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Loading …By Professor Andy Bilson and Dr Matthew Jay
Our study using national data estimated that a quarter of all children in England became a child in need before their 18th birthday.
This means that these children, according to section 17 of the Children Act 1989, required services from children’s social care because they were disabled or would not otherwise reach a basic level of wellbeing.
The findings highlight the significant reach of social care interventions and raise questions about the systemic issues contributing to such widespread need.
The Department for Education’s (DfE) annual children in need census indicated that 3.4% of all children aged 0-17 were classified as “in need” on 31 March 2023. But this is an annual snapshot.
Estimating childhood rates of involvement
Our team took a different approach, using an anonymised version of the dataset to track children’s social care involvement over time.
As the DfE’s data doesn’t cover an 18-year period, we estimated cumulative incidences using three different birth cohorts, employing statistical models to ensure double counting of individuals was ruled out. In this way we produced a more comprehensive view of how many children interact with social care services throughout their lives, rather than just a yearly snapshot.
We estimated that 25.3% of all children would be identified as “in need” at least once before adulthood. Our findings are supported by earlier research by Professor Bilson, in which local authorities said that 14% of children in their areas had been a child in need before their fifth birthday in 2017.
Additionally, our study estimated that, before turning 18:
- 35.4% of children have been referred to social care services;
- 32.3% have undergone a social work assessment;
- 6.9% have become subject to a child protection plan.
Prevalence of abuse or neglect concerns
As a statistical study, we were not able to look at the quality or nature of the child in need services offered to children. Support may range from parenting assistance and home adaptations, under a child in need plan, to child protection plans or being taken into care, depending on the child’s circumstances.
However, a recent freedom of information request made to the DfE by Professor Bilson showed that, for 78% of all children placed on a child in need plan between 2015 and 2023, the initial need was either because of abuse or neglect or family dysfunction. The latter category refers to families where social workers consider that chronically inadequate parenting is impairing the child’s health and development “but for whom there is not yet hard enough evidence to invoke child protection measures.” (DfE Children in Need Census Guide).
Given our finding about the proportion of children who become involved with children’s social care, this suggests that nearly one in five children may be classified as in need, during their childhoods, because of concerns about abuse or neglect or inadequate parenting.
Higher rates of intervention in deprived areas
The Child Welfare Inequalities Project found that in England, the rate of children on a child protection plan (CPP) in the most deprived 10% of the country was 2.4 times the national average.
As noted above, we found that 6.9% of children were made subject to a children protection plan during their childhoods. If the deprivation ratio from the Child Welfare Inequalities Project holds for childhood involvement, this means that one in every six children in the most deprived 10% of areas would have been on a child protection plan before their eighteenth birthday.
Also, if we were to assume that the same ratio holds in relation to children being classed as in need, this would mean more than three out of five children in the most deprived 10% of the country would have been deemed to require services to achieve a basic level of wellbeing during their childhoods. And in most such cases, this would have been because of concerns about abuse or neglect or inadequate parenting.
Implications for policy and practice
The study’s findings have significant implications for social work practice, policymaking and resource allocation. The data suggests that children’s social care is not just an emergency intervention for a minority, but a service that touches the lives of many families, potentially a majority in the most deprived areas.
It also raises concerns about whether adequate support is in place to prevent families from reaching the point where their health or development is in jeopardy, particularly for those in the most deprived communities.
There were about 225,000 child protection investigations in England last year. Combined with the fact that the principal need for the majority of children in need relates to suspicions of abuse or neglect, it is likely that the focus of most such interventions would be investigative.
Need to tackle root causes of vulnerability
With child poverty levels remaining high and public services under pressure from extensive government cuts, social workers and policymakers must consider how best to address the root causes of children’s vulnerability. Investing in community support and development and tackling the impacts of poverty at its core may be key to reducing the long-term reliance on social care services.
We recommend that the government monitor the cumulative incidence of children receiving social care support and analyse data by measures of deprivation, with a view to addressing upstream health and social determinants of social work involvement.
As the sector continues to grapple with increasing demand and service cuts, these findings serve as a call to action for a more holistic approach to supporting children and families before social care intervention becomes necessary.
The research, published in the International Journal of Population Data Science, was led by Dr Matthew Jay (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health) with collaborators at the University of Edinburgh, University of Central Lancashire, the Fisher Family Trust and the University of Westminster.
