Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children referred for an initial assessment from social services were suspected to be in danger from (a) abuse and (b) neglect in each of the last five years; how many children (i) received a core assessment from social services and (ii) had further contact with social services as a result of their core assessment in each of those years; how many children were (A) referred for an initial assessment from social services and (b) received an initial assessment from social services in each of those years; and what proportion of core assessments for children referred to children's social care were completed within the target timescale of 35 working days from the day of the initial assessment in each of those years.

Initial and core assessments ceased to be working practice in 2013-14 and were replaced by continuous assessments. During 2014 however, some local councils had already moved to continuous assessments, whereas some were still operating under the core/initial assessments model.

The information on children in need is not currently held in the format requested for the previous five years, and was previously published on an “episode level” rather than a child level meaning that children could be counted more than once. This year measures were published for both the number of children and the number of episodes. The figures are publically available on GOV.UK at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-children-in-need.

The published figures, in the attached table 1, contain the number of assessments for an episode of need in which (a) abuse or (b) neglect was identified as a factor, but the data on assessment factors only go back to 2013-14. Due to being the first year of collecting this item, data quality was poor and therefore was omitted from the 2013-14 publication.

The closest figures to the number of children (i) receiving a core assessment from social services is the number of core or continuous assessments. The data on children (ii) having further contact with social services as a result of their core assessment is not held in the format requested by the Department for Education.

The most relevant figures to the number of children (A) referred for an initial assessment from social services, and (B) received an initial assessment from social services in each of those years is the number of referrals made, and the number of initial or continuous assessments made in each of those years. The relevant data from the publications is summarised in the attached table 2.

The Department for Education does not hold the data on core assessments completed within the target timescales of 35 working days in the format requested.