Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were referred to children’s services on multiple occasions before receiving support from those services in each of the last three years.

The Department for Education does not hold the information in the format requested.

The number of children that were referred to children’s services on multiple occasions before receiving support is not routinely produced.

The department publishes figures on the total number of referrals to children’s social services within one reporting year, number of referrals which were within 12 months of a previous referral and the number of children re-referred within 12 months.

These figures for the past 6 years are available in table A1 of the main tables in the ‘Characteristics of children in need: 2017 to 2018’ statistical release on gov.uk and here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need-2017-to-2018/.