Comparative child welfare administrative data from each of the four jurisdictions of the UK (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales) was analysed over a tenyear period to examine rates and patterns of public care. Scotland followed by Wales has the highest rates of children in out-of-home care followed by England and NI with similar lower proportions. Despite strong links between deprivation and higher chances of becoming looked after this national variation appears more a reflection of differing legal and operational practice than higher levels of need for public care. Notwithstanding differing devolution settlements, a convergence in the direction of policy across the UK towards early intervention, extensive use of kinship care and adoption as an exit route from public care is apparent. This convergence is most apparent in the increased entry of very young children to public care in Scotland, NI and Wales. The lack of any systematic collection of data by governments on the social and economic conditions of children reflects a missed opportunity to examine separately their influence on rates of children in public care.

Although numerous international studies point to large variations in child welfare interventions, comparative analysis has tended to focus either solely on England or the UK as a whole, discounting differences across the four UK countries. This paper compares trends in national statistics relating to the operation of child protection systems across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between 2004/5 and 2013/14. Despite a number of legislative, operational and definitional differences between nations, a number of trends are apparent. All systems show an increasing orientation towards child protection as evidenced by rising rates of child protection investigation and children subject to child protection planning. Increasingly, this relates to emotional abuse and involves younger children aged 0-4 years. However, the way cases are processed can differ with only one in ten referrals resulting in a child protection investigation in Northern Ireland compared to one in five in England.Potential reasons for these differences are discussed and questions raised as to why, more than quarter century after the introduction of the Children Act 1989, we still have no clear picture of the circumstances of families who come into contact with social services or the services provided to support them. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 While providing a valuable framework for interpreting variations between countries, UK-based comparative research, to date, has tended to focus either solely on England or the UK as a whole, discounting differences across the four UK countries of England, Northern Ireland (NI), Scotland and Wales.Although qualitative comparison (Stafford et al., 2012) points to considerable commonality amongst constituent UK countries with regard to child protection legislation, structures and procedures, a cursory glance at recent national statistics shows considerable variation between nations; at the end of 2013/14 Scotland had the lowest rate of children subject to child protection plans (28 per 10,000) and Wales the highest (50 per 10,000), while England had the lowest rate of children looked after by the state (60 per 10,000) and Scotland the highest (156 per 10,000).

ObjectiveLegislation to safeguard children from maltreatment by carers or violence by others was advanced in England and Scotland around 2004–2005 and resulted in different policies and services. We examined whether subsequent trends in injury admissions to hospital related to maltreatment or violence varied between the two countries.Setting and participantsWe analysed rates of all unplanned injury admission to National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England and Scotland between 2005 and 2011 for children and adolescents aged less than 19 years.OutcomesWe compared incidence trends for maltreatment or violence-related (MVR) injury and adjusted rate differences between 2005 and 2011 using Poisson or negative binomial regression models to adjust for seasonal effects and secular trends in non-MVR injury. Infants, children 1–10 years and adolescents 11–18 years were analysed separately.ResultsIn 2005, MVR rates were similar in England and Scotland for infants and 1–10-year-olds, but almost twice as high in Scotland for 11–18-year-olds. MVR rates for infants increased by similar amounts in both countries, in line with rising non-MVR rates in England but contrary to declines in Scotland. Among 1–10-year-olds, MVR rates increased in England and declined in Scotland, in line with increasing non-MVR rates in England and declining rates in Scotland. Among 11–18-year-olds, MVR rates declined more steeply in Scotland than in England along with declines in non-MVR trends.ConclusionsDiverging trends in England and Scotland may reflect true changes in the occurrence of MVR injury or differences in the way services recognise and respond to these children, record such injuries or a combination of these factors. Further linkage of data from surveys and services for child maltreatment and violence could help distinguish the impact of policies.

A B S T R AC TSocial work practitioners face powerful existential threats in child protection. Core aspects of anxiety and their significance for practitioner-parent relations are identified. Social and psychoanalytic theories are utilized to suggest that the production of anxiety in child protection stems from multiple sources and that insufficient attention has been paid to the social context of poverty and disadvantage. Menzies' core analytic categories of primary and secondary anxiety are applied and extended to take account of specific dimensions of the social and organizational context of child protection practice for social work. Processing the anxiety is central to practitioner-parent relations that lie at the heart of the protection of children.

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