Investigators: Cate Taylor, Fiona Stanley, Helen Leonard, Melissa O'Donnell, Miriam Maclean, Scott Sims
External collaborators: Vera Morgan, Sunalene Devadason (University of Western Australia); Marni Brownell, Okechukwu Ekuma (University of Manitoba); Ruth Gilbert (University College London)
The aim of this project was to examine the educational outcomes of children in contact with the child protection system. The project was innovative in that it utilised linked government administrative data from the Department of Health WA, Department of Communities – Child Protection and Family Support, Department of Communities – Disability Services and Department of Education through the Developmental Pathways Project, to conduct a longitudinal analysis of prospective data from a large number of children.
Currently, Western Australia is the only state that has a comprehensive data linkage system including children’s education and child protection data, along with data on an array of child, parental and community characteristics. Using linked data overcomes the many methodological difficulties associated with maltreatment research and enables a much greater understanding of the relationships between maltreatment and out-of-home care with educational outcomes, taking into account a range of risk factors at the child, parental and community levels.