Reporting year 2021

Children accommodated in secure children's homes

Data guidance

Published 27 May 2021

Description

This document describes the data included in the 'Children accommodated in secure children's homes: 31 March 2021' National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least three stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab).

The methodology document for this subject should be referenced alongside this release. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality and how the data is produced.

Coverage

This release contains statistics on children accommodated in secure children's homes in England and Wales, including:

• numbers of approved and available places
• availability and occupancy rates
• children accommodated by gender, age, ethnicity and length of stay.

Information is taken from the DfE SA1 data return collected from secure children's homes. 

Figures relate to the position at 31 March except for 2020 when the reference date was changed to 29 February to reflect the position in secure children's homes before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the national lockdown.

File formats and conventions

The following symbols have been used in this release:

• ‘c’ figure suppressed to protect confidentiality. There may be some secondary suppression.
• ‘z’ for not applicable

For percentages:

• where the numerator or denominator is small then the figure is replaced by ‘c’
• they may not sum to 100% due to rounding

Please note: Users are advised to be cautious if pivoting the csv tables in Excel – suppressed and not applicable cells may be represented as ‘0’ (zero).

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

SCH Characteristics 2021

• Filename: sa2021_characteristics.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2010 to 2021
• Content:

  Numbers of children accommodated in secure children's homes by gender, age of child, length of stay, placement type, ethnicity, for England and Wales, 2010 to 2021

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
characteristics	Characteristics
children_accommodated	Number of children accommodated
percentage_children_accommodated	Percentage of children accommodated

Footnotes

1. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number and categories may not sum to 100% due to rounding.
2. 'c' denotes figures suppressed to preserve confidentiality.

SCH Individual homes 2021

• Filename: sa2021_individual_home.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2010 to 2021
• Content:

  Number of places approved and available for use, number of children accommodated and occupancy rate in individual secure children's homes, 2010 to 2021

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
children_accommodated	Number of children accommodated
occupancy_rate	Percentage of approved places occupied (occupancy rate)
places_approved	Number of places approved
places_available	Number of places available
secure_home	Secure children's home name

SCH National 2021

• Filename: sa2021_national.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2010 to 2021
• Content:

  Numbers of secure children’s homes, places approved and available for use, children accommodated, places contracted to the MoJ and as percentage of approved places, availability and occupancy rates, number of YCS placements, for England, England and Wales, 2010 to 2021

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
availability_rate	Percentage of approved places available (availability rate)
children_accommodated	Number of children accommodated
children_placed_YCS	Number of children placed by YCS
MoJ_places	Number of places contracted to the MoJ
number_of_secure_homes	Number of secure children's homes
occupancy_rate	Percentage of approved places occupied (occupancy rate)
perc_approved_MoJ	Percentage of approved places contracted to the MoJ
places_approved	Number of places approved
places_available	Number of places available

Footnotes

1. 'c' denotes figures suppressed to preserve confidentiality.