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Using Looking After Children to create an Australian out-of-home care database

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2016

Sarah Wise
Sarah Wise*
Affiliation:
Australian Institute of Family Studies, 300 Queen Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000
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Abstract

There is a paucity of publicly available information on Australian children in out-of-home care. Data on the characteristics of children in care, their experiences during placement, and the services provided for them are badly needed to monitor service effectiveness, to identify where service improvements can be made and to ascertain how to improve the allocation of resources. This paper provides a rationale for using information collected on the ‘Looking After Children’ (LAC) schedules to generate an Australia-wide database on children in out-of-home care, as well as identifying some of the problems to be overcome if the LAC schedules are to be used to collect aggregate data.

Type
Section Three: Data Collection
Information
Children Australia , Volume 28 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: Out-of-home care: Building a national research agenda , 2003 , pp. 38 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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