Family Routes: analysis of DfE administrative data methodological paper and core sample

Family Routes: analysis of DfE administrative data methodological paper and core sample

Julie Selwyn, Julian Gardiner · Department for Education

Linked social-care and education records were used to construct an England sample of 127,040 children, including 68,110 who left care through adoption. This methods and descriptive report compares their care histories with special-guardianship and long-term fostering groups. Adopted children entered care younger but experienced more placement changes and slower decision-making than the special-guardianship group.

Limitations: Administrative records describe recorded care histories rather than children’s own accounts. Groups differ in their backgrounds, so comparisons do not isolate effects of adoption. The report defines samples used in other Family Routes publications; these are overlapping data, not independent cohorts. Education and return-to-care findings appear in separate reports. Historical coding changes, missing detail and discrepancies between social-care and education records affect interpretation. Commissioned and published by the Department for Education, which has responsibility for the adoption system evaluated. Readers may take that institutional relationship into account.

Research type

Administrative-data linkage and descriptive study

Source reviewed

Full text

Peer reviewed

No

Age group

Children / Adolescents