Educational Achievement of Looked After Children - Research Proposal Example

An investigation into the educational achievement of looked after children 1.0 Introduction Looked after children, refers to the children under the age of 18 years that have been provided with care and accommodation by children’s services. In most cases this will foster carers, but some of the looked after children may be in a children’s home or boarding school, or with an adult known to the parents and children’s services (council, 2011). The main objective of this is to ensure the health and safety of looked after children that come from families who have experienced extreme hardship and upheaval. 1.1Purposes and Aims To find out if there is effective cross-council involvement like housing involved in the support for the children. If the lead councilor for children and young people take responsibility in ensuring successful achievement of education of looked after children. To investigate whether children, parents, carers and foster carers get involved in and influence corporate parenting policy. If the educational achievement of looked after children prioritized in the Children and Young people’s plan and other relevant plans. Is the priority understood by relevant council staff, partners, young people, parents and carers? How improving the educational achievement of looked after children fits with corporate and Children’s Trusts objectives. Are the looked after children living appropriate placements? How the council, the Children’s Trust and other partners ensure that inequalities between looked after children and within the cohort of looked after children reduced? To determine the relevant care plans available. This proposed research is important because it enables me to find out the problems experienced by the looked after children, in order to recommend the solutions that need to be applied. The research that was taken by Audit commission has particularly motivated me to carry out this research which mainly talks about the plight of this looked after children. 1.2 Potential users The government Human rights Activists Parents of looked after children The councilors The staff and foster carers 1.3 Research Questions Is there a clear leadership, management and corporate commitment regarding the council’s looked after children and to corporate parenting. Are the councilors and officers having a well informed understanding in relation to their duties as per section 52 of the Children’s Act? Are coherent strategies and relevant policies existing so as to guide all levels of organization and are the policies properly implemented? Is commitment and corporate ownership to this responsibility demonstrated in holistic, cross-cutting planning? 2.0 Literature review 2.1 Care and Planning The online article entitled; Care planning for Looked after Children makes a clear assessment about care and planning under the subheading, Care planning in practice. The article makes use of the report of the Department of Health 1998 and identifies that reporting on inspections of planning and decision-making for looked after children whilst care plans existed in all the 27 social services departments inspected, several were lacking in detail and the quality of the assessments and plans was variable the best being those produced for court proceedings (NCB, 2011). The article further supports the view of Department of Health (1998) when it argued that the quality of the plans were variable, frequently short term and often rather unclear even though most children looked after had care plans which they were aware of and felt involved in the production (NCB, 2011). It adds that they further compromised with the lack of placements available. The report also called for plans to be more specific, and for educational and health planning to reflect the parental responsibility of the authority concerned in the study, it was found that on one hand, care plans did perform their function of giving courts the information they needed to consider before making an order (NCB, 2011).  2.2 Participation and partnership Children and families should participate in decision-making as it is central to the thinking that underlies the Children Act 1989, its accompanying guidance and regulations. The responsible authority should involve the child and his parents in review meetings and the possibility of a child being accompanied to a review meeting by a person who is able to provide friendly support should be considered. Under the Children Act 1989 all care planning and review framework is based on the welfare and ethical principles of addressing the child’s needs, working in partnership with children themselves and, where possible, their parents, or other adults who are significant in their lives. Plans which have the involvement and cooperation of their principal beneficiaries are more likely to be successful in achieving their goals as stated above. Several studies of young people’s awareness and experience of the care planning process have suggested that there is some way to go in achieving major goals such as the active involvement of children and young people despite progress in these areas. A report Not Just a Name  a decade ago found that, whilst about two-thirds of looked after young people questioned felt that they were listened to and over, 80 per cent said they had been asked before plans were made on such things as moving them (NCB, 2011). 2.3 Legislation The recent study making orders work of the Children Act 1989 was the first piece of legislation that systematically strengthened the care planning and review process for looked after children. The Act and associated guidance and regulations provided detailed arrangements for planning and reviewing the care of children looked after by local authorities. The main parts of the Children Act 1989 which relate specifically to planning and reviewing are Section 20 on the provision of accommodation and Section 26, which establishes the legal basis for regulations on the nature and frequency of reviews (NCB, 2011). 2.4 Strengths, weaknesses, Contradiction One of the weaknesses is that however systematic and comprehensive an instrument or record framework may be, its value will still ultimately depend on the quality of the comments recorded. Several sources have expressed concerns over the vague way in which the forms may be sometimes completed which can limit their value as a monitoring tool. Thus simplified and shortened schedule, which makes less demand on social worker’s time, might be helpful as suggested by Harwin (Harwin, 2003). However, despite such uncertainties, Kahan felt that the records offered a sound theoretical model for working with looked after children based on a consensus of views of what some of the reasonable parents might expect of their child’s development (NCB, 2011). The literature provides a clear picture on problems of the looked after children experience. Some of the challenges that were discovered by a Better Education for children facing looked for children include: Young people’s lives are characterized by instability, young people in care spend a lot of time out of school or other place of learning, and that carers are not well equipped to provide sufficient support and encouragement at home for learning and development (Commission, 2011). The research findings and views of the participants in the care planning and review process indicate a strong need for more thinking and work to be invested in the whole process of care planning. Ensuring holistic, participative assessment of the child’s needs is an essential base for the work. Evaluating information and evidence as a process is too frequently missed out, leading to repeated attempts to retain the children in their families or repeat work already carried out. One of the aims of the Children Act 1989 which is preventing drift and delay is not yet being achieved for some children (Commission, 2011). Therefore, contradiction in this case is that providing children with choice over how their plans are compiled and reviewed is a constant message from those who have heard children’s views about the process. Good quality and detailed care plans can lead to improved outcomes for children. The evidence proves that increased resources of time and skill are necessary in care planning if these aims and objectives are to be achieved (NCB, 2011). The existing literature influences the proposed research in that some of the challenges that have been mentioned are some of the main aims of this paper. Respect for children's views one of the key issues in the Children Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Drawing looked-after children's views of CAMHS is particularly important due to their nature and complexity of their difficulties .In law looked-after children, like all children, should be given the status as experts in their own experience with a fundamental right to contribute to their own mental health care and service developments. The likelihood that children may express views which are in conflict with developed guidelines is easy to overlook. Current trends especially supporting empirically-validated practice guidelines involve many complex issues interventions identified by research as effective may be in conflict with the expressed preferences of children. This is particularly important given the tendency in society to attach more value to the views of the highly educated individuals in the society. 3.0 Methodology The research design that exists for the above research can either be quantitative or qualitative research designs. The decision to be made on the use of either qualitative design or quantitative design is based on whether the type of data to be dealt with is either qualitative data or quantitative data respectively, on our case we are going involve both given that we are going to conduct personal interviews or even telephone interviews to ensure we have the psychological expectations and personal feelings of the children affected by the educational program, Campbell, D.T. & Stanley, J.C. (1963). Again, we have to ensure that we have enough numerical data to aid in the calculations for efficient decision making. Depending on better considerations based on well considered facts and figures including constant change or turnover, limited resources and the form or nature for the population to be dealt with, Zikmund, W.G. (2001). We majorly have:- 3.1 Quantitative Design and Analysis It works out or establishes statistically significant conclusions about a population by studying a representative sample of the population 200 children in 20 educational institutions to give a general view of the entire group or population of 1200 children in about 60 such institutions being studied. Since we are acting or conducting our research on living being, under this method we would employ descriptive form of quantitative analysis. Experimental quantitative design will also be employed on the determination on the accuracy or the extent to which dependent variables are controlled by the independent ones. Often, surveys, correlation studies, and measures of experimental outcomes are evaluated to establish causality within a credible confidence range or levels of confidence, Creswell, J.W. (2003). Descriptive research measures the sample of 200 in 20 educational institutions at a moment in time and describes the sample’s demography considered of 1200 in 60 institutions of children. Although this is not seen as a statistically difficult exercise, a good description of the variables helps the researcher evaluate the statistical output in the proper context. Field experiments are conducted when it is important to measure what the research element actually does, rather than what they say they will do. As it can be observed with concept studies, what a person says they will do and what they actually do can be very different because of setting or ability to change. In as much as quantitative research can be considered to be better than qualitative research at establishing causality because of the precise measurements and controlled environment of experiments; qualitative studies can also be used to establish causality but with less external validity and this improves on the reliability, Huitt, B. (2003). 3.1.1 Validity Validity refers to the ability of an instrument to measure what it is supposed to measure in other words called the extent of accuracy. If I conducted a survey to measure the degree of which the children were willing to accept the educational program to help them come out of ignorance then it comes out positive then we would term the research findings valid and the reverse is also true. Validity are of two types to be tested:-Internal Validity which refers to the veracity of the study, how well it was constructed and run, accuracy of definitions and theories employed, accurate measurement of variables, and the researcher’s degree of confidence that the change in the dependent variable was effected or controlled by the independent variables. External Validity is a study’s ability to have the results generalized to the population. Through quantitative studies this validity will be ensured by ensuring that sampling of the 200 units was done in an appropriate way, such as randomizing selection so that every element in a population has a chance of being selected or to use selective techniques, such as stratified, cluster or snowball sampling and even use of judgmental sampling for the sake of qualitative data so as to ensure that various groups within the population of study are adequately represented (Deflem, 1998). To increase external validity, the elimination of extraneous variables as causative factors would be conducted (Flick, 2002). 3.2 Qualitative design and analysis This is where the researcher is deemed to use both the anthropological and ethnographic methods to study the 200 participants. The researcher will be observing the participants very closely but unnoticed so that he or she doesn’t influence their participation for the sake of valid findings. Qualitative research conducted here seeks to explain the current situation as opposed to providing the broad or general view of the population. This will help us find out the behavioral characteristics of the entire population under study and it is normally conducted in the field during data collection. Whereas qualitative research is more deductive, quantitative research is more inductive since it seeks to arrive at a theory through explaining it s behavior (Lowhorn, n. d). 3.2.1 Validity They are two as usual: - Internal validity which is automatically established in qualitative research because the group which is being researched on acts as its own point of reference (De Vaus, 2001). External validity on the other hand in this case cannot be established in the traditional sense with qualitative data since it is not trying to reach a general conclusion about the population (Lowhorn, n. d). Instead, validity for qualitative research is best described as rigorous, credible, and trustworthy since it’s what is actually observed (Huitt, 2003). The approach which is given to this research will both be as a case study followed by a survey. Through the case study approach, the sample of 200 elements out of the possible 1200 is selected to be placed under consideration that is to be studied with respect to all its aspects or cases which may include how the children respond to the care given to them as well as how the care is given to them. The challenges of the programs will also be analyzed. Case study is then followed by a survey to verify the successes (De Vaus, 2001). Questionnaires which include both open ended and closed ended will be used to collect data together with interviews which will be of personal in nature, also telephone interviews shall be conducted under special conditions. The data collection methods above will be used simply because they are cheap hence affordable, easy to apply or use, objective oriented towards the research question in place as well as flexible and able to adjust to the data collection environment (Flick, 2002). Depending upon the desired outcome of the research, we may choose between quantitative or qualitative designs. Since they seek to explain events from different perspectives, both are valid ways to evaluate a phenomenon in the proper context. By examining the current situation, the research question, and the critical factors of each design, the researcher can make a more informed choice and enhance both reliability and validity of the study (Creswell, 2003). 4.0 Ethical considerations in research Ethics in research demands that there need not be a deviation from the set standards, rules, practices and norms of behavior set for the sake of a set research activity. The highest levels of ethics must be maintained for all the participants in a research exercise ranging from the sponsors, research assistants and the participants. There are very many relevant issues like the benefits explanation to the respondents, assurance of confidentiality, obtaining of free consent, voluntary participation as well as the protection from risk. To the respondents, our research team is to ensure that: - the respondents’ benefits from the research activity are clearly explained to them without overstating them or even understating them as well. Material inducements should never be used given that they may influence the outcomes. The respondents right to privacy must also be keenly ensured, this helps to protect the respondent from humiliation of the society in case of a negative outcome from him or her being interviewed in case of a negative outcome. An explanation of the risk involved in the exercise should also be exposed to the respondents so that in as much as the respondent may go ahead and engage in the research activity they do so voluntarily and with the full awareness of both the positive and negative consequences. Ethics will also be ensured to the sponsor by: - ensuring that confidentiality is maintained; sponsors identity should never be disclosed most so his identity without his or her consent, findings should also not be disclosed. Also, the sponsors right to quality research must be ensured by giving back to him a quality report about the research finding .Ethics should also be ensured to the research assistants where better pay terms should be arranged for them as well as providing for better working conditions which is both safe and in order. Informed consent mean further that the prospective participants must be fully informed on the procedures and risks involved in the research and must give their acceptance to participate. In our research case the guardians of the children in question would be asked to sign consent forms so that the research can be continued. Anonymity means that identity of participants remains undisclosed until with permission. Confidentiality and anonymity will be ensured by requesting for permission before any information is released as well as by using consent forms. 5. 0 Conclusions An investigation into the educational achievements of the looked after children is an equally wide research field that: - will expose a further area of research work and the research will also help in the production of the recommendations that are likely to further help in supporting the looked after children and finally, the research will help bust the education institutions that support the vulnerable children hence a positive output or gains to the society. References Abusabha, R. & Woelfel, M.L. (2003). Qualitative vs. Quantitative Methods: Two Opposites that Make a Perfect Match. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 103(5). aspx council, E. S.-c. (2011). Looked after children (LAC). Retrieved April 11, 2011, from http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/childrenandfamilies/childrenincare/lookedafterchildren/default01.htm Commission, A. (2011). Retrieved April 11, 2011, from http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/localgov/audit/childrenandyoungpeople/lactoolkit/pages/background . Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. De Vaus, D. (2001). Research Design in Social Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Flick, U. (2002). An Introduction to Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Harwin, J and others (2003) Making Care Orders Work: A study of care plans and their implementation. London: TSO. Lowhorn, Greg L. (n. d). Qualitative and Quantitative Research: How to Choose the Best Design. Retrieved 18 May 2011, from http://pesapay.blogspot.com/2010/11/qualitative-and-quantitative-research.html NCB. (2011). Care planning for looked after children. Retrieved April 11, 2011, from http://www.ncb.org.uk/careplanning/further-information/lit-review.html Read More