Promoting inclusive recruitment within children’s social care research trials: lessons from the Reflective Fostering Study’s InCLUDE project

It is widely acknowledged that those participating in clinical trials generally do not represent the intended beneficiaries of that research. This pattern is mirrored in trials within children’s social care settings, where underserved communities are often not adequately represented. This paper shares learning from the Reflective Fostering Study, a clinical trial that evaluated the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the Reflective Fostering Programme, a support programme for foster and kinship carers. The trial included a distinct workstream, the ‘InCLUDE project’, aiming to better understand the barriers preventing specific underserved groups (male carers, South Asian and kinship carers) from taking part in the study, as well as identifying facilitators for their active and meaningful involvement. Learning was used to iteratively modify the recruitment processes within the trial, with the aim of improving representation of groups initially underrepresented. Over the course of the trial, representation of specific underserved groups improved, as evidenced by the analysis of study data from the later phases of the study and compared to national data. Drawing on all the learning from InCLUDE, the paper presents broader recommendations for enhancing inclusion and representation in future children’s social care research trials.