Investigating the impact of family drug and alcohol courts on parental offending: a data linkage study
Project Dates
October 2022 to September 2024
Funder
ESRC
Project Summary
Family drug and alcohol courts (FDACs) are an innovative holistic problem-solving approach to care proceedings. Research has found that by treating the parental problems that led to the care proceedings during the court case, family reunification rates and parental substance misuse cessation rates are higher than in ordinary care proceedings. International evidence confirms the same results.
An important gap in evidence is the impact of FDACs (or their international equivalent 'family drug treatment courts') on offending behaviour, although, it is known that parents who are involved in care proceedings frequently have offending records too. The proposed study offers a major opportunity to redress this knowledge deficit.
Study aims:
- To establish whether receipt of FDAC is associated with changes in maternal and paternal offending and reoffending.
- To establish, whether parents who accessed FDACs continue to have higher rates of sustainable family reunification, after taking into account offending profiles, than those who went through ordinary care proceedings and services.
- To demonstrate the potential and feasibility of carrying out research that links and analyses sensitive administrative data, particularly data from courts on vulnerable populations, and that uses person-level data, to create a new longitudinal cohort study.
Method:
To address these aims, we will undertake a 24-month data linkage study based on an analysis of secondary data from existing data sources. It will bring together individual parental records from three administrative data sources, FDAC, Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) and the PNC (Police National Computer records) to create a longitudinal cohort study, comprising approximately 1700 parents.
Previous FDAC research can be found here: Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) Evaluation Research
Research Team
The Lancaster Team
Judith Harwin, Professor in Socio-Legal Studies, Co-director of the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research , Principal Investigator
Dr Bachar Alrouh, Research Fellow and Co-Investigator
Dr Claire Hargreaves, Senior Research Associate
The University of Central Lancashire team
Dr Les Humphreys, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Policing, Co-investigator
Dr Charlotte Barlow, Reader in Criminal Justice and Policing
External Collaborators
The Centre for Justice Innovation team
Stephen Whitehead, Head of Data and Evidence
Vicki Morris, Deputy Director
Members of the Research Advisory Group
HHJ Carol Atkinson, Designated Family Judge for East London and Lead Judge for research across Family Justice
Iain Brennan, Professor of Criminology, Hull University
Karen Broadhurst FAcSS (Chair) Professor of Social Work, Co-director of the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research and Co-director of the Data Science Institute, Lancaster University
Caroline Cooper, Criminal and Civil Justice System Consultant (U.S. and International) and General Practice of Law. Previously Research Professor and Director, Justice Programs Office, School of Public Affairs, American University, Washington D.C
Brian Francis, Professor of Social Statistics, Lancaster University
Anna Kawalek, Senior Lecturer in Law, Leeds Beckett University
Lauren Kocan, Head of Children’s Rights and Family Justice, Department for Education
Tom McNeil, Assistant Police & Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands
Amy Summerfield, Head of Evidence and Partnerships, Data and Analysis, Ministry of Justice
Saif Ullah, Senior Research and Evaluation Manager, Cafcass.
Contact
Professor Judith Harwin j.e.harwin@lancaster.ac.uk
