Sibling Data Cafes for Care Experienced Young People

Led by: Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh

Funding awarded: £7,927

Sibling relationships are important for wellbeing and resilience across people’s lifetimes, yet around 70% of children in the Scottish care system are separated from a sibling.

Administrative data has the potential to help understand and reduce these inequalities, however, care experienced young people may have limited opportunities to learn about the administrative data collected about them. In turn, researchers may not be fully aware of the lived experiences represented by the data, or young people’s priorities for how they would like their data to be used to make a positive change to the lives of those in the care system.

This project focuses on new data about sibling relationships of care experienced young people, which will be made available in the next few years as part of Administrative Data Research (ADR) Scotland’s Looked After Children dataset.

The project team, led by Dr Katie Cebula, aims to create a dialogue between care experienced young people and data analysts/researchers, to ensure that care experienced young people understand the sibling data collected about them and how it’s used, and that messages are shared appropriately with researchers about young people’s sibling experiences and future priorities for data use.

The team – a collaboration of researchers and care experienced young adults, with advisers from Stand Up for Siblings and The Promise (Scotland’s commitment to drive positive change in the lives of care experienced young people) – will co-design two pop-up ‘Sibling Data Cafes’ for care leavers and their supporters. The cafes will offer a range of creative activities, such as data stories, graffiti boards and ‘postcards to a data analyst’.

Performance poet Craig Houston, who works with care experienced young people, will attend the cafes and work with the project team to create and record a poem using the information gathered in the activities. The poem will then be shared with the care community and data analysts and researchers across Scotland.

This project sits within the Children and Young People’s Research Hub in the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh which provides a framework for ongoing dissemination and impact.