ArticleBMJ open2020
Association between health indicators of maternal adversity and the rate of infant entry to local authority care in England: a longitudinal ecological study.
Article in BMJ open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Separation at birth due to safeguarding concerns: Using reproductive justice theory to re-think the role of midwives.Birth (Berkeley, Calif.) · 2025Article
- Risk Factors Associated With Primary Care-Reported Domestic Violence for Women Involved in Family Law Care Proceedings: Data Linkage Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Observational
- Characteristics of enrolment in an intensive home-visiting programme among eligible first-time adolescent mothers in England: a linked administrative data cohort study.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2022Article
- Mental health service use among mothers involved in public family law proceedings: linked data cohort study in South London 2007-2019.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2022Article
- Characterizing newborn and older infant entries into care in England between 2006 and 2014.Child abuse & neglect · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveInfants enter care at varying rates across local authorities (LAs) in England, but evidence is lacking on what is driving these differences. With this ecological study, we aimed to explore the extent to which adversity indicated within women's hospitalisation histories, predelivery, explained the rate of infant entry into care.
methodsWe used two longitudinal person-level data sets on hospitalisations and entries to care to create annual measures for 131 English LAs, between 2006/2007 and 2013/2014 (April-March). We combined these measures by LA and financial year, along with other publicly available data on LA characteristics. We used linear mixed-effects models to analyse the relationship between the outcome-LA-specific rate of infant entry into care (per 10 000 infants in the LA population) - and LA-specific percentage of live births with maternal history of adversity-related hospital admissions (ie, substance misuse, mental health problems or violence-related admissions in the 3 years before delivery), adjusted for other predictors of entry into care.
resultsRate of infant entry into care (mean: 85.16 per 10 000, SD: 41.07) and percentage of live births with maternal history of adversity-related hospital admissions (4.62%, 2.44%) varied greatly by LA. The prevalence of maternal adversity accounted for 24% of the variation in rate of entry (95% CI 14% to 35%). After adjustment, a percentage point increase in prevalence of maternal adversity-both within and between LAs-was associated with an estimated 2.56 (per 10 000) more infants entering care (1.31-3.82).
conclusionsThe prevalence of maternal adversity before birth helped to explain the variation in LA rates of infant entry into care. Preventive interventions are needed to improve maternal well-being before and during pregnancy, and potentially reduce risk of child maltreatment and therefore entries to care. Evidence on who to target and data to evaluate change require linkage between parent-child healthcare data and administrative data from children's social care.
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