Poor parental mental health has overtaken domestic violence as the most commonly reported factor in social worker assessments into whether a child is at risk of serious harm or neglect, according to new research.
Growing rates of mental illness – in both parents and children – were an increasingly important driver of child safeguarding interventions in England, the latest comprehensive survey of children’s social care pressures found.
Housing insecurity and homelessness, rising poverty, gang violence and the “significantly underestimated” lasting effects of the pandemic were also major factors in child protection work, the research found.
Andy Smith, the president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), which published the survey, said public service cuts and the “stark impact of poverty” were leading to worse outcomes for children, especially in poorer areas.
“The essential foundations that children need to thrive are now absent for a large proportion of children, which results in them arriving at our door in need of help and protection,” he said. “This isn’t good for children, families or for communities.”
The rising cost of child protection, and high numbers of looked after children in care, is behind the financial problems facing many local authorities, and is now the biggest single area of overspending by top-tier English councils.
The latest Safeguarding Pressures research, which has been published biennially by the ADCS for the past 17 years, identified an 83% rise in child protection plans and a 28% increase in children in care since 2007.
Safeguarding assessments in which parental mental illness was the main presenting need had risen 10% over the past two years, it found. Poverty and lack of access to NHS mental health services had led some parents to employ “maladaptive and dangerous strategies” to manage their needs, one council respondent said.
These included alcohol abuse and the consumption of class A drugs such as cocaine and opiates, the use of which had risen during the pandemic and had shown little sign of returning to pre-Covid levels, according to the research.
“Survey respondents … described increased numbers of infants at risk of, or having experienced, serious harm – in particular, neglect and physical injury – related to parental substance misuse and mental health needs,” it said.
More than three-quarters of respondents reported increasing safeguarding demand linked to children’s mental heath and emotional wellbeing needs. In many cases, social services referrals followed failure to access NHS children and adolescent mental health services.
One unnamed local authority in the north of England reported a 40% increase in the number of young people presenting at hospital A&E departments after suicide attempts between 2021 and 2024. They were mainly girls aged 10-15, half of whom had experienced sexual violence prior to their suicide attempt.
Record numbers of homeless families in insecure temporary accommodation were also putting major pressure on child protection services, the survey found. More than 150,000 children were in temporary housing England in 2024, many of them in poor quality private-rented housing in areas of high deprivation and crime.
Local authorities in the north of England reported an influx in “out of area” placements of homeless families into low housing cost neighbourhoods, the vast majority from London. In some cases, receiving authorities were not notified of pre-existing safeguarding concerns about incoming families.
Child criminal exploitation, knife crime, and other “harms outside the home” affecting young people had increased over the past two years. One anonymous East Midlands authority reported there was “still the same number of young people carrying knives, but there seems to be more willingness to use them.”
Growing rates of child and family poverty – increasingly in families where one or more parents were at work – were a constant backdrop to rising demand for child protection, the report found. Analysis by one Yorkshire council found safeguarding referrals were five times higher in the poorest areas compared to the most affluent.
The ADCS survey was based on data returns by 124 English top-tier councils (80%), a survey and interviews with 34 local authority children’s services directors.
Smith said he was encouraged to see the government promising to invest in children’s services. He added: “Evidence presented here shows the stark impact of poverty, the housing crisis and failing health services on children’s lives and on their childhoods is undeniable.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “We are taking further action across government through our Plan for Change to ensure children in our country have the best life chances, including by delivering an ambitious strategy to increase household income, bring down essential costs, and tackle the challenges felt by those living in poverty.
“On top of this, we will recruit 8,500 additional mental health workers across child and adult services and we are tackling the housing crisis, delivering the biggest boost in social and affordable housing in a generation.”
