Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what information his Department holds on whether there is a causal link between a mother suffering from post-natal depression and the number of children aged up to three years old taken into care.

Neither the Department of Health nor the Department for Education holds the information requested.

The latest statistics on looked-after children at both national and local authority levels for the financial year 2013 to 2014 can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption--2

Table A1 (National Tables) gives a breakdown of the primary reasons for children becoming looked after.