Understanding changing patterns of placement type stability in the first two years of placement for looked after children in Scotland: A sequence analysis

Ben Matthews, Chris Playford, Janice McGhee, Fiona Mitchell and Chris Dibben

Children and Youth Services Review, 2026, vol. 180, issue C

Abstract: Placement stability is an important concern for children looked after. Sequence analysis has been proposed as a promising method by which to quantitatively assess care placement stability for looked after children. Previous uses of sequence analysis to understand care placement stability have focused on a cohort perspective – following children from birth to age 18 and then analysing their whole care histories. This cohort approach is less well suited to understanding care placement stability for the population of children in care at a given time, which is a limitation given interest in understanding how aggregate levels of care placement stability is changing. In this paper we demonstrate a complimentary use of sequence analysis to understand placement type stability in shorter periods. We combined sequence analysis with regression modelling applied to Scottish administrative data for children looked after between 2008–2017 to describe change over time in the average number of transitions between placement types – a placement stability measure derived from sequence analysis – for children in their first two years in care. Our results show that there was a slight overall decrease in placement stability by this measure between 2008–2017, but that this decrease appears attributable to changes in the composition of placement types over the same period.

Keywords: Sequence analysis; Administrative data; Children in care; Longitudinal care histories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740925005638
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:180:y:2026:i:c:s0190740925005638

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108680

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().