The Children Looked After return (also known as SSDA903) is an annual collection of information about children looked after by local authorities (LAs) in England. It is a longitudinal data collection.
How is the data used?
The data is widely used by Department policy divisions, other government departments, LAs, external agencies and social and educational researchers.
Analysis of individual child records supports the drive to raise standards, to improve the outcomes for this vulnerable group of children, to accurately target funding, and to monitor and develop policy.
Data from this collection is also matched through the national pupil database to attainment data and to other educational data including exclusions, attendance and special educational needs. Without this information it would be very difficult for ministers, Parliament, central and local government, pressure groups and the public to monitor government policies and their effectiveness.
How is the data collected?
The data is collected via the SSDA903 system.
Important dates
The system will open on Tuesday 2 April 2013, and data should be loaded by Friday 31 May 2013. The system will remain open for cleaning of data until Friday 28 June 2013.
Census updates
Should any urgent problems arise during the collection, authorities will be informed via email. News bulletins will also be issued during the collection as needed.
Support
The following documents will support LAs completing the return:
The following technical document is also available:
Contact us
Please use the service request form if you would like to change your contact details, request a COLLECT username and password or make any queries about the Children Looked After return.
Please use the feedback request form if you have any comments about the content on this web page, the Data Collection Helpdesk service, the COLLECT system or any other aspect of our data collection service.
