Risk Factors

Treasury has put a lot of work into identifying risk factors for future offending and other bad outcomes. Outcomes for kids with two or more from the following list wind up worse than for those without them:

• Having a CYF finding of abuse or neglect
• Being mostly supported by benefits since birth
• Having a parent with a prison or community sentence
• Having a mother with no formal qualifications.

They say 7842 kids have all four risk factors. Poor outcome measures include contact with youth justice services, leaving school without qualifications, receiving benefits for more than two years before age 21, winding up in jail before age 21, and being on benefit over the age of 25.

Here's the data visualisation tool. And here's the paper showing all the workings.

This is good and important stuff. Knowing where risks are concentrated can make it easier to target programmes. 

What I'm really looking forward to seeing is comprehensive work looking at the effectiveness of the different interventions MSD is trying.