Event

Data-Driven Insights: Exploring the Lives of Care Experienced Children and Young People

At this event, we will launch a landmark report on the lives of care experienced children across the UK.

Event time:

13th February 2025 12:00 – 13:00
Format:

online

This webinar provided an opportunity for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to gain valuable insights into the life chances of care-experienced children based on their administrative data, and to hear valuable insights from former Children’s Commissioners.

This report showcased important long-term data analysis across inequalities, regional variation, evolving care practices, and long-term impacts, which can help identify critical themes for policymakers. It also demonstrated the value and utility of administrative data in providing insights into the lives of those who experience social care.

Researcher and policymakers alike know that poor outcomes are not inevitable with the right resources. A key strength of administrative data is the ability to produce data-driven insights to identify where more support is needed and pinpoint examples of success. Many care experienced children lead happy and fulfilled lives. Embedding administrative data into research and policy development will have real-world implications for care-experienced children to ensure they all can thrive.

Speakers

Sarah Cheesbrough

Director of the Policy Research Centre National Centre for Social Research

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Sarah Cheesbrough re-joined the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) in January 2025 as Director of its Policy Research Centre. In this role, she is responsible for leading a team of talented researchers, delivering a variety of mixed methods research in a fast-paced environment, in order to respond to and help inform policy.
She was previously Director of the Communities team at IFF Research, a social and market research agency. Prior to that, she has held leadership roles at Thinks Insight & Strategy and Verian UK, and at NatCen previously, as Director of its Communities, Work and Income team.
Koulla Yiasouma

Chair of Oberstown Children Detention Centre ADR UK

Koulla is a qualified social worker and worked as a probation officer in England. She established the first 24-hour telephone helpline for women who were experiencing domestic abuse in Northern Ireland before she joined Include Youth in 1998 as Director (Chief Executive). In 2015 she was appointed by the First and Deputy First Ministers to be the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People and her eight-year term ended in March 2023. While Commissioner, Koulla and her team undertook significant work in the areas such as mental health, special educational needs and child protection. She also published the first formal investigation into the care of a child. Koulla has been appointed by the Minister for Children in the Republic of Ireland to be the Chair of Oberstown Children Detention Centre. She has also been awarded the role of Honorary Professor of Practice by Queens University Belfast and will be working closely with the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Barnardo’s UK and is currently working as an Interim Chief Executive and consultant. Koulla is a passionate advocate for human rights particularly the rights of children and young people and believes that the formal realisation of rights ensures better outcomes for all of society.
Sally Holland

Professor of Social Work Cardiff University

Sally Holland is a registered social worker and Professor of Social Work in Cardiff University. Between 2015 and 2022 she was Children’s Commissioner for Wales. Sally is currently co-leading the evaluation of the Welsh Government’s Basic Income Pilot for Care Leavers. She is also involved in ESRC-funded research on outcomes associated with Sure Start and Flying Start and European research on services for children who have experienced abuse and neglect. She teaches on the MA in Social Work and is also Director of Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion for the School of Social Sciences. Her research base is CASCADE Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre, of which she was founding director in 2014.

Chair

Professor Karen Broadhurst

Co-Director Centre for Child and Family Justice Research Lancaster University

Professor Karen Broadhurst FAcSS is a social scientist based at Lancaster University. She is former Co-Director of the University’s Data Science Institute and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Karen specialises in family justice and collaborates with colleagues in Australia, Europe, the US and in China. As Principal Investigator, Karen has completed a number of high-profile, high-impact research projects, which have led to data-driven change in policy and practice. Research on women’s repeat involvement in public law care proceedings led to widespread service developments, turning the tide on neglect of women living apart from their children. Karen has held a number of national advisory and service positions. She served on the Academic Advisory Group the ADR UK Data First Programme led by the Ministry of Justice, and chairs the fellowship funding allocation panel attached to this programme. She also served on the Evidence Group for the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and is expert advisor to the Archbishop’s Commission on Families and Households. Karen co-directed the Family Justice Data Partnership (a team based at Lancaster and the SAIL Databank at Swansea University) which is delivering a five year programme of analytic work to support the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. This programme of work is demonstrating the huge value of routinely produced public services data, particularly where this can be linked to health, education, crime and demographic data.