Characteristics of children in need: 2010 to 2011
Children referred to and assessed by children's social services for the financial year ending March 2011.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
Reference Id: OSR26/2011
Publication type: Statistical Release
Publication data: Local authority data
Local authority data: LA data
Region: England
Release date: 30 November 2011
Coverage status: Final
Publication status: Published
This publication contains final figures on the numbers of children referred to and assessed by children’s social services. It includes information on the characteristics of children in need and information on children who were the subject of a child protection plan for the year ending March 2011.
This updates provisional information published in OSR18/2011 and provides breakdowns of figures by new characteristics data for age, gender, ethnicity, disability, primary need, category of abuse, and reason for closure.
Key points
The key points from this release are:
Children in need
- There were 382,400 children in need at 31 March 2011, which was a rate of 346.2 per 10,000 children.
- There were a total of 735,500 episodes of need throughout the year.
- There were 393,000 episodes of need starting between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2011 and 359,000 episodes of need that came to an end.
Referrals and assessments
- There were 615,000 referrals to children’s social care services in the year ending 31 March 2011.
- There were 439,800 initial assessments completed in the year ending 31 March 2011, 281,400 (64.0%) of which were completed within 7 working days and 339,700 (77.2%) of which were completed within 10 working days.
- The number of initial assessments completed in the year as a percentage of all referrals in the year was 71.5%.
- There were 185,400 core assessments completed in the year ending 31 March 2011, 139,100 (75.0%) of which were completed within 35 working days.
- The number of children subject to a section 47 enquiry which started in the financial year 2010 to 2011 was 111,700. Of these, 53,000 (47.5%) were subject to an initial stage child protection conference. 36,700 (69.2%) initial child protection conferences were held within 15 working days of the start of the section 47 enquiry.
Children who were the subject of a child protection plan
- At 31 March 2011, there were 42,700 children who were the subject of a child protection plan.
- In the year ending 31 March 2011, 49,000 children became the subject of a child protection plan. Of these 6,500 (13.3%) became the subject of a plan for the second or subsequent time.
- 45,500 child protection plans came to an end in the year. 2,700 (6.0%) of these children had been the subject of a plan for 2 years or more.
As part of a government drive for data transparency in official publications we will be including supporting data for this publication as an additional table. The underlying data for this publication will be made available by Friday 2 December 2011.
All 26 tables from the publication are available from this page.
Graham Knox
01325 735413