Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children in (a) Lewisham Deptford constituency, (b) Lewisham borough and (c) England were referred to children's social services on more than one occasion in each of the last five years.

The Department for Education does not hold the information in the requested format.

Figures on children in need are published at a local authority level, not a constituency level. Therefore, the figures for Lewisham Deptford constituency are not available.

The number of children referred to social services on one or more occasions within the same reporting year is not a figure that is routinely produced. Similarly, the number of children referred to social services at least once within consecutive reporting years is also not routinely produced.

The department publishes figures on the number of referrals which were within 12 months of a previous referral. This is a measure of the number of re-referrals rather than the number of children re-referred. Last year, the number of children to which these referrals applied was published for the first time. However, this information is not available for earlier years. These figures have been provided below.

Table 1: Number of referrals to children's social services that were within 12 months of a previous referral from 2012-13 to 2016-17, and number of children who had a referral within 12 months of a previous referral in 2016-17

The total number of referrals to children’s social services within one reporting year is also reported in table C1 of main tables in the ‘children in need and child protection’ statistical collection on GOV.UK. It can be accessed at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-children-in-need.

These figures do not include the number of children who are referred in consecutive years however, as this measure is not routinely produced.