Annual statistics for England on serious incidents that involve death or serious harm to a child due to abuse or neglect, and any death of a looked-after child.
This page provides a range of routes to access data from within this statistical release to suit different users.
This includes all data sets, guidance files and any supporting files
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.
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).
Total number of notifications of each nature for the financial years 2018-19 to 2021-22, England.
Children in Need, Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) and population data has been added to provide further contextual information to the data on serious incident notifications.
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
Total number of serious incident notifications for each financial year.
National
Number of serious incident notifications for each financial year. The data is broken down by the following: - ethnicity by gender; - ethnicity by age group; - gender by age group.
Local authority, National, Regional
Number of serious incident notifications for the financial year, by local authority and region. PLEASE NOTE: Neither high nor low numbers of serious incident notifications alone should be interpreted as a performance measure of the local authority or its workforce. When interpreting data on serious incident notifications, local authority contextual information is an important consideration. Local authorities with larger populations tend to be more likely to report more serious incident notifications than those with smaller populations. Those with higher levels of deprivation also tend to be more likely to report higher rates of serious incident notifications than those with lower levels of deprivation. In addition, whilst reporting has improved in recent years, the Department cannot be certain that all incidents that meet the definition for a serious incident notification are notified. Data relating to population size, the number of Children in Need and deprivation have been included to provide further contextual information to the data on serious incident notifications.
National
Number of serious incident notifications, total and by nature of notification.
National
Number and percentage of serious incident notifications for each financial year. The data is broken down by the following: - age group; - gender; - ethnicity; - disability; - notification nature; - placement type; - whether the child is known to any agencies or has a Child Protection Plan (CPP); - financial year quarter.
Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.
Description
This guidance describes the data included in the Serious Incident Notifications experimental statistics release. The release methodology, available on the release web page should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data source, coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.
Coverage
Notifiable serious incidents are those that involve death or serious harm to a child where abuse or neglect is known or suspected, and the deaths of looked after children, whether or not abuse or neglect is known or suspected.
This release provides information on serious incident notifications, including by:
Rounding and Suppression
Rounding and suppression is applied to the data. The Code of Practice for Statistics requires that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that all published or disseminated statistics protect confidentiality. The publication follows the DfE policy statement on confidentiality.
Regional numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. National and Local authority numbers are unrounded.
Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
As a result of rounding components may not sum to totals and percentages may not sum to 100.
Where any number is shown as zero, the original figure submitted was zero.
Symbols
The following symbols have been used:
‘c’ to protect confidentiality - secondary suppression may also be applied to figures to protect confidentiality
‘:’ for not available
Data files
All data files associated with this release are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.
If you have a specific enquiry about Serious incident notifications statistics and data:
If you have a media enquiry:
Telephone: 020 7783 8300
If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:
Phone: 0370 000 2288
Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)
Don't include personal or financial information like your National Insurance number or credit card details.