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- BLOG - Access to secure data during the Covid-19 pandemic - a model for the future?
- Covid-19 and Care Homes: Advances in Administrative Data Research during the pandemic
- DATA INSIGHTS -Deprivation and informal care at the end of life
- BLOG - Reflections on engaging with children & young people about data
- NEWS - Innovative new residential linkage tool launched
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.4
- DATA INSIGHTS - Youth Movements, Social Mobility and Health Inequalities
- NEWS - New report warns of deepening poverty crisis for Scottish families
- New report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Spotlight on Dr Elizabeth Lemmon
- Spotlight on Jan Savinc
- BLOG - Covid-19 fines in Scotland: What we know so far
- BLOG - The value of social science and administrative data research in Scotland: how we are helping respond to COVID-19
- NEWS - Joining together with Research Data Scotland to co-host existing public panel on data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Exploring illegal drug consignments in Scotland
- DATA INSIGHTS -Linking two administrative data sets about looked after children
- NEWS - ADR UK grants 20 PhD studentship opportunities focused on quantitative research using linked administrative data
- NEWS – ADR Scotland data ambassadors launched
- Spotlight on Peter Christen
- The importance of administrative data
- Virtual Conference - Data Linkage: Information to Impact
- An Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course - March 2023
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.7
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.3
- DATA INSIGHTS - Investigating the effects of class composition and class size on pupils’ attainment in Scottish primary schools
- NEWS - New opportunity to join ADR Scotland’s Public Panel
- BLOG - Engaging the public through our public panel
- BLOG - Exploring the potential of synthetic data
- Children’s Health in Care in Scotland (CHiCS)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Automatic Coding of Occupations: Methods to create the Scottish Historic Population Database (SHPD)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Selective schools: do they improve health?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Were people who died at home less likely to attend hospital at the end of life during the Covid pandemic?
- EVENT - Active Travel: New Data, New Insights
- EVENT - Holyrood Evidence Week: Doing Data Better for Policy and Public Good
- EVENT - Unlocking criminal justice data in Scotland: Findings from Data First
- IPDLN Conference - Data linkage research: informing policy and practice
- NEWS - Making nursing data available to inform policy
- NEWS - New report on The Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Care Journeys in Scotland: An Analysis of the Administrative Data on 'Looked After' Children
- NEWS - Updated report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Scout and Guide participation boosts later life health
- BLOG - Geospatial Ambitions
- BLOG - Taking historical death records and developing a database for future analysis
- BLOG - Unlocking criminal justice data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Community mortality due to Covid-19
- DATA INSIGHTS - What makes people more likely to cycle to work?
- Future-proofing investment into administrative data research announced in Scotland
- NEWS - Understanding the dynamics of the nursing workforce: the potential of routinely collected data
- Spotlight on Joanna Soraghan
- Spotlight on Katherine Falconer
- Why misconceptions about population data can lead to bad outcomes
- ADR Scotland publishes its strategy for 2022-2026
- BLOG - Developing and re-shaping our public panel
- BLOG - Review of the recent DWP Areas of Research Interest Workshop
- BLOG: Developing a cross-national research agenda on crime and convictions
- BLOG: Working together to make a difference with data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Homelessness duration in Scotland: how long does rehousing take?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Occupation and COVID-19 deaths: Scotland in a comparative perspective
- DATA INSIGHTS -The health and economic benefits of active commuting in Scotland
- EVENT - ADR UK Conference 2023
- EVENT - RSE The secret world of data
- NEWS - New comic on children's rights and data
- NEWS - Report published on our children’s engagement pilot study
- NEWS - When did fines issued by the police for breaking Covid rules peak?
- Scotland’s portfolios: Research and Statistical Data - building a new approach to thematic data linkage
- Spotlight on Cecilia Macintyre
- Spotlight on Dr Evan Williams
- Spotlight on Fernando Pantoja
- Spotlight on Laurie Berrie
- ADR Scotland Winter Partnership Session - **internal event**
- BLOG - AGEING AND HOMELESSNESS IN SCOTLAND
- BLOG - Can we use linked administrative data to identify social disadvantage?
- BLOG - Commuting and its impact on health
- BLOG - The Dynamics of the Nursing Workforce in the UK: Using data to support our nurses
- BLOG: Growing up in kinship care
- Congratulations to Alastair McAlpine, the new Chief Statistician for Scottish Government
- DATA INSIGHTS - Analysing a season of death and excess mortality in Scotland’s past
- EVENT - ADR UK Virtual Half Day event
- EVENT - HDR UK Conference: Data for global health and society
- EVENT - Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course (IDS-ADR)
- Event - Public data for public good: towards better understanding children's lives
- NEWS - ADR Scotland's first flagship dataset
- NEWS - Data research initiative secures £90 m funding extension
- NEWS: Our role supporting the new Covid-19 research data service in Scotland
- Spotlight on Gina Anghelescu
- Spotlight on Michelle K Jamieson
- Webinar - An Introduction to Looked-After Children Dataset
- ADR Scotland Away Day (**for staff only**)
- BLOG - An Inside Job: Using Criminology, Police Data and a Lot of Nouse
- BLOG - Improving justice data to promote data justice in Scotland
- BLOG - Location of death in 2020: a changing trend from hospitals to homes
- BLOG - Reflecting on the ADR UK Conference: Insights from our new PhD Researchers
- BLOG - Seeking feedback on Research Data Scotland’s core principles via our public panel
- BLOG - What skills, training and support are required by those wishing a career as an administrative data researcher?
- BLOG No. 9 - Final blog in this 'deaths at home' series
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No. 6
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.8
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.5
- BLOG: 5 things I've learnt about working with policymakers...
- BLOG: Automating Coding for Large Historical Datasets
- BLOG: COVID-19- How increased deaths at home impact the carer community
- DATA INSIGHTS -Postal deliveries of drugs in Scotland
- EVENT - 'Getting things done with data in government'
- EVENT - Linking public sector data for research: an ADR UK showcase event
- EVENT Seminar - Administrative data for social policy research: potential and pitfalls
- NEWS - ADR Scotland launches new podcast series
- NEWS - Additional funding for Understanding Children’s Lives and Outcomes
- NEWS - Engaging children and young people
- NEWS: Police use of Fixed Penalty Notices under the Covid-19 regulations in Scotland: A new data report highlights links with deprivation and inequality
- NEWS: Police use of the new Covid-19 powers: Using administrative data to analyse and evaluate practice
- Research Data Scotland - New user forum
- Spotlight on Dr Patricio Troncoso
- Spotlight on Renata Samulnik
- Summary of ADR Scotland Winter Partnership session
- Directorship of the International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN) for 2021-22.
- BLOG: In the light of experience: InterRAI and the final thousand days of life
- Multiple health conditions and social care
- NEWS - Susan McVie elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
- SCADR relocates to the Bayes Centre
- EVENT: Four day introduction to using administrative data for social and health research
- BLOG: The value of administrative data: DALYs and the Scottish Burden of Disease study
- BLOG: Where to start with parliamentary and policy engagement
- EVENT - International Conference on Administrative Data Research, Cardiff
- EVENT - Using data to realise the potential of the 'Last 1000 days'
- EVENT: TalkingData: ADR Scotland mini-summit
- EVENT: “Let’s use data to save time, money and lives”: ADR Scotland partners gather for mini-summit
- EVENTS: ADR Scotland researchers present at international conference in Cardiff
BLOG - Children’s Health in Care in Scotland
This month we are delighted that Dr Mirjam Allik has written a guest blog, describing the journey of accessing administrative data and sharing findings from the latest Children’s Health in Care in Scotland (CHiCS) report.
What is this latest report about?
The CHiCS (Children’s Health in Care in Scotland) project is the first population-wide longitudinal data analysis in the UK that links administrative data on social care, births, deaths, hospitalisations and prescriptions to compare the health of care experienced children with children in the general population.
We looked at people who were in school in Scotland in 2009/2010 and followed their health backwards to birth and forwards to 2016. For those who had been in care, we also had information on care histories, such as the types and number of care placements and the age at which these took place. This gave us a timeline of events for over 660,000 children, of whom about 13,800 had some experience of care.
We compared the number and type of hospitalisations and prescriptions these children and young people had by sex, age and care experience. All data was deidentified and analysed with strict safety measures. The analysis showed that care experienced people had poorer health outcomes and they were in more contact with the health services. Often differences between those with experiences of care and their peers increased with age.
What was one of the most significant findings?
Our work showed that many of the adverse health events actually occur either before the child enters care or after the young person leaves care and not while the child or young person is receiving formal care. This is a novel and a very important finding in terms of policy. It suggests that poor health may contribute to entering care and much more support could be provided to all families in early childhood, particularly if the child is diagnosed with an underlying health problem, such as a disability, a neurodevelopmental condition, or chronic illness. It also suggests that when young people leave care and start independent life, they do not always have enough skills, experience and support in place to take care of their health and well-being.
What would your key message be to care experienced children who may be reading this?
This is a difficult question, but don’t ever think that you are destined to have certain health, education or income outcomes or that you are less worthy of a healthy, safe and a happy life than any other person. While our research may seem distant, we do it with the aim to improve outcomes for future generations. We encourage you to tell us what you think of our work if you can. When we hear direct feedback from those who are affected by our work, we get a much better sense of what we are getting wrong (or maybe occasionally right) about the relationship between childhood social care and health.
Who was on the advisory group and how did they help the project?
We had a diverse group of people advising us which made us think very hard about what kind of work we wanted to produce. Representatives from The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and Who Cares? Scotland helped us to better understand the language related to children in care and pointed us to a lot of helpful resources to best present our findings.
The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA), Scottish Government and other participants at our knowledge exchange event picked up on issues such as regulations regarding how care is provided and what actually happens when children come into contact with the social service. Again, we lack that close vision of what goes on in day-to-day work.
Insights from Scottish Government were also very important because they could highlight what is useful for them to know when considering future policies. We also received advice from academics with a clinical background which was extremely useful in understanding how difficult it can be for parents to manage the health of their children.
Without all these different perspectives our work would have been so much more limited in its understanding of the real lives behind the numbers in the work we have published.
If you could, what additional data would be most valuable to link to in future?
We are often asked what we know about the family unit and the reasons why a child entered care. Unfortunately, we have to answer, “very little”. More information on fathers, brothers, sisters, or care proceedings would substantially enrich our work but are not currently available.
The dream list is long, not just in terms of additional variables, but also the additional metadata that would make a difference – such as knowledge on the quality and potential biases of administrative data.
What do you hope this report will lead to?
We hope our work adds to what we know about health outcomes among children and young people and how these change from birth to young adulthood, especially for those who have experienced care.
Read the full report here.
This article was published on 08 Dec 2022