Child Protection Investigations in Scotland: A 33 Per Cent Increase in Two Years

Abstract

The Scottish government plans a more preventive and partnership‐oriented approach to child protection. However, it has not recently published statistics on the number of child protection investigations. This paper analyses data from a request for information from government. It shows a rate of 153 investigations per 10 000 children aged 0–17 in 2017/18. There were wide variations in rates of investigations across Scottish local authorities. Almost three‐quarters of investigations in 2017/18 did not lead to the child being placed on the child protection register. A small association between investigation rates and local authority deprivation suggests that factors other than deprivation at the local authority level are at play in decisions to investigate child protection. There has been an increase of investigations by one‐third in the last two years with no change in the numbers starting a child protection plan. These trends raise the possibility that concerns about the preventive approach net‐widening and leading to more rather than less children drawn into the formal child protection system may have some basis. The limited nature of published statistical data in Scotland means that policies and activities, which are carried out with large amounts of public funding, receive limited public scrutiny. Key Practitioner Messages One investigation was conducted for every 65 children in Scotland in 2017/18. One child in 23 was investigated before the age of four. Rates of investigation vary widely between local authorities. One in four investigations are likely to lead to a child protection registration. There was a 33 per cent increase in investigations in the most recent two years with no change in child protection registrations. Investigations harm families and lessen the chances of engaging them with support.

Measuring the ratio of true‐positive to false‐positive judgements made by child and family social workers in England: A case vignette study

“…How might this apply to the more politically and socially charged questions of child protection investigations and children in care? Based on recent trends of increasing numbers of investigations, relatively static numbers of child protection plans (Bilson, 2022; Bilson & Martin, 2017) and more children in care (Elliott, 2020), it would seem as if the decision threshold for social work intervention has been moving lower. This might be a good thing, with more at‐risk children being protected and more families given the support they need.…”

“…How might these concepts be applied to social work? One could be forgiven for believing there has been a significant increase in false positive errors over recent years in England, as shown by the number of families now subject to child protection investigations even while the number of child protection plans has remained relatively stable (Bilson, 2022; Bilson & Martin, 2017). Yet we must also recognize the extreme injustice of false negative errors, suffered by children whose abuse goes unrecognized (Reder & Duncan, 2013).…”

Can Child Protection Social Workers Forecast Future Actions, Events and Outcomes? a Case Study of Long-term Work with Five Families.

“…<Insert Figure 2 about here> Third, there is a growing body of literature about the socioeconomic and demographic inequalities of the UK social work system (Bywaters et al, 2016;Bywaters et al, 2015, Webb & Bywaters, 2018Webb et al, 2021), and about the growth in the proportion of child protection investigations, compared to numbers of referrals and assessments (Bilson, 2021;Bilson & Martin, 2017;Devine & Parker, 2015). Children living in the most deprived circumstances are more likely to experience social work involvement and intervention, especially those living in poor families within more affluent areas (Bywaters et al, 2015).…”

Data resource profile: the Edinburgh Child Protection Dataset - a new linked administrative data source of children referred to Child Protection paediatric services in Edinburgh, Scotland

“…Additionally, these nationally available data are limited, for example type of abuse and referrer are not available in these Scottish Looked After data. A recent freedom of information request additionally captured data on numbers of children in England investigated by social work in relation to child protection concerns, however these data are not available for research interrogation [ 12 ]. By contrast, the current paper describes a newly archived historic clinical dataset, The Edinburgh Child Protection Dataset (ECPD), as a new data resource for research.…”