Parental substance use is a major contributor to child protection involvement, accounting for nearly two-fifths of registrations in Scotland’s Child Protection Register (2023/24). Although both parents’ substance use can affect child wellbeing, mothers are more often primary caregivers and thus more frequently come into contact with child protection services. While most mothers who use substances do not neglect or harm their children, those who lose custody often experience multiple, intersecting vulnerabilities. Evidence indicates that infants born to women who use opioids are twelve times more likely to be removed by court order at birth than demographically similar peers—a disparity that has widened over the past 15 years. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms driving this relationship, or about the developmental trajectories of these children.
This PhD will extend analyses of an existing ESRC-funded cohort comprising linked health and social work records for 4,836 births to women identified as using opioids in pregnancy (2009–2019), and a matched control group. The research will address four key questions: (1) What are the care pathways for children with prenatal opioid exposure over their first five years? (2) To what extent does prenatal opioid exposure predict child removal at birth and beyond? (3) What causal mechanisms link opioid exposure and child removal? (4) Do children removed from mothers who use opioids have better or worse developmental outcomes than those who remain with them?
Advanced quantitative methods—including pathway analysis, causal inference, and mediation analysis—will be used to explore these complex relationships. Findings will inform policy and practice to improve care and support for women who use opioids and their children. By leveraging a unique, ready-to-use administrative dataset, this project offers a rare opportunity to generate robust, policy-relevant evidence for a highly vulnerable and understudied population.
Supervisory Team:
- First Supervisor: Dr Louise Marryat, Louise.Marryat@glasgow.ac.uk
- Second Supervisor: Professor Helen Minnis, Helen.Minnis@glasgow.ac.uk
- Third Supervisor: Dr Martha Canfield, martha.canfield@gcu.ac.uk
For more information please visit Intersecting Vulnerabilities: Mapping the Care Journeys of Opioid-Exposed Children in Scotland using administrative data - Scottish Graduate School of Social Science