Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of mothers at risk of recurrent care proceedings, and preventing care entry of children
Evidence Hub
Evidence briefings for decision-makers and practitioners: What works to support the mental health and wellbeing of mothers at risk of recurrent care proceedings, and to prevent care entry of their children?
Background
A large number of children in England and Wales enter local authority care every year. These numbers are increasing across all ages of children, including those removed as babies.
Many of the children who are taken into care are born to mothers who have had one or more previous child removed. Around one in four mothers who are subject to care proceedings will return for a subsequent set of proceedings.
These mothers have often experienced multiple disadvantages, which are compounded by the trauma of child removal. This can include having been in care themselves, being young when they have their first child, and having high levels of need and disadvantage such as mental health problems, substance use and domestic violence. This disadvantage may impact upon their ability to care for their children.
The removal of a child causes severe emotional distress and further increases the vulnerability of the mother.
Without effective interventions, many of these mothers will go on to repeatedly have children removed from their care, with a large mental health impact upon the mother and the child, as well as significant financial costs for an overstretched child welfare system.
An urgent need to understand how to break these cycles
There is an urgent need to understand how to interrupt these cycles of disadvantage, trauma and child removal.
New interventions have been introduced which try to support these mothers and reduce the number of children that go into care. However, little is known about whether these interventions work, who they work for, under what circumstances, and why.
This lack of evidence makes it difficult for local authorities to know what support to provide to mothers in their local areas.
The aim of this research was to develop evidence that describes what works to support the mental health and wellbeing of mothers at risk of recurrent care proceedings, and to prevent care entry of their children.
This work drew on different types of evidence to build an idea about how best to support mothers at risk of their children being taken into care.
This included working closely with policy colleagues, practitioners and mothers with relevant lived experience.
Briefings now available
The study is now complete and the research team have developed a set of briefings to share key findings and recommendations from this work – which you can download below.
The aim of these briefings is to offer clearly-presented, evidence-based guidance to support decision-making and frontline practice, in this important area of work.
Who will find these briefings useful?
Briefings for decision makers – these are aimed at children’s social care directors, service leads, commissioners, managers and anyone involved in the strategic planning of children’s social care.
Briefings for practitioners – these are aimed at children’s social care practitioners and those training in social care practice.
More about the study
This study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). It was led by researchers from Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Teesside University, Kings College London, University College London, and City St George’s University of London. Many of the academics involved in this research project have significant social care practice experience.
The study involved working closely with frontline social care practitioners and mothers with lived experience of child removal.
You can read more about the study, here: Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of mothers at risk of recurrent care proceedings: a realist synthesis – NIHR Funding and Awards
The academic research papers from this study are currently under review and will be shared on this page when published.
Find out more
If you’d like to find out more about this work, please contact:
Professor Ruth McGovern, Professor of Public Health and Social Care at Newcastle University and Co-Director of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria