Understanding children’s outcomes: the role of big data

Venue: Ian Potter Auditorium, Kenneth Myer Building

Presenters: Professor Judith Masson

Internationally, attention is turning towards the outcomes for children of state intervention in child welfare as a basis for improving care for children and young people. Traditionally, administrative data have been collected to facilitate the management of systems, and the focus in child protection research has been the operation of processes and the orders made, leaving establishing the consequences for children to small evaluative studies, which are resource intensive. Big data and data linkage provide opportunities better to understand outcomes for all children exposed to the care system and the relationships between processes, services and outcomes.

This Miegunyah Lecture provides an accessible consideration of insights from and the challenges of using big data to understand children’s experiences following child protection proceedings. It draws upon Professor Judith Masson’s important study Establishing outcomes of care proceedings for children before and after care proceedings reform, which provides an innovative use of administrative data to investigate the effects of contemporary policy and practice in child protection.

Judith Masson is Professor of Socio-legal Studies School of Law at the University of Bristol. She has a long and distinguished career in socio-legal studies and has held senior academic positions in the UK. Her research is at the forefront of international interest across the fields of child welfare law and practice. She has achieved national and international recognition through her research and scholarship and has acted as a specialist consultant to the Council of Europe, the EU, and the UK Parliament. She was academic member of the Family Justice Council and the Judicial Studies Board for England and Wales, and in 2013 she was appointed as a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/6563-understanding-children-s-outcomes-the-role-of-big-data