Research and analysis

Vulnerability in infancy

Descriptive analysis of vulnerability in infancy using data from the Community Services Dataset (CSDS).

Applies to England

Documents

Vulnerability in infancy

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Details

Analysis which summarises the numbers and proportion of neonates, post neonates and infants recorded in the CSDS (2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021) as vulnerable.

It describes and quantifies the reasons given for hospital and community services recording children as vulnerable in a child’s health record. Vulnerable children are at greater risk of experiencing physical or emotional harm or experiencing poor outcomes because of one or more factors in their lives. The analysis looks at:

  • clinical vulnerability
  • statutory vulnerability
  • social and family vulnerability
  • combinations and multiple vulnerability

It includes analysis of inequalities based on sex, ethnicity and deprivation.

Information about the numbers of infants with safeguarding vulnerability factors recorded is also analysed.

There are known data quality issues with the CSDS which mean that the analysis should be considered experimental.

Updates to this page

Published 25 August 2022

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