In July 2024, Advicenow, Anglia Ruskin University and Lancaster University published the report Come to us in a peaceful way: Improving experiences of Roma families with children’s services in England. The report draws primarily from qualitative data and an analysis of existing literature pointing to growing evidence of overrepresentation of Roma children in care, highlighting the need for better data collection to understand the scope of this issue.
This briefing presents further research, which aims to re-assess and update existing findings regarding available data concerning Roma children in care.
Conclusions
Our report, Come to us in a peaceful way (2024), shows that despite longstanding recommendations to disaggregate Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) data by ethnicity (Greenfields et al., 2015; Allen, 2022), such measures remain largely unimplemented in England’s government datasets and academic literature. This research shows that inconsistencies in data collection within different governmental departments also hinders meaningful research and data analysis, making it difficult to accurately assess the scale and nature of inequalities faced by Roma families in their interactions with children’s services. These gaps in evidence weaken policy responses and hinder accountability, allowing systemic disparities to persist unchallenged.
The existing data reveals troubling trends that strongly suggest the overrepresentation of Roma children in care in England, underscoring the urgent need for more robust and disaggregated data to clarify the underlying causes.
Recommendations
Government departments including the Office for National Statistics and Department for Education should disaggregate ethnically sensitive information in administrative data sets and ensure consistency in data collection across government departments. There should be distinct categories for Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller groups wherever confidentiality constraints allow.
As this study confirms there is growing evidence of the disproportionate representation of Roma children in care, there is an urgent need for a comprehensive understanding of the structural, institutional, and socio-political factors contributing to this disparity and the development of policy interventions that are both effective and equitable.
We submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Education, asking to obtain additional disaggregated statistics about Roma communities from the Children in need publication. We also submitted feedback to the new Elective home education and Children missing education publications, recommending that ethnicity breakdowns be included in future releases.
