How can we improve the experiences and outcomes of autistic children in care? A mixed methods study of needs, services, and good practice

This Fellowship will investigate this by looking at patterns of diagnosis, autistic traits, and outcomes for children in care. It will also gather information from foster/kinship carers and social work teams that support these children, to create lessons of good practice to guide future work and policy.

There is very little research on the experiences and outcomes of autistic children and those with high levels of autistic traits in care. It may be difficult for this group to get a diagnosis, particularly as the presentation of behaviours associated with autism is similar to behaviours often associated with early trauma or attachment difficulties. As a result, it may be challenging for this group of children and their foster/kinship carers, to access the best services to support them.

A lack of understanding of autism and autistic traits may prevent foster/kinship carers from supporting children effectively. This may worsen challenging behaviours, causing high levels of family stress and putting foster placements at risk.

This Fellowship aims to help address this gap in knowledge by:

1. Undertaking research to understand more about the rates and patterns of autism for children in care and their outcomes.

2. Improving the guidance and assistance provided to foster/kinship carers when caring for an autistic young person or a young person with a high level of autistic traits.

There will be three parts to the project.

The first involves analysis of large databases to create an understanding of the rates of autism diagnosis for children currently in care. It will also investigate patterns of diagnosis (including age and gender) and the outcomes for these children (including education and mental health outcomes).

The second part involves sending a survey to all foster/kinship carers in Wales. This survey will include information about the children they are caring for, including measures of autistic traits, attachment difficulties, current difficulties, parental stress and information on the history of the child. Analysis of this data will allow an understanding of how the level of autistic traits in a child or young person relates to other measures, including attachment difficulties and parental stress.

In the third part I will conduct interviews and focus groups with foster/kinship carers, social workers and other local authority staff. These will aim to get a clear understanding of the current support process for autistic children and those with high levels of autistic traits, and what needs to change to improve the existing policies and procedures.

The three parts of the Fellowship together will provide a detailed understanding of the numbers of children experiencing difficulties, what the biggest challenges are for these children, and how we can best support them and their carers to get the best outcomes through childhood and into adulthood.

This project will be guided by advisory groups, consisting of relevant fostering/kinship care charities, local authorities, foster/kinship carers and young people, many of whom have already assisted in the design of this research proposal.

The findings from this research will be widely disseminated, through academic publications and conferences, reports to local authorities, reports to charities and accessible versions for the public.