The study builds on two recently completed studies:
The study involves three key stages:
- Stage 1: Analysis of aggregated patterns and trends of fathers in care proceedings in England, and their risk of re-entering a second set of care proceedings.
- Stage 2: A national survey of men involved in care proceedings.
- Stage 3: A year long, in-depth, qualitative study of fathers involved in recurrent care proceedings.
Findings from each stage of the study will be recorded and analysed separately, with the aim of generating timely, robust outputs in the format of short reports and headline findings for practitioner engagement events. The stage-specific analyses will allow us to answer distinct sets of research questions at the macro/population, medium and micro-individual levels respectively. Each set of evidence will help identify important themes and dimensions that build toward to the final integrated analysis. The integrated mixed-methods interpretation of the data involves looking across the quantitative and qualitative data to build a holistic picture of fathers in recurrent care proceedings. This will enable us to identify the interplay between different factors operating at different levels of society that jointly shape the aggregate pattern and individual experiences of fathers’ recurrence.