Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32-37 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, United Kingdom; Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark.
Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32-37 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, United Kingdom.
Child Abuse Negl. 2023 Oct;144:106245. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106245. Epub 2023 May 29.
The responsibility of local authorities in England to provide children in care with stable, local placements has become increasingly difficult due to the rising number of children in need of care and a shortage of available placements. It is unclear if the trend of outsourcing children's social care to private companies has exacerbated this challenge. This paper examines how the outsourcing of children's social care to the private market has influenced placement locality and long-term stability over time.
We created a novel dataset of multiple administrative data sources on the outsourcing, placement locality and stability, and characteristics of children in care between 2011 and 2022. We conducted time-series fixed-effects regression analysis of the impact of for-profit outsourcing on placement locality and stability from 2011 to 2022.
Our fully adjusted models demonstrate that for-profit outsourcing is consistently associated with more children being placed outside their home local authority and greater placement instability. We found that an increase of 1 % point of for-profit outsourcing was associated with an average increase of 0.10 % points (95 % CI 0.02-0.17; p = 0.01) more children experiencing placement disruption, and 0.23 % points (95 % CI 0.15-0.30; p < 0.001) more children being placed outside their home local authority. We estimate that an additional 17,001 (95 % CI 9015-24,987) out-of-area placements can be attributed to increases in for-profit provision.
Our analyses show that placement stability and distance have deteriorated or stagnated over the last decade, and that the local authorities that rely most on outsourcing have the highest rates of placement disruptions and out-of-area placements.
由于需要照顾的儿童数量不断增加，以及可用安置位置短缺，英国地方当局为照顾儿童提供稳定的当地安置的责任越来越大。目前尚不清楚将儿童社会关怀外包给私营公司的趋势是否加剧了这一挑战。本文研究了将儿童社会关怀外包给私营市场如何影响安置地点和长期稳定性。
我们创建了一个新颖的数据集，该数据集由 2011 年至 2022 年期间关于儿童社会关怀的外包、安置地点和稳定性以及照顾中儿童特征的多个行政数据源组成。我们对 2011 年至 2022 年期间营利性外包对安置地点和稳定性的影响进行了时间序列固定效应回归分析。
我们的完全调整模型表明，营利性外包始终与更多的儿童被安置在其家庭所在地之外以及更大的安置不稳定有关。我们发现，营利性外包增加 1 个百分点，与经历安置中断的儿童平均增加 0.10 个百分点（95%CI 0.02-0.17；p=0.01），以及更多的儿童被安置在其家庭所在地之外的比例增加 0.23 个百分点（95%CI 0.15-0.30；p<0.001）相关。我们估计，由于营利性服务的增加，额外有 17001 名（95%CI 9015-24987）儿童被安置在区外。
我们的分析表明，在过去十年中，安置稳定性和距离已经恶化或停滞不前，而且最依赖外包的地方当局的安置中断和区外安置率最高。
