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Last year, Blue Cabin’s local authority specialist, Joanne Stoddart, shared some key themes from her research into UK data, and how it can be used by local authorities and other organisations.
Now, Joanne is back with an updated look at the latest UK data, as of February 2025.
It is no surprise to social care professionals that the number of children in care in the UK has continued to rise, partly driven by the growing number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
In contrast, the number of children adopted in England continues to decline. Most children in care live in foster placements, including kinship or connected care arrangements.
It may come as a surprise to many social care professionals that in the overall pupil population, 17.1% of pupils are identified with special education needs, whilst conversely, 58.1% of children who had been in care continuously for 12 months at 31 March 2023 for whom data were available had special education needs.
This figure consists of 30.8% with an Education, Health and Care Plan and 27.3% with special education need support.
The most common type of need for all children in care as at 31 March 2023 was ‘social, emotional and mental health’.
For social care practitioners in the North East of England, you will be interested to note that our region continues to have the highest child in care rate per 10,000 of children under 18 years in England at 114.00, with the second highest region having 94.0 in the North West. The lowest continues to be Outer London at 45.00, and for comparison the England average is 70.00.
In addition, when considering the North East as a region, there continues to be an evident clear difference between the local authorities in the north of the region in comparison with the south of the region with the south having a higher rate of children in care with the exception of Gateshead.
Finally, it is relevant to note that the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation UK Poverty report 2025 shows that the child poverty rate in the North East is now 21%, which is just below the UK average of 22%. However, there was a note of caution regarding this statistic advised in the report. The West Midlands now reports to have the highest rate of child poverty at 27%. Although the child poverty rate in the North East region appears to have significantly reduced, the highest child poverty rate within the North East is Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (43%), South Shields (36%), Newcastle Central and West (35%) and Redcar (34%). All of these rates are significantly higher than the West Midlands region as a whole.
As a local authority practitioner I always try to see the bigger picture, and undertaking research provides a very useful overview of the situation across the UK, England and within the North East region.
In understanding the bigger picture, it enables local authorities to understand how they are performing in comparison to others, learn from others and also share their knowledge as appropriate.
In understanding the data and themes emerging, it supports future sufficiency planning. For example, understanding the trends for children in care enables the specific targeting of foster carers for older children, UASC, and foster carers with specific skills and abilities to support the significant number of children with a special education need.
It also supports and shapes the commissioning strategy to ensure there are appropriately resourced and skilled providers available to meet the needs of our children in care.
The vast majority of social care professionals will remain very aware of the overall picture of the child in care population across the UK. However, as a local authority practitioner myself, I always find undertaking research into this area invaluable as it is too easy as a busy social care professional to simply focus on what is happening in our own world. Although it takes energy to look up and see the bigger picture, this exercise remains invaluable as it enables a refocus and reminds us, as practitioners, to focus on what is important: the children and families that we help, support and safeguard.
Understanding the bigger picture enables practitioners to analyse how their local authority is performing, and undertake deep dives if data or findings differ greatly to other areas.
Understanding differences leads to conversations to explore how we can all work to further improve the lives of the children and families we work with.
Read Joanne’s previous blog, from July 2024, here.
In this very special podcast episode, we talk with young film makers from Tees Valley who have made a short film called All About Adoption. Hear from some of the film makers about what they wanted friends, teachers and social workers to know about adoption.
Find out more and listen to the episode>>
And here, you can watch a short film made by young people in Redcar and Cleveland, sharing their experiences of being in care.
Watch the film by The Studio of the Fostered Heroes>>
