A university and policy research partnership, led by Lancaster University, has secured £1 million to provide insights into care arrangements for children affected by their mothers' involvement in the criminal justice system.
The study, the first of its kind, will use and link national datasets to understand women's involvement in justice systems and the outcomes for their children.
The £1 million award, includes an £830,000 grant from UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Principal Investigator Professor Karen Broadhurst, of Lancaster University, will work with Co-Leads Dr Bachar Alrouh (Lancaster University), Professor Lucy Griffiths (Swansea University) and Les Humphreys (UCLAN).
The project has been developed with partners committed to transforming justice outcomes for women and children.
Project partners include the Ministry of Justice, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), Cafcass Cymru, and the leading charity, Birth Companions.
Women's involvement in the criminal justice system impacts on their relationships with their children.
Whether women are serving community sentences or are in prison, criminal justice involvement can have a major detrimental effect on children's caregiver arrangements.
An unknown proportion of mothers appear in both the criminal and family justice systems and can lose children through care and adoption proceedings.
Maintaining mother-child relationships is a key objective of the Female Offender Strategy for England and Wales. However, evidence to support these policies remains scarce.
The Child Outcomes for Mothers Facing Trial (COMFT) study will provide insights into caregiver arrangements for children when mothers have dual system involvement.
For the first time, and working closely with the Ministry of Justice's Data First team, who are funded by Administrative Data Research UK, the researchers will link data across criminal and family justice systems in England and Wales, to uncover vital insights that will inform policy and practice.
The research, to be guided by women with lived experience, is the first of its kind to use large-scale, anonymised data to explore the outcomes for children whose mothers face trial.
The 'COMFT-Together' advisory group will be made up of mothers who have had cross-justice involvement and will play an integral role from the outset in shaping the research and ensuring its relevance and impact.
This aspect of the research will be led by Birth Companions - a national charity specialising in the needs and experiences of women in the criminal and family justice systems during pregnancy and early motherhood.
The study also provides an outstanding learning, development and networking opportunity for post-doctoral researchers joining the project.
The team will document processes of data linkage and share learning with the wider research and analytic community, creating new research opportunities to understand mothers and children with cross-justice involvement.
The team will benefit from close reciprocal working with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), building on the work of the Data First programme within the MoJ.
The project also benefits from a long-standing partnership with Swansea University, enabling access to the globally leading SAIL Databank. The team will use the SAIL platform to access secure anonymised data affording the highest levels of privacy protection.
Lancaster University's Data Science Institute will support dissemination and engagement, given the safe use of public data is a core theme for the Institute.
Professor of Social Work at the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University Karen Broadhurst said: "The preservation of family relationships is central to improving approaches to women across the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Preserving mother-child relationships is associated with a reduction in offending and provides vital continuities for children.
"We are absolutely delighted to receive this funding, which will enable us to unravel women's involvement in both the criminal and family justice systems and outcomes for children. As this study is the first of its kind, it will be of considerable interest to the international community of researchers working with large-scale administrative data to support progressive policy development."
Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at Population Data Science at Swansea University Lucy Griffiths said: "COMFT aims to push the boundaries of both methods and knowledge, whilst placing the lives of women and children at the heart of the study.
"Our research will represent a significant step forward in understanding the challenges faced by women and their children when navigating the justice systems. Using the world-class resources of the SAIL Databank, we aim to provide robust evidence to help shape policies that preserve family relationships and improve outcomes for children."
Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Policing at the School of Law and Policing at the University of Central Lancashire Leslie Humphreys said: "This funding will enable groundbreaking research that will link data from the family justice system and the criminal justice system.
Despite an appreciation among practitioners and researchers of the overlap between mothers who are subject to both the family and criminal justice systems, very little empirical evidence exists around how mothers' experiences of these systems relate to and impact upon one another and how this can impact mother-child relationships. The Data First initiative has been invaluable in facilitating the linkage of data from these two large-scale sources and our study, in using this data, will provide an excellent evidence base which we can use to inform policy and practice concerned with maintaining healthy mother-child relationships."
Head of Evidence and Partnerships at the Ministry of Justice Analysis Directorate Amy Summerfield said: We are thrilled to be partnering with the University research teams on this pioneering new research programme. This is exactly the type of collaboration that the MoJ-led Data First programme was set up to do - to make best use of our linked data assets, driving robust academic research, and developing the evidence base against priorities set out in the MoJ Areas of Research Interest. This research will provide invaluable evidence - for the first time at this scale - to better understand how we can reduce the harms for women and children who experience both the criminal and family justice systems. We look forward to working in collaboration with this expert team and maximising the insights for policy and practice decision-making."
Head of Policy at Birth Companions Kirsty Kitchen said: "We are excited to support a central role for women with lived experience throughout this major new study, which holds such potential to shape a better approach for the benefit of women, children and society as a whole."
