Children in Need in England 2024

Product Description

This annual release contains statistics on children in need in England and referrals to and assessments completed by children's social care services. Each reporting year covers the year ending 31 March.

Children in need are a legally defined group of children (under the Children Act 1989), assessed as needing help and protection as a result of risks to their development or health. This group includes: those on child in need plans, those on child protection plans, children looked after by local authorities, care leavers and disabled children. Children in need also include young people aged 18 or over who continue to receive care, accommodation or support from children's services, and unborn children.

Comparisons within this release have been made between 2024 and a year earlier, and 2024 and the start of the series (2013 for most, but not all, measures). In addition, to assess any potential longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on children's social care services, comparisons have also been made between the latest year and 2020, which (mostly) pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

All 153 local authorities provided a return for the 2024 collection. However, due to a transition to a new case management and reporting system there were significant data quality issues affecting Hampshire's return. As a result, the figures for this local authority have been replaced with ‘u’ to indicate low reliability in the underlying datasets and 2023 figures for Hampshire have been included in the 2024 totals for England and the South East region.