Looked After Status
Proportion of Preschool children with ‘Likely difficulties’ on the SDQ by Looked After Status of child (Base: 9056)
Children who had ever been ‘Looked After’, either at home or away from home, were more likely to have difficulties in all areas of the SDQ, compared with children who had never had ‘Looked After’ status. Differences were particularly strong on the Total Difficulties, Conduct Problems, and Hyperactivity/inattention scales.
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.
