Shedding light on the social and health realities of care-experienced young people in Western Australia: A population-level study

Background
Young people who were in out-of-home care (OHC) face an accelerated transition to independent adulthood. Current evidence on outcomes for Australian care-leavers is scant.

Objective
This study aims to develop a better understanding of the outcomes for young people leaving care.

Participants and setting
A birth cohort of children and young people born in Western Australia (WA) from 1993 to 2008. Three groups were identified and compared: young people with care-experience (OHC Cohort), those with child protection involvement but not care experience (CP Contact Cohort), and peers in the general population (No Contact Cohort).

Methods
This is a retrospective, population-based study utilising de-identified, linked administrative records provided by the WA state government agencies. Data from the three cohorts were compared through descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and logistic regression modelling.

Results
The birth cohort contained records for 414,266 individuals. The smallest comparison group in this study was the OHC Cohort (n = 6526), followed by the CP Contact Cohort (n = 78,095), and the No Contact Cohort (n = 329,645). Care-experienced young people in WA fared significantly worse than their peers across the domains of health (physical and mental), disability, education, social housing and criminal justice involvement.

Conclusions
Those who have had child protection involvement, but have not been placed in care, had better outcomes than those who had been in care. However, their outcomes were still poorer than the population cohort with no child protection contact.