This report on the linkage of Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS) with data from Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) is one strand of the Permanently Progressing? study. The study is the first in Scotland to investigate decision making, permanence, progress, outcomes and belonging for children who became ‘looked after’ at home, or away from home (with kinship carers, foster carers or prospective adopters) when they were aged five and under. Phase One ran from 2014-18 and is designed to be the first phase in a longitudinal study following a large cohort of young children into adolescence and beyond. Phase One was funded by a legacy and was undertaken by a team from the universities of Stirling, York and Lancaster in conjunction with Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) Scotland.
The Scottish government collects information from all 32 local authorities about children who are looked after in their area, the Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS data). The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) also collects information about children referred to SCRA, some of whom will appear in the CLAS data. The CLAS data and the SCRA data do not share a common identification number, and until now linking these two important data sets has never been attempted. Within the safe haven operated by the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN) we were able to safely link CLAS and SCRA data on 1,000 children.
This strand of the study linked the two data sets in order to:
- Test the feasibility of linkage
- Test whether the data match/do not match as expected
- Allow a fuller analysis of child and process factors which might not be evident from only CLAS or SCRA data alone.
