It's all or nothing! The trajectories of 'everything but the kitchen sink' through preventive programs and out-of-home care in Denmark

The intension behind preventive programs and out-of-home care is to ensure safe transition into adulthood for young people in need. Building on a cohort born in 1995, 6 waves of longitudinal survey-data on DALSC (Danish... [ view full abstract ]

The intension behind preventive programs and out-of-home care is to ensure safe transition into adulthood for young people in need. Building on a cohort born in 1995, 6 waves of longitudinal survey-data on DALSC (Danish Longitudinal Studies on Children, N=6,000) and 4 waves on CIC (Children in Care, N=2,900), we analyse ‘what works’ in the context where the social welfare system is in charge of the parental role. The social system is here determined as a common denominator for preventive programs and different kinds of out-of-home care arrangements. Can we, by analysing the trajectories through life course of all adolescents in need of child protection, give a simple contribution to answering the question on what works?

Using sequence and cluster analyses on monthly data from birth to age 18 we will include the following research questions:
1) Can we bundle the trajectories through the wide range of preventive programs and out-of-home care facilities into a finite number of clear care careers, or is it really ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ for everybody? One of the objectives of the analysis will be to test whether preventive interventions in the early years make a difference between the clusters.
2) Does the number of risk factors at entry affect the trajectory? Risk factors are here family stability, parental socioeconomic background and mental health, subjective child wellbeing, and school attendance at different ages (following the 4 waves).
3) Do the different pathways affect the outcome? As outcomes we will use level of education/enrolment in education, delinquency, mental health, and dependence on social assistance, all at age 19.

Preliminary results show a staggering diversity of life events histories hidden behind the common story of out-of-home care children, confirming the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach from the social welfare system. However, we also find clear patterns identifying distinct clusters of young people with different characteristics and levels of disadvantagedness with significant negative outcomes suggesting a need for a more targeted line of action and a more coherent view on vulnerable children’s life trajectories to ensure that that their transition into adulthood is a transition into independent adulthood.

Keywords: out-of-home care, administrative data, sequence analysis, longitudinal data, early prevention, social welfare system.