Child protection investigations in Scotland 2015-2019: FOI release

Information requested

How many child protection investigations have there been in Scotland and in the first seven months of 2020, compared with years 2015 to 2019?

Response

The answer to your question is set out in the table below which shows the data available on the number of child protection investigations for each year, 2015 – 2019. Data from August 2019 onwards is not yet available.

Year	Number of investigations
2015	11,501
2016	12,134
2017	12,401
2018	11,984
2019 (Jan – Jul)	7,010

Notes

1. The data are derived from extracts which are provided from local authority social work departments, according to a published specification available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-exchange-of-data-child-protection/.

2. There are currently no publicly available statistics on child protection investigations derived from this data collection. Any future inclusion of statistics on child protection investigations within the routine publication of Children's Social Work statistics will require an assessment of data quality, which will determine whether and how the data are developed in the future.

3. Children’s Social Work data are collected annually from local authorities for the year 1st August to 31st July. The latest available statistics are for the 1st August 2018 – 31 July 2019 year and are published here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/republication-childrens-social-workstatistics-scotland-2018-19/.

4. The table presents figures for each year (January – December), and for January – July in 2019. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have data from August 2019 available as it has not been collected yet.

5. Children’s Social Work Statistics for 2019-20 are planned to be published in March 2021.

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