824) and five exemplar groups: children diagnosed with asthma (n = 87), diabetes (n = 103) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD; n = 69), children in remission from cancer (n = 68) and children in public care (n = 87). Methods: In phase I, the Manchester-Minneapolis Quality of Life instrument (MMQL) Child Form was translated into UK English. In phases II and III, the questionnaire was shortened and validated. Results: MMQL was anglicised and shortened to five components comprising 29 items. Good internal reliability was found with &agr; reaching at least 0.69 for all subscales. Construct validity was established through moderate correlations with comparable PedsQL subscales (Pearson’s r ranged from 0.38 to 0.58, p<0.01). Discriminant validity was also demonstrated in children with asthma and IBD, children in remission from cancer and children in public care, all of whom reported significantly lower HRQL than healthy children. Children with diabetes showed similar HRQL to their healthy peers. Good reproducibility and moderate responsiveness were demonstrated for the new measure. Conclusions: The anglicised and shortened MMQL was shown to be valid and reliable and could be a valuable new tool for the assessment of HRQL in children.

Prioritising education for children looked after away from home

The idea for this special issue of the journal arose from a cross-national research project funded under the European Union Seventh Framework Program on Youth and Social Inclusion. The five-country project, known by the acronym YiPPEE (young people in public care*pathways to education in Europe), focused on the post-compulsory education of young men and women who had been looked after away from home as children, and was coordinated by the England team based at the University of London Institute of Education (Jackson & Cameron, 2011). The five countries forming the YiPPEE partnership were chosen to represent different welfare regimes, and the hypothesis was that these would significantly differentiate the educational opportunities and outcomes of children and young people in care, although this was only partly borne out by the results. Four of the papers in this issue of EJSW are based on research by the YiPPEE national teams. The England findings are reported elsewhere (Cameron et al., 2012; Jackson & Cameron, 2012) and in two forthcoming books. Each of the five countries reviewed the literature in their own language and in English, and these reviews formed a consolidated international overview (Höjer, et al., 2008), which showed that the education of children in care had attracted almost no attention in any country other than the UK, and the educational pathways of children in care beyond legally obligatory school attendance were virtually unknown. This was not altogether a surprise. As long ago as 1983, the gap between care and education systems was identified as the main reason for the neglect of education in the lives of children separated from their families (Jackson, 1987). This division persists, though slightly modified in England by new administrative arrangements bringing social care and education together in Departments of Children’s Services (Jackson, 2010), and is clearly reflected in the paucity of academic articles concerned with the school experience and educational attainment of children and young people in public care. Why does this matter? First, school is of central importance in the everyday life of all children. A child who is unhappy or isolated in the school community is unlikely to make good progress in learning or social development. School difficulties are reflected in placement problems and have been shown, for example by research

Progress at Last

I have just moved house and am writing this editorial surrounded by piles of paper, file boxes and tottering heaps of books. Miraculously, from this chaos there emerged an issue of Adoption & Fostering in which appeared my first ever article on the education of children in care (Jackson, 1988). Based on my own experience as a social worker and a small study commissioned by the Social Science Research Council (Jackson, 1987), the central themes of the article were remarkably similar to the issues which continue to be debated today. They included education and life chances, disruption and instability, educational issues in planning for children in care, the role of foster carers, and how to improve learning opportunities and outcomes. Revisiting this article seemed a good opportunity to consider where we have come from and how far we have yet to go before we can feel confident that children in care have at least as good a chance as other children to succeed in education. What has changed and what has stayed the same? The very first paragraph highlights one of the most important advances. It points out that in 1988, although children in care, like others, ‘are expected to attend school five days a week for 40 weeks a year, we know almost nothing of what happens to them there. There are no official statistics on the educational performance of children in care’ (Jackson, 1988, p 6). That is no longer true. Although there are still gaps – notably in information about educational participation and attainment after the age of 16 – we have quite good information up to Key Stage 4. Importantly, this is no longer treated as inert data but actively used to set and drive up standards. Local authorities are able to compare their own performance with that of similar areas and review their policies and practice accordingly, as in Angela O’Sullivan’s research reported in this issue. G u e s t e d it o ri a l

Continuing educational participation among children in care in five countries: some issues of social class

Young people who have spent all or part of their childhoods in public care are at particular risk of social exclusion as adults and yet the pathway out of exclusion identified by policy-makers at both European and national levels, namely, education, is very difficult to access. Using data from a five-country study of the post-compulsory educational pathways of young people in public care, this paper examines the rates of participation of young people in further and higher education and considers what might account for the gap, looking at two factors: the impact of background social class on educational support and the educational intentions and practices of the care system. The paper concludes by considering the policy context and some possible tensions between policy aims and young people’s contexts and experiences.

Educational success for looked-after children: The social worker's responsibility

Abstract Research over the past twenty years shows that children in public care are massively disadvantaged within the education system. The scale of the problem has been highlighted by the rise in exclusions, with over a third of looked after children denied their right to education altogether. But even those who attend school regularly are unlikely to reach their educational potential unless active measures are taken to compensate for earlier disadvantages. Careleavers without qualifications are at high risk of social exclusion. This article reports findings from the authors research on high achievers who have been in care and urges social workers to recognize the promotion and support of looked after childrens education as a central part of their role.

Falling off the ladder: Using focal theory to understand and improve the educational experiences of young people in transition from public care.

Colemans focal theory, developed in relation to adolescents in the general population, appears to offer some explanation for the poor educational achievement and social exclusion of care leavers, but has been little tested empirically. This paper revisits data from two studies of care-experienced young people aged 18-25, drawing on qualitative interviews in the UK and four other European countries, to see if focal theory would have helped to predict their educational progression or otherwise. The lives of research participants were found to be characterised by disruptions and uncertainty, with multiple challenges confronting them in quick succession, making it hard for them to pace their transitions as, according to focal theory, other young people do. Findings suggest that the theory could be used to inform policy designed to improve educational outcomes and should be incorporated into training for those responsible for supporting care leavers through their transition to adulthood.