Award Title: Enhancement of ECHILD with a mother-child and Unique Property Reference number link
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Aim: To enhance the existing ECHILD database by 1) adding in maternal and sibling information via a pseudonymised mother-child link and 2) scoping the requirements for linking household unit information using Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). The enhanced resource will facilitate policy-relevant research on the impact of family and household characteristics on child outcomes, including how maternal health, family violence, and children and young people's experiences of maltreatment or adversity influence child health, school outcomes and additional needs such as special educational needs and social care support.

Objectives: 

1.	Link hospital records of births in ECHILD to maternal hospital records (for children born from 1997 onwards). This will enable analysis of the impact of maternal demographic and health characteristics (e.g. age, hospital admissions for chronic conditions or drug, alcohol, violence or self-harm, or prior pregnancies from 1997 onwards) on child outcomes. 
2.	Extend ECHILD to include hospital and education records for children born from 1984-1995. This will allow us to link children born from 1997 onwards to their mother's education (from 2001/2, mothers aged <=36 in 2021), care experience (from 2005/6, mothers aged <=31), and child in need support records (from 2010, mothers aged <=28 years).  
3.	Support re-use of ECHILD by producing meta-data and code and reporting linkage quality of the mother-child link.
4.	Scope the options and obtain permissions for linking individuals in ECHILD to an encrypted Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). This would enable linkage of de-identified indicators of environmental exposures and household characteristics.
5.	Involve Government, the NSPCC and other third sector collaborators, parents and young people, in developing research priorities for the ECHILD mother-child and UPRN link.
6.	Work with NHS Digital, DfE and ONS to support annual refreshes of the data, and to sustain the ECHILD resource for wider re-use.

Lay Abstract: ECHILD is a research database that joins together existing health, education and social care information for all children in England. We are using this linked data to better understand how education affects children's health, and how health affects children's education. ECHILD allows us to gain a detailed picture of the challenges that many children face as they grow up. Research using ECHILD will help government and the providers of services to better understand children's needs, to join up services, and to see which children might not receive the services they need. 

ECHILD currently uses data about children from schools, hospitals and children's social care. However, some key bits of information are missing. For example, including information on maternal characteristics (such as age, education, and health needs) could help inform the best ways to support young adults in becoming parents. Information on household and neighbourhood characteristics (e.g. number of siblings, overcrowding or air pollution) could provide evidence for government on the impact of these factors on health and education within and across household members. We are therefore proposing to further develop ECHILD by adding in maternal and household information. This will allow us to answer more research questions and generate evidence about the best ways to support young families. Individuals cannot be identified in the database and it can only be used for research and planning services. 

We have talked a lot with young people and parents to find out what they think about ECHILD and the kinds of questions they think future research should address. We will continue to involve the public throughout our new study.

Research Activity Codes: 2.4 SURVEILLANCE AND DISTRIBUTION
Health Categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE