Analysis of Children Looked After (CLA) in England by location of their placement and distance from home (out of area placements), including trends over time.
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Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by users and can be adapted to switch between different categories.
Data sets: download or create tables
Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.
Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.
Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.
Alternatively use our data catalogue to search and filter for specific data sets from this release or our entire library, providing full data summaries, data previews and access to API data sets.
Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by some users (such as local councils, regional government or government policy teams) and can be adapted to switch between different categories (such as different geographies, time periods or characteristics where available).
National table showing placement information for children looked after on 31 March.
National table showing information on distance from home for children looked after on 31 March.
National table showing average distance for children looked after on 31 March.
Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.
National
Children looked after in England on 31 March each year, placed inside or outside the LA boundary.
National
Children looked after in England on 31 March each year who are placed less than 20 miles, over 20 miles from their home address or where the distance was not known or recorded.
National
Children looked after in England on 31 March each year, by placement distance groupings.
National
Children looked after in England on 31 March each year, by placement distance locality (inside or outside the LA boundary, and distance from home address).
National
The average (median) distance from home for all children looked after, children looked after inside the LA boundary and children looked after outside the LA boundary.
National
The number of children looked after who are placed over 20 miles from home by the number of placement moves during the year.
National
The average distances of placement moves during the year for all children looked after at 31 March.
National
Placement type for children looked after placed inside or outside the LA boundary on 31 March each year.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year. by placement type and whether they're located inside or outside the LA boundary.
National
The median distance of each placement type for children looked after in England on 31 March each year.
National
Children looked after in England on 31 March each year, by distance locality and placement type.
National
Children looked after by foster provider and type in England on 31 March each year, by placement distance.
National
The median distance of each fostering provider and type for children looked after in England on 31 March each year.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year, by distance locality and gender.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year, by distance locality and age.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year, by distance locality and ethnicity.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year, by distance locality and SDQ score.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year, by distance locality and SEN provision.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and their placement locality.
National
Children looked after on 31 March 2024 who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, by placement type and distance locality.
National
Children looked after on 31 March each year who were placed a not known or not recorded distance from home, broken down by their unaccompanied asylum-seeking children status.
Local authority, National, Regional
Children looked after on 31 March 2024 placed outside the local authority boundary and over 20 miles from home, by the responsible local authority.
Local authority
Children looked after on 31 March 2024 by local authority, broken down by whether they remain inside or outside the local authority boundary. The local authority is then categorised as an in-placer or out-placer.
National
Children looked after on 31 March 2024 placed outside their own local authority, outside neighbouring local authorities and over 20 miles from home, by placement type, including average distance placed.
Regional
The placement region for children looked after who are placed in foster care with other foster carers and outside of the neighbouring LAs, by the region of their home address.
Regional
Children looked after who are placed in foster care with other foster carers and outside of the neighbouring LAs, by the destination of their placement.
Regional
The placement region for children looked after who are placed in children's homes and outside of the neighbouring LAs, by the region of their home address.
Regional
Children looked after who are placed in children's homes and outside of the neighbouring LAs, by the destination of their placement.
National
The reason for a new episode of care for children looked after who entered care during 2015-16 (up until 2023-24), who had at least one placement outside the LA boundary in their period of care.
National
For children looked after who entered care during 2015-16 (up until 2023-24), the time between entering care and moving into their first outside the LA boundary placement.
National
For children looked after who entered care during 2015-16 (up until 2023-24), the day of the week they moved into their first outside the local boundary placement.
National
Placement type for children looked after by age, gender and ethnicity demographics at 31 March 2024.
National
Placement type for children looked after at 31 March 2024 by SEN provision.
Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.
A map of England showing whether each LA is an in-placer or an out-placer defined by the net movement of CLA placed inside or outside the LA boundary in 2024.
Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.
This document describes the data included in the ‘Children looked after: A focus on placement location' release's underlying data files. This is an ad hoc statistical release and uses the annual published data from the Children looked after data collection (opens in new tab). A guide (opens in new tab) for the 2024 data collection provides further information on the data collected.
The methodology (opens in new tab) document for this subject should be referenced alongside this release. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality and how the analysis is produced.
This analysis is based upon information collected in the SSDA903 (CLA) data collection, it is a child level dataset collected from local authorities in England annually. For the Special educational needs (SEN) status, the SEN data is taken from both the school census and alternative provision census.
Information on the coverage of the SSDA903 collection can be found in the data guidance for the ‘Children looked after in England’ publication.
Information on the SEN data can be found in the data guidance for the ‘Outcomes for children in need’ publication.
The data presented in this publication is derived by linking the cohort of children from the SSDA903 collection with outcomes data using child-level identifiers, information includes:
It includes annual data for children looked after from 2015 - 2024 at 31 March.
Numbers and percentage exclude children looked after under an agreed series of short term placements.
Users of the data should consider the following:
National and regional figures have been rounded to the nearest 10. Local authority figures are unrounded.
Where any number is shown as zero, the original figure submitted was zero.
The following symbols have been used in the releases (to align with GSS standards):
For percentages:
For averages:
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