Child Outcomes for Mothers Facing Trial (COMFT)
Project Dates
January 2025 - December 2026
Funder
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Project Summary
Women's involvement in the Criminal Justice System (CJS) can impact negatively on their relationships with their children. A proportion of mothers appear in both the CJS and the Family Justice System (FJS). As a result of family court proceedings, children may be placed with family members, with foster carers, or may be adopted. The disruption of mother-child relationships is associated with repeat offending and can be harmful for children. However, an absence of evidence based on large-scale quantitative datasets, means we cannot answer vital questions about the scale of this disruption and caregiver outcomes for children.
Recent policy developments in England and Wales aim to preserve mother-child relationships with the aim of reducing female offending and repeat involvement in the criminal courts. However, policy makers are hampered by a lack of baseline evidence about mother-child relationships, against which they can measure progress.
By focusing on female defendants in the Magistrates' and Crown Court, who also appear in the family justice system, the COMFT study will link data to advance knowledge about caregiver outcomes for children, when mothers face trial.
The study will be completed by a highly experienced and established team of data scientists, statisticians, and specialists in criminal and family justice. Based at Lancaster University, Swansea University and the University of Central Lancashire, the team will use the SAIL Databank at Swansea University, to safely access anonymised data and provide completely new cross-justice insights.
The study titled "Child Outcomes for Mothers Facing Trial (COMFT)" has been made possible because the SAIL Databank has acquired new crime datasets produced as part of a related ADR UK study "Data First" - led by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Family Court records are already held by the SAIL Databank. The Data First programme has unlocked valuable records which have been anonymised for research purposes.
The MoJ is the project partner, and this will ensure effective sharing of expertise throughout. The Children and Family Court Advisory Service (Cafcass) and Cafcass Cymru are also essential partners.
A unique feature of this study, is that it has been designed with mothers with lived experience(s) who will form an advisory group (COMFT-Together). Mothers will help to shape the project and translate findings into policy solutions that are helpful to mothers and children. The leading national charity Birth Companions will support this group and are partnered with the team throughout.
The study will last two years. Stage 1, comprises the linking of women's records across criminal and family justice, and the production of analytic tables to enable analysis of mother-child journeys and outcomes. The team will also describe (document) these data and convene workshops, to help other researchers use the SAIL Gateway for related research.
Stage 2 of the study comprises two sub-studies that will capture the demographic profiles of mothers, and maternal pathways between the two sectors of justice, including repeat involvement. The sub-studies will also describe the type of family court proceedings (public and private law) in which children appear, and caregiver outcomes for children. The study will provide a much clearer understanding of whether justice systems preserve or disrupt relationships between mothers and children, and help to identify opportunities for prevention. It will benefit policymakers tasked with delivering female offender policies, frontline practitioners, as well as children and families.
Research Team
Professor Karen Broadhurst
Dr Bachar Alrouh
Dr Claire Hargreaves
Kathryn Tranter
External Collaborators
Professor Lucy Griffiths (Swansea University)
Dr Laura North (Swansea University)
Dr Laura Cowley (Swansea University)
Dr Leslie Humphreys (UCLAN)
