CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER AND IN NEED: WHAT THE LATEST STATISTICS TELL US
Between the end of October and the middle of November 2022, the Department for Education released a raft of statistical data about looked-after children and children in need. Statistics can have a Delphic quality, with inevitable ambiguities and no means to ask the spreadsheets, ‘why?’ We are simply given figures for the year ended 31 March 2022 and we can also look at how things have changed from earlier years. Learning why we reached this point, or what is likely to happen in the future, requires deeper probing.
Looked-after children
For looked-after children, the headline figure is that the total number of looked-after children has increased to 82,170, representing an increase of 2 per cent since 2021. The data includes figures going back to 1994 when there were 47,590 looked-after children and so, over 28 years, the total has risen by a little over 72 per cent. The annual figures appear to show that, between 2004 and 2009, there seemed to be a period of stability, with the total number of children in care hovering around the 60,000 mark. In 2010, the total increased by just over 3,500 children in a year and, since then, the total has increased every year.
The total number of looked-after children includes 5,570 children who are unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). This is the highest recorded total for these children and represents a 34 per cent increase since 2021. In 2021, the total number of children who had applied for asylum in their own right and were separated from their parents or any other responsible adult fell to 4,150, which the Department suggests ‘was likely due to the pandemic’. At the end of March 2020, before the pandemic, there were 5,080 UASC in local authority care. Prior to this year, the highest total was in the year ended 2019, when a total of 5,150 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were being looked after.
UASC are generally male (95 per cent) and 87 per cent were 16 or 17 years old. The ethnic origins of UASC are less detailed in the published data than might have been wished. The open data shows that 20 per cent were African and 24 per cent were recorded as ‘any other Asian background’ apart from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Chinese. The largest group, at 45 per cent, are only shown in the open data as ‘other ethnic group’, which includes individuals as potentially diverse as Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis and Libyans, but also Japanese, Koreans and anyone from Latin, Central or South America.
The number of looked-after children being adopted has slightly increased since 2021, with 2,950 looked-after children being adopted. This is 60 more than in the previous year. It seems likely that the marginal increase reflects cases being delayed during the pandemic rather than a genuine rise in adoption. Since 2015, the numbers of children leaving care through adoption has been steadily falling and the last two years saw the lowest numbers of adoptions since 2000. More children (3,870) now leave care through the making of a special guardianship order than through adoption. Relatives or friends of the child accounted for 87 per cent of special guardians, with 11 per cent being former foster carers. This change appears to reflect the rising age at which children come into care. The average age of a child at adoption is three years and three months, while for special guardianship the average is six years and four months.
The Department for Education has published details of the placements for looked-after children, showing the locality and provider of the placement. The figures show the very significant role played by private providers of accommodation for children across the range of different types of accommodation. Of 82,170 children, 37,680 were living in some kind of local authority placement and 31,070 were with a private provider.
Only 56 per cent of looked-after children (46,280) were placed within their own council boundary. For them, 55 per cent were living in the local authority’s own foster care, with only 6,010 private foster placements within the council area, as compared to 25,640 local authority ones. For secure accommodation, children’s homes and semi-independent living, inside the child’s council area, the public/private balance shifts, with 1,390 children in local authority accommodation, compared to 3,790 placements from the private sector.
Once children have to be placed outside the local authority’s own area, the data appears to show that the majority of children are placed with private companies. Against 9,290 local authority foster placements, 12,130 private fostering places are being used. When children are accommodated outside their council area, in secure accommodation, a children’s home or semi-independent living, 6,760 of the 7,320 places are provided by the private sector.
The Department for Education has also published data about the number of looked-after children, from each local authority, as a rate per 10,000 children. Whilst this data has been published previously, the basis for estimating the child population has been changed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and so this year’s figures are not directly comparable with earlier years. By setting out the rate in which children are placed into care, it is possible to examine regional differences without the distortion of different child population sizes. Nationally, within England, the rate of looked-after children per 10,000 is 70 children. However, even within one part of the country, wide variations can be seen:
|
Local authority
|
Rate of children per 10,000
|
|
North Yorkshire
|
38
|
|
Bradford
|
103
|
|
Leeds
|
80
|
|
Wakefield
|
88
|
|
Kirklees
|
62
|
|
Calderdale
|
75
|
|
Sheffield
|
59
|
|
Rotherham
|
99
|
|
Barnsley
|
70
|
|
York
|
80
|
|
East Riding of Yorkshire
|
53
|
|
Kingston-upon-Hull
|
150
|
Characteristics of children in need
On 27 October 2022, the Department for Education released the annual children in need statistics for England. Under the Children Act 1989, this group of children include: children on a child in need plan; children on child-protection plans; looked-after children; care leavers; and disabled children.
At 31 March 2022, there were 404,310 children in need. This is one of the highest recorded annual totals. The highest total was in 2018, when there were 404,710 children in need. Over the following three years the total has slightly fallen each year to 388,490 in 2021. The 2022 total is a 4.1 per cent increase over a single year. This total equates to 334.3 children in need per 10,000 children and is, again, the highest since 2018. This equates to 1 in every 30 children. The number of referrals in 2022 was 650,270, representing an 8.8 per cent rise from 2021 and the highest total since 2019. It is suggested that the resumption of full-time school attendance led to the increase in referrals when referrals from schools increased.
At 31 March 2022, there were a total of 50,920 child-protection plans. The open data includes the breakdown for the initial category of abuse and the age of the child at the date of the plan.
|
Initial category of abuse
|
Number of children
|
|
Neglect
|
24,430
|
|
Emotional abuse
|
19,480
|
|
Physical abuse
|
3,780
|
|
Sexual abuse
|
1,930
|
|
Multiple categories
|
1,280
|
|
Age of child at start of plan
|
Number of children
|
|
Unborn
|
1,330
|
|
Under 1
|
4,440
|
|
1–4 years
|
12,080
|
|
5–9 years
|
14,200
|
|
10–15 years
|
16,120
|
|
16 years +
|
2,750
|
As with the data for looked-after children by population, the headline, national details of children in need per 10,000 children overlay wide regional variations. Using the same local authorities used for looked-after children, the figures are:
|
Local authority
|
Rate of children in need per 10,000 children
|
|
North Yorkshire
|
255.2
|
|
Bradford
|
419.2
|
|
Leeds
|
344.8
|
|
Wakefield
|
339.8
|
|
Kirklees
|
223.7
|
|
Calderdale
|
302.9
|
|
Sheffield
|
362.5
|
|
Rotherham
|
380.5
|
|
Barnsley
|
320.0
|
|
York
|
311.5
|
|
East Riding of Yorkshire
|
285.9
|
|
Kingston-upon-Hull
|
658.3
|
Cross-examining the spreadsheets
Looking at data from individual local authorities raises serious questions. Why should a child in Bradford be almost three times as likely to find themselves in local authority care, compared to a child, 18 miles away, living in Skipton in North Yorkshire? Why should the child in Hull be just less than four times more likely to be in care than the child in Skipton? Why should a child in Hull be more than twice as likely to be in need than his counterpart only eight miles away in Beverley?
I had expected that the answers to these questions would already have been well-researched and documented and was surprised to find that they were not. The 2016 report by Paul Bywaters’ et al, ‘The relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect: an evidence review’, provides a starting point. This was the first systematic review of the relationship between poverty and maltreatment. In that report, the authors say that there has been no research into the links between the socio-economic circumstances of individual families and the incidence of child abuse and neglect. Whilst accepting that ‘poverty is neither a necessary nor sufficient factor’ in abuse and neglect, the greater economic hardship, the greater likelihood of abuse and neglect. The authors felt that poverty interacted to increase or reduce the chances of child abuse with such factors as:
- ‘parenting capacity, for example, affected by mental and/or physical illness, learning disabilities, (lack of) prior education, shame and stigma;
- ‘family capacity for investment, for example, to buy care, respite or better environmental conditions;
- ‘negative adult behaviours, for example, domestic violence or substance use, perhaps provoked or exacerbated by family stress;
- ‘positive adult and child behaviours, promoting social support and resilience;
- ‘external neighbourhood factors: the social and physical environment. ‘
Last summer, a study published in Lancet Public Health (Bennett et al, 2022) looked at rates of child poverty and the number of children becoming looked-after. The author’s concluded that between 2015 and 2020:
‘a 1 percentage point increase in child poverty was associated with an additional five children entering care per 100,000 children… We estimate that, over the study period, 8.1% of the total number of children under the age of 16 entering care… were linked to rising child poverty, equivalent to 10,351… additional children’.
Last autumn’s statistical releases, about looked-after children and children in need, are quite inscrutable about the causes behind these regional differences. With the two studies by Paul Bywater and Davara Bennett in mind, in order to cross-examine the new data, I have looked to other publicly available statistics to see how the area where the child lives affect their future. My starting point was to look at the Index of Multiple Deprivation, a data set published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The English Indices of Deprivation 2019 (the most recent edition) use 39 separate indicators, organised across seven distinct domains of deprivation which can be combined, using appropriate weights, to calculate the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 (IMD 2019). It is an overall measure of multiple deprivations experienced by people living in an area. The IMD shows relative deprivation with the area ranked as 1 being the most deprived and those with a higher number being relatively less deprived. It is a measure of relative rather than absolute deprivation. It is therefore useful to compare the IMD ranking of the local authorities in the tables above to see whether there appears to be any correlation between these and outcomes for children. Organising the local authorities by their IMD gives us a table like this:
|
Local Authority
|
IMD Rank
|
Rate of Looked After Children per 10,000
|
Rate of Children in Need per 10,000
|
|
Kingston upon Hull
|
4
|
150
|
658.3
|
|
Bradford
|
12
|
103
|
419.2
|
|
Barnsley
|
30
|
70
|
320
|
|
Rotherham
|
35
|
99
|
380.5
|
|
Wakefield
|
42
|
88
|
339.8
|
|
Leeds
|
43
|
80
|
344.8
|
|
Sheffield
|
44
|
59
|
362.5
|
|
Calderdale
|
52
|
75
|
302.9
|
|
Kirklees
|
64
|
62
|
223.7
|
|
East Riding of Yorkshire
|
122
|
53
|
285.9
|
|
North Yorkshire
|
125
|
38
|
255.2
|
|
York
|
140
|
80
|
311.5
|
The trends are clearer to see when plotted on a graph:
In this, the horizontal axis shows each authority’s IMD ranking and the figures for looked-after children and children in need are shown on the vertical axis.
Life is seldom as simple as a straight-line mathematical formula and that, certainly, seems to apply to the relationship between deprivation and children in need. The data from Yorkshire tends to support the view of Paul Bywaters and his colleagues that poverty is a factor which can make children more exposed and vulnerable to other issues within the family. For children in less deprived areas, other factors may be more important. In ‘middling’ local authorities, those less deprived than such as Calderdale, the relationship with deprivation is less immediately clear. In an attempt to check this impression, one of the least deprived areas in England is Wokingham, ranked 151, and this area has 249.1 children in need per 10,000. At least at local authority level, the relationship between deprivation and children in need is less clear once a level of safety margin from poverty is achieved.
For children in the twenty or thirty most deprived areas of England, however, the impact of deprivation is stark, as the position of Kingston-upon-Hull and Bradford clearly illustrates. High levels of deprivation are, I would argue, clearly linked to high levels of children in need and looked-after children. Looking further afield for corroboration, Blackpool is the most deprived area in England and has 700.8 children in need per 10,000 children. Middlesbrough, ranked in 2019 as the fifth most deprived area, has 742.9 children in need for every 10,000, whilst neighbouring Hartlepool, ranked ninth for deprivation, had 689.8 children in need for every 10,000, on 31 March 2022. If we are looking at where resources should be focussed for the most impact, this does seem to give a clear signpost.
The same exercise can be carried out, replacing the Index of Multiple Deprivation with family incomes. If we look at the percentage of children in low-income families, available from the Government’s Local Authority Interactive Tool, rather than the IMD ranking, we see this:
|
Local Authority
|
% of children in low-income families
|
Rate of Looked After Children per 10,000
|
Rate of Children in Need per 10,000
|
|
Kingston upon Hull
|
33.4
|
150
|
658.3
|
|
Bradford
|
38
|
103
|
419.2
|
|
Barnsley
|
24.2
|
70
|
320
|
|
Rotherham
|
25.7
|
99
|
380.5
|
|
Wakefield
|
21.7
|
88
|
339.8
|
|
Leeds
|
24.6
|
80
|
344.8
|
|
Sheffield
|
26.4
|
59
|
362.5
|
|
Calderdale
|
24.2
|
75
|
302.9
|
|
Kirklees
|
28.2
|
62
|
223.7
|
|
East Riding of Yorkshire
|
16.7
|
53
|
285.9
|
|
North Yorkshire
|
13.7
|
38
|
255.2
|
|
York
|
12.9
|
80
|
311.5
|
Again, there is a clear relationship between children growing up in low-income families and a greater likelihood of them suffering abuse or neglect. Not all children will suffer in this way but more will suffer when there is greater financial hardship. I suppose that a useful metaphor is to think about children running across the road. Not all of them will be knocked down but the likelihood of an accident increases as the level of traffic increases.
A Warning?
My opening reference to the Oracle at Delphi reminds me that the job of prophetesses was to tell us about the future. With inflation, housing costs and energy costs pulling away from many families’ incomes can we foresee future risks for children and children’s services? What we are learning is that increasing economic stress is like sending more cars along the road where the children run across. Whilst many will still reach the opposite pavement, there will, inevitably, be more children suffering maltreatment and neglect. Whether local authorities will have the resources and ability to meet those needs is another matter altogether.
References
Bennett, D.L., Schlüter, D.K., Melis, G., Bywaters, P., Alexiou, A., Barr, B., Wickham, S., Taylor-Robinson, D. (2022) Lancet Public Health Vol 7, pp e496 – 503.
Bywaters, P., Bunting, L., Davidson, G., Hanratty, J., Mason, W., McCartan, C., Steils, N. (2016) The relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect: an evidence review. Joseph Rowntree Foundation
UK Department for Education. Characteristics of Children in Need: Reporting Year 2022. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need
UK Department for Education. Children looked after in England including adoptions Reporting Year 2022. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoptions
UK Department for Education. Local Authority Interactive Tool. Updated 16 December 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait. Consulted 14 January 2023.
Photo Credit: The Temple of Apollo at Delphi by Kim Bach (Flickr) who kindly made this available on a Creative Commons basis