Parental Mental Health Tops Child Protection Referrals in England

New research reveals that poor parental mental health has surpassed domestic violence as the most frequently cited factor in social worker evaluations determining whether a child is at risk of significant harm or neglect. The latest comprehensive survey on children’s social care pressures in England indicates that rising mental health issues among both parents and children are increasingly driving child safeguarding interventions.

The study also highlights other major contributors to child protection concerns, including housing insecurity, homelessness, increasing poverty, gang violence, and the long-lasting, often underestimated, effects of the pandemic. Andy Smith, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), which conducted the survey, emphasized that public service cuts and the severe impact of poverty are leading to poorer outcomes for children, particularly in disadvantaged 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.

Since 2007, there has been a 28% increase in children in care and an 83% increase in child protection plans, according to the most recent Safeguarding Pressures research, which has been published by the ADCS every two years for the past 17 years.

It discovered that over the previous two years, the number of safeguarding evaluations where parental mental illness was the primary presenting need had increased by 10%. According to one council response, some parents have turned to "maladaptive and dangerous strategies" to handle their children's demands as a result of poverty and limited access to NHS mental health care.

According to the study, these included alcohol misuse and the use of class A substances like cocaine and opiates, whose usage had increased during the pandemic and had not appeared to be going back to its pre-Covid levels.

“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.”