The Child Welfare Inequalities Project: final report

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Bywaters, P., Brady, G. ORCID: 0000-0002-3431-6543, Bunting, L., Daniel, B., Davidson, G., Elliott, M., Featherstone, B., Hooper, J., Jones, C., Kwhali, J., Mason, W., McCartan, C., McGhee, J., Mirza, N., Morris, K., Scourfield, J., Shapira, M., Slater, T., Sparks, T., Steils, N. and Webb, C., 2020. The Child Welfare Inequalities Project: final report. London: Nuffield Foundation.

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Abstract

The Child Welfare Inequalities Project (CWIP), 2014-19, aimed to establish child welfare inequalities as a core concept in policy making, practice and research in the UK and internationally.

Key research tasks were to identify the scale of inequalities in social welfare intervention rates as they affect children in different places, of different ages and identities, and their families, and to begin to understand how different factors in family lives and service responses interact to produce inequalities. A longer term intention was that remedies could subsequently be developed by policy makers and service providers and their impact tested.

CWIP was the main project in a programme of research conducted over the period 2013-2019. It was designed to provide the foundations for the development of an inequalities perspective on child welfare, not the last word. By developing and testing a set of concepts, theory and methods and by securing a range of evidence, we hoped to set the baseline for subsequent reflection, research and action, in the UK and internationally (Bywaters, 2015).

A social welfare system reflects the society in which it operates: its assumptions, priorities and attitudes to children, parents and family life. It also reflects the role of the state: how policy is made, the values that underpin policy, the power it exercises over its citizens, how it manages and polices that power and what it counts as success. All of these themes are explicit or implicit in our work.

In summary, this project reports on a system which treats its citizens – parents and children – remarkably unequally but which focuses more attention on policy aspirations and implementation processes than on either the causes of family difficulties or the consequences of state responses.

Item Type:

Research report for external body

Alternative Title:

Child Welfare Inequality Project (CWIP)

Description:

Commissioning body: Nuffield Foundation

Creators:

Bywaters, P., Brady, G., Bunting, L., Daniel, B., Davidson, G., Elliott, M., Featherstone, B., Hooper, J., Jones, C., Kwhali, J., Mason, W., McCartan, C., McGhee, J., Mirza, N., Morris, K., Scourfield, J., Shapira, M., Slater, T., Sparks, T., Steils, N. and Webb, C.

Publisher:

Nuffield Foundation

Place of Publication:

London

Date:

1 July 2020

Identifiers: