Association between health indicators of maternal adversity and the rate of infant entry to local authority care in England: a longitudinal ecological study.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Infants enter care at varying rates across local authorities (LAs) in England, but evidence is lacking on what is driving these differences. With this ecological study, we aimed to explore the extent to which adversity indicated within women's hospitalisation histories, predelivery, explained the rate of infant entry into care.

Methods

We used two longitudinal person-level data sets on hospitalisations and entries to care to create annual measures for 131 English LAs, between 2006/2007 and 2013/2014 (April-March). We combined these measures by LA and financial year, along with other publicly available data on LA characteristics. We used linear mixed-effects models to analyse the relationship between the outcome-LA-specific rate of infant entry into care (per 10 000

SUBMITTER: Pearson RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7430489 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature