Updated Children's Social Work Statistics Scotland, 2018-2019
The Scottish Government has today (1 September 2020) published an update to the official Children's Social Work Statistics for 2018-2019 published on 31 March 2020.
This data includes data on children and young people who were formally looked after, were placed under child protection measures, or were in secure care at some point between 1 August 2018 and 31 July 2019.
The information is collected from local authorities and secure units, and at the time of publishing in March Glasgow City Council had not provided data for the period of 1 August 2017 to 31 July 2018, so national figures for 2017-18 were estimated based on the previous year and data from other local authorities. Glasgow City Council’s data has now been included in the time series analysis and Glasgow City’s Looked After Children data for 2018-19 was revised. It is normal practice for local authorities to revise their data for the previous year during the child protection data collection process, and so this is also reflected in the updated statistics.
The figures for the number of children looked after in Scotland have been revised down from 14,738 in 2017-18 to 14,554 in 2017-18, and from 14,015 in 2018-19 to 14,262 in 2018-19.
In March the data reported 3% fewer children (2,599) on the child protection register for 2018-19. A revised figure of 2,530 children on the register in 2017-18 indicates that there were 69 more children, a 3% increase on the previous year.