Dr Calum Webb
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Sheffield Methods Institute
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
+44 114 222 7125
Full contact details
Sheffield Methods Institute
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Understanding child inequalities - Meet Dr Calum Webb Calum Webb joined the Sheffield Methods Institute as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in September 2021, having previously worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Sociological Studies. His research explores socioeconomic inequalities in the child welfare system and their relationship to fiscal and social policy using quantitative research methods. He completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of Sheffield in 2019 as an ESRC-funded White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership student.
His research on child welfare inequalities and the funding of local services for children and young people has been published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Children and Youth Services Review, the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Child & Family Social Work, and elsewhere. Outside of academic circles, his work has been cited by the National Children’s Bureau, Ofsted, Children England, the British Association of Social Workers, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the Department for Education, and other organisations.
- Research interests
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From 2021-2024 Calum will be leading an innovative new research project as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy titled “Investment in Prevention and its Systemic Effects (IPSE): Modelling the causal effects of spending in children's services with a whole systems approach.”
This project will explore how investment in preventative services for children, young people, and their families can create virtuous cycles that reduce child protection intervention and rates of children entering care. It will also explore how these cycles have changed over time and whether some groups of children benefit more than others from the services that are currently funded. This research will help us understand how inequalities in child welfare interventions might emerge from the fiscal policies of national governments and the decisions made about what kind of services to provide.
Previously, Calum was a researcher on the Child Welfare Inequalities Project, a Nuffield Foundation funded project that identified large socioeconomic inequalities in England. The project team’s research highlighted that children in the most deprived 10 per cent of neighbourhoods were ten times more likely to be in care than children in the least deprived 10 per cent of neighbourhoods.
As part of this project, Calum’s research showed that the most deprived local authorities in England had seen the largest cuts to their expenditure on services intended to help safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under austerity
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Inequalities in out-of-home care rates in England: Does local party politics matter?. Child Abuse & Neglect, 149, 106590-106590.
- The differential association of socioeconomic vulnerabilities and neglect-related child protection involvement across geographies : multilevel structural equation modeling. Children and Youth Services Review, 138.
- More Money, More Problems? Addressing the Funding Conditions Required for Rights-Based Child Welfare Services in England. Societies.
- Funding for preventative Children’s Services and rates of children becoming looked after : a natural experiment using longitudinal area-level data in England. Children and Youth Services Review, 131.
- Three roads to Rome? Comparative policy analysis of predictive tools in child protection services in Aotearoa New Zealand, England, & Denmark. Nordic Social Work Research. View this article in WRRO
- Beyond the Toxic Trio: Exploring Demand Typologies in Children’s Social Care. The British Journal of Social Work.
- Income inequality and child welfare interventions in England and Wales. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. View this article in WRRO
- Cuts both ways : ethnicity, poverty, and the social gradient in child welfare interventions. Children and Youth Services Review. View this article in WRRO
- Untangling Child Welfare Inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England. Children and Youth Services Review, 111. View this article in WRRO
- Towards full integration of quantitative and qualitative methods in case study research: insights from investigating child welfare inequalities. Journal of Mixed Methods Research. View this article in WRRO
- Paradoxical evidence on ethnic inequities in child welfare: Towards a research agenda. Children and Youth Services Review, 96, 145-154. View this article in WRRO
- Social work, poverty, and child welfare interventions. Child and Family Social Work, 23(3), 364-372. View this article in WRRO
- ‘When you're sitting in the room with two people one of whom… has bashed the hell out of the other’: Possibilities and challenges in the use of FGCs and restorative approaches following domestic violence. Children and Youth Services Review, 88, 441-449. View this article in WRRO
- Austerity, rationing and inequity: trends in children’s and young peoples’ services expenditure in England between 2010 and 2015. Local Government Studies, 1-25. View this article in WRRO
- Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?. Child & Family Social Work, 23(1), 53-61. View this article in WRRO
- Categorising Demand for Child Welfare Services Using Latent Class Analysis: A Study of the National Data-sets on Children in Need in England. The British Journal of Social Work.
- Monitoring a Fragile Child Protection System: a Longitudinal Local Area Ecological Analysis of the Inequalities Impact of Children’s Services Inspections on Statutory Child Welfare Interventions in England. Journal of Social Policy, 1-21.
- Improving Inclusivity in Robotics Design: An Exploration of Methods for Upstream Co-Creation. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 9.
- Understanding out of Home Care Rates in Northern Ireland: A Thematic Analysis of Mixed Methods Case Studies. The British Journal of Social Work. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring the declining rates of state social work intervention in an English local authority using family group conferences. Children and Youth Services Review. View this article in WRRO
- Are Child Welfare Intervention Rates Higher or Lower in Areas Targeted for Enhanced Early Years Services?. Child Abuse Review.
- In Defence of Ordinary Help: Estimating the effect of Early Help/Family Support Spending on Children in Need Rates in England using ALT-SR. Journal of Social Policy.
- Austerity, Poverty, and Children's Services Quality in England: Consequences for Child Welfare and Public Services. Social Policy and Society.
Conference proceedings papers
- Inequalities in out-of-home care rates in England: Does local party politics matter?. Child Abuse & Neglect, 149, 106590-106590.
- Grants
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Awarding body Project title Funding amount British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Investment in Prevention and its Systemic Effects: Modelling the causal effects of spending in children’s services with a whole systems approach. (2021) £257,578 (PI) ESRC Impact Accelerator Account Artificial Intelligence & Social Care: Strengthening Partnerships and Coproducing Priorities in Social Work (2020) £45,173 (PI) Nuffield Foundation Re‐analysing the CWIP quantitative dataset using multilevel modelling (2019) £35,400 (Co-I) Sheffield University Student’s Union Understanding the needs of Chinese students on postgraduate taught programmes (2019) £1,000 (PI) Research England Higher Education Innovation Fund The Child Welfare Inequalities Project App (CWIP App) (2019) £9,981 (PI) Nuffield Foundation Identifying and understanding the link between system conditions and welfare inequalities in statutory children’s social care services. (2018)
£263,652 (Consultant) Nuffield Foundation Identifying and Understanding Inequalities in Child Welfare Intervention Rates (Child Welfare Inequalities Project) (2015) £557,705 (RA) ESRC Innovation, Impact and Knowledge Exchange Developing a policy learning tool for anti‐poverty policy design and assessment. £12,722 (Co-I)
- Teaching interests
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Calum is interested in using and developing ways to teach quantitative methods and statistical analysis that make the subject more accessible and open, particularly to those who struggle its mathematical aspects. This includes teaching the fundamentals using real-world research and data examples, interactive activities, and visual explanations of abstract statistical concepts. He is interested in participatory and community-led approaches to quantitative research.
Calum is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Between 2017 and 2020 he taught introductory and intermediate quantitative methods modules for students of Sociology, Social Policy, Occupational Psychology and Social Research
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy
- Member of the Social Policy Association, British Society for Population Studies, and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society
- Member of the Cafcass Research Advisory Board
- Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Technical Advisor to the Department for Education