Child Protection Statistics for the Years Ended 31^st March 1997 and 1998

A Publication of the Government Statistical Service

1. INTRODUCTION

Background to procedures underlying the child protection information system

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 places certain duties on local authorities in relation to the wellbeing of children in their area. These include a general duty to promote and safeguard the welfare of children in need and a specific duty to cause inquiries to be made into the case of a child who may be in need of compulsory measures of supervision due to lack of parental care, abuse or neglect. Arising from these duties, local authority Social Work Departments will have received reports about children who may have been abused or who may be at risk of abuse. These children may have been referred from relatives, neighbours, professionals or other sources. Social Work Departments decide when there is cause to initiate child protection inquiries and the subsequent steps to follow. National guidance sets out a framework for collaboration between Social Work Departments and other agencies in child protection cases (Protecting Children — A Shared Responsibility : The Scottish Office 1998).

At the initial stage of inquiries, practitioners will assess whether the child is at immediate risk of serious harm. If so, they may seek to secure the safety of the child by applying for a child protection order or an exclusion order under the 1995 Act. Inter-agency child protection case conferences may be convened to consider the nature and extent of any future identified or potential risk and to decide what action should be taken to reduce the risk. Interim measures of support, supervision or care (e.g. voluntary social work involvement, placing the child with a foster family) may be put in place in order to alleviate the risk to the child.

A case conference will decide whether any child(ren) should be placed on the local child protection register. A child should be registered when his/her safety and welfare is considered to require an inter-agency protection plan. An inter-agency plan provides a framework for inter-agency assessment, case work and review. The purpose of a protection plan is to reduce any perceived risk to the child and to safeguard and promote his or her welfare.

If the child is registered, a review case conference will normally be held within three months and at six monthly intervals thereafter. The review conference will review the progress of the inter-agency work to protect the child and consider any continuing risk. The conference will also consider whether there is a need for continued registration or to update the child protection plan.

When professionals who are working with the child and family decide that the risk to the child has been eliminated or reduced, the local authority should remove the child’s name from the child protection register. This decision should normally be made by a review case conference.

The data

The Scottish Executive collects child protection data from local authorities under the Child Protection Management Information System which was introduced in April 1992. This data is collected at various stages of the system outlined above via the unit returns CP1-CP4. Since local government reorganisation took effect on 1^st April 1996, less than half of Scotland’s local authorities have sent CP1-CP4 returns to the Scottish Executive.

Where authorities have sent in CP1-CP4 returns, the information from these returns was used in producing the figures in this note. Those authorities who have not been able to send in CP1-CP4 forms were asked to provide data in the form of a series of summary tables. This was combined with the CP1-CP4 data from returning authorities to produce the Scotland level figures in this note.

All local authorities who were asked to provide summary information were able to do so, with the exception of Midlothian. Estimated figures were calculated for Midlothian and these estimates were used in the production of the Scotland figures given in this Information Note.

In addition, some local authorities who were asked to provide summary information were able to provide some but not all of the data requested. Where this was the case, the remaining data was estimated for these authorities. This estimated data was also used in the calculation of Scotland level figures.

Because of the inclusion of estimated figures in the Scotland totals, some of the column and row totals in the tables in this Information Note may not exactly equal the sum of their component parts due to the effects of rounding.

It should be stressed that both the volume of child protection inquiries carried out and the number of case conferences convened may reflect wide variation in practice at local level. These factors should be taken into consideration when making any comparisons between separate local authority areas.

2. CHILD PROTECTION REFERRALS

Table 1B shows that, in the year to 31^st March 1998, around 6,900 children had been referred for child protection inquiries.

Although a small majority of these children (52 per cent) were girls, this pattern varied by age group. Fifty eight per cent of children referred who were aged 11 years and over were girls. However, for children aged 10 and under, there were slightly more boys referred than girls.

As can be seen in Table 1A, local authorities reported that around 6,300 children were referred for child protection inquiries in the year to March 1997. This is a noticeably lower figure than the one for the year to March 1998. This should, however, be interpreted with caution as some local authorities reported difficulties in collating figures for 1996/97 resulting in significantly lower figures being reported for 1996/97 than in 1997/98.

The patterns by gender and age group for the 1996/97 data were roughly similar to those described for 1997/98.

Tables 1: Children referred for child protection inquiries: Breakdown by gender and age group

A. In year to 31^st March 1997

B. In year to 31^st March 1998

3. CHILDREN SUBJECT TO A CASE CONFERENCE

It can be seen in Table 2 that 2,889 children who were referred in the year to 31^st March 1998 were subject to a case conference following child protection inquiries. This represented 42 per cent of the total number of children referred. The majority of these 2,889 children lived at home prior to their referral (92 per cent). A further 3 per cent lived with family or relatives.

Again, the figures for 1996/97 showed very similar patterns to 1997/98.

Table 2: Number of children referred in the years to 31^st March 1997 and 1998 who were subject to a case conference : Breakdown by placement of children prior to referral

Table 3 shows that in around 70 per cent of case conferences, the primary source of risk to the child was believed to be his/her natural parent(s). Also, in around a sixth of cases, a step parent or parent’s co-habitee was the main source of risk.

Table 3: Number of children referred in the years to 31^st March 1997 and 1998 who were subject to a case conference : Breakdown by child’s primary known/suspected abuser

Table 4 shows that 1,919 (66 per cent) of the case conferences for children referred in 1997/98 resulted in the child’s name being placed on the child protection register. In 43 per cent of these registrations, physical injury was the main category of registration identified by the case conference. Physical neglect and sexual abuse were the next most common categories, accounting for 27 and 20 per cent of the total, respectively.

No noticeably different patterns were observed in the 1996/97 figures.

Table 4: Number of children referred in the years to 31^st March 1997 and 1998 who were subject to a case conference and were registered as a result of that conference : Breakdown by category of abuse identified by conference

4. CHILDREN ON THE CHILD PROTECTION REGISTER

Table 5 shows the number of children who were actually on local authorities’ child protection registers as at 31^st March 1997 and 31^st March 1998.

On both of these dates, there were a total of around 2,300 children in Scotland on child protection registers. City of Edinburgh had the largest number, closely followed by Glasgow City. The number of children on the registers in these two authorities together accounted for 31 per cent of the Scotland total in both years.

Table 5: Number of children on child protection registers as at 31^st March 1997 and 1998 and rate per population aged 0-15 years

1. Figures estimated as completed returns not received from Midlothian Council.

5. FURTHER INFORMATION

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Information Note are available on request from:

Mr. Alan D. Fleming,
Scottish Executive Education Department,
Floor 1-B,
Victoria Quay,
Edinburgh, EH6 6QQ.
Telephone: 0131-244-3745.
Fax: 0131-244-0354.
E-mail alan.fleming@scotland.gov.uk

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