NEWS - Updated report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland

This latest report includes all children in care at any time between 2008 and 2021, extending the data analysis to include the first year of the pandemic. This report focuses on children who became 'looked after' as infants (under 1 year) and as babies (in their first week of life). We compare our findings with equivalent data from England.

Our main findings include:

• The difference we found in our previous report where Scotland had higher rates of infants starting care than England has disappeared in the most recent data. In both countries now, around one child in every 107 enters care before their first birthday.

• In Scotland many infants, and especially many newborns, first enter care with the voluntary agreement of their parents and this proportion has not changed in recent years. Many of these voluntary agreements are changed into legal arrangements by the children’s hearings or by the courts in the following weeks. In England the proportion of infants starting care by voluntary agreement is lower and has been decreasing sharply in recent years due to legal rulings that dispute the legality of such agreements.

• There are large differences by Local Authority in the proportion of infants entering care, some but not all of which can be explained by the level of poverty in the local authority.

• In Scotland, adoption for children by age 7 for children entering care under one week are just under 50% and 23 % of those entering care from one week to one year. Few children entering care as infants are adopted at older ages.

• Infants entering care can follow many different paths and we have identified eight possible groups. The largest group (23% of all infants in care) are those who are only ever in the care of foster parents. They have relatively short care histories lasting only to their second or third birthdays for most children. Some other groups, especially those with complex patterns of care, have a high proportion of children (up to one third) who remain in care, or move in and out of care, throughout their childhood.

Co-authors of the report, Gillian Raab and Janice McGhee, both from the University of Edinburgh, explain:

Our inaugural report in 2020 provided a better understanding of patterns of care in the first year of life in Scotland. This updated report illuminates the complex experiences and outcomes for infants who become looked after in the first year of life. The small decline in the rate of newborns becoming looked after is to be welcomed but important questions remain: not least better understanding of variation in local authority rates of infants becoming looked after; and across-the-board availability of early help and support to parents.

Alastair McAlpine, Scottish Government Chief Statistician (interim) and ADR Scotland Co-Director states:

This updated report contributes to our understanding of infants in care and can continue to enrich policies that supports them. It is a testament to the collaborative work between the Scottish Government and academic research through the ADR Scotland programme, making administrative data securely available for academic research for the benefit of the public. At the same time the work carried out by the team opens the door for other projects looking at outcomes for 'looked after' children in Scotland. We have created a dataset, with care histories, which is available for further research into this vital area.

Read and download the full report here.

For users of the dataset, please see the Data Explained document which provides feedback on the data quality and learnings from using the Scottish Government’s 'Looked After' Children Longitudinal Dataset for research.