Please could you tell me how many allegations made by children against anybody working with children (not just children) have led in the past three years to:
1.Social service referrals, in cases deemed unsubstantiated, unfounded or malicious
2. Referrals to police to consider if action might be appropriate.
Please could any figures you hold for each of the last three years be broken down on a year by year basis (preferably calendar year)? If possible please could you provide details of each case as to the general setting in which the original allegation was made (I.e education/social care/youth club etc).
Please see our response in the table below. To identify the type of setting in each case would mean a manual review of each referral, a total of over 2000. Even if each one took only five minutes the total time needed would be in excess of the 18 hours specified under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 12 – Cost of Compliance, therefore this information is exempt.
Use of the symbol * indicates that we hold the information but as disclosure may identify individuals we consider it exempt under the Freedom of information Act 2000 Section 40(2) Personal Data.
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | |
| Total referrals | 744 | 696 | 359 |
| Setting | 319 | 369 | 359 |
| Unsubstantiated | 54 | 46 | 15 |
| Substantiated | 22 | 8 | * |
| Unfounded | 24 | 11 | None |
| Malicious | * | * | None |
| False | None | None | None |
| Police action required | * | * | 11 |
| No further action – advice and guidance only | 214 | 299 | 325 |