Bethany Lee-Shield she/her

Working title of PhD: Examining Potential Inequalities in the Outcomes of Care Experienced Children

Institution: University of Edinburgh

Year Commenced: 2024

Supervisors: Professor Susan McVie and Professor Morag Treanor

Full or Part-time: Full time

Synopsis: 

Care experienced children are at risk of poorer outcomes in areas such as justice, health and education compared to children without care experience. However, we know that many care experienced children do not have poor outcomes. One possible reason for differences in outcomes among care experienced children are care journeys.

The care journeys of care experienced children may vary greatly, including experiencing different types of ‘placements’, different amounts of time in care and differences in the stability of their care. There is not yet a good understanding of the relationship between these care journeys and outcomes in Scotland. Therefore, my research will aim to fill this gap to provide a better understanding of the relationship between different types of care journeys and outcomes.

My project will involve linking administrative datasets from organizations in Scotland to answer the following research questions:

1. How do patterns of care journey vary in Scotland among CEC?
2. How do the educational outcomes of CEC vary by care journey?
3. How do the health outcomes of CEC vary by care journey?
4. How do the justice outcomes of CEC vary by care journey?
5. How does the relationship between care journeys amongst CEC and education, health and justice outcomes intersect?

Keywords: Youth Justice, Inequalities, Care