Can you please supply the following information regarding referrals etc. to children’s social care or its predecessor for two cohorts of children? Children born in the year from 1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012, before their fifth birthday and separately children born in the year from 1st April 2006 to 31st March 2007 also before their fifth birthday:
1. How many children had ever been referred
2. How many referrals were made on these children
3. How many children had started an episode as a child in need
4. How many children had ever been subject of a section 47 enquiry
5. How many children had ever been subject of a child protection plan (or placed on a child protection register)
6. For those children placed on a child protection plan/register the category of abuse allocated at the start of the first plan/registration
7. How many children had ever been looked after
8. How many looked after children had left care to be adopted
9. What was the legal status of looked after children born 1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012 at 31st March 2017 and for children born 1st April 2006 to 31st March 2007 at 31st March 2012
We do hold this information, however, in order to disclose it in response to this request we would need to review the care records of all children who entered/left our child protection system over the past 11 years – first to identify if they met the 2 cohorts mentioned and then we would need to manually check each child’s pathway and outcome to ascertain the level of detail being requested.
In 2016 – 2017 alone there were 7000+ children identified as being potentially Children in Need and each one of those records would need to be examined at approximately 10 mins per record. Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information 2000 – Cost of compliance – we are not obliged to spend more than 8 hours extracting, locating or retrieving information in response to a Freedom of Information request, therefore this information is exempt.
However, in order to provide advice and assistance, information about referrals, episode as a child in need, section 47’s, child protection, category of abuse, looked after children, adopted and legal status can be found on the DfE published Children in Need and Children Looked After data sets available at the links below. Unfortunately, these data do not separate out the two identified cohorts.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-children-in-need
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-looked-after-children