Across English speaking countries there has been a change from systems of child welfare and family support to systems focussing on child protection investigation and search for harm.
There have been rapid increases in the number of child protection investigations across much of the English speaking post industrial countries:
- USA: 2011-15 increases of 16.2% referrals; 9.5% investigations; and 4.5% substantiations
- Australia: 2011-12 to 2015-16 increases of 40.7% notifications; 41.6% investigations; and 26.0% substantiations
- England: 2008-16 increases of 15.4% referrals; 124.3% investigations; 86.2% on child protection plans
- Canada: 1998 – 2008 increases of 74% in investigations
- New Zealand: has a different recent trend – notifications requiring further action and substantiated abuse and neglect rose between 2007 and 2013 (by 41%) but fell back to close to 2007 levels by 2016. However even at this lower level 5.3% of all children had a notification in 2016-17
- Scotland does not publish the number of investigations but the number of child protection registrations rose by 35% between 2007 and 2016
This leads to huge rates of involvement in child protection
- USA: 37.4% of all children investigated before age of 18 & 53.0% African Americans (Kim et al 2017)
- South Australia: 1 in 4 reported to child protection by age 16 and “between 57 and 76 per cent” of Aboriginals Delfabbro et al. (2010)
- New Zealand: 1in 4 reported to child protection before age 17, 9.7% substantiated: 3.1% in care
- England: for all children born 2011-12 before age of 5: 1 in 5 referred; 1 in 16 investigated for child protection; 3.8% Child protection plan, that’s a 17% higher chance of being investigated than for children born just 2 years earlier
Research into the rate of investigations in Scotland