Looked after status
Children who currently or previously had ‘Looked After’ status were far more likely to have difficulties than children who had never had Looked After status. Overall, children who had at some point had Looked After status were more than two and a half times more likely to have difficulties. More than 1 in 3 Looked After children had difficulties with hyperactivity/inattention, compared with 1 in 6 children who had not been Looked After.
Notes
SDQ - Goodman’ Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire for children. It covers five areas: Conduct Problems, Hyperactivity/inattention, Peer Relationship Problems, Emotional Symptoms and Pro-social Behaviours. The first four of these are rated negatively (that is, they pick up difficulties in children). These can be added together to give a Total Difficulties score, which shows an indication of overall difficulties that the child is experiencing. The final area, Pro-social Behaviours, is a positively scored scale, so it shows things the child does e.g. ‘is helpful if someone is hurt or upset’. The Total Difficulties score and the sub-scale scores can be split into groups which indicate whether a child has no difficulties, possible difficulties or likely difficulties.
This analysis reports on results from Pre-school SDQs in the academic years 2011/12 and 2012/13 combined (data collected in February/March of each academic year). For more information on the study see About the Study.
