Core indicator
Children’s services
Looked after children
Last updated March 2025
(March 2025)
Data published: November 2025
What is this sector and how are we measuring it?
Local authority children’s services exist to support families dealing with challenging situations and provide children with a safe and protective home, particularly in cases where a child may be at risk of neglect, abuse or other forms of harm. Children known to local authority children’s services are more likely to be exposed to the risk factors associated with later offending.
One group of children particularly at risk of harm is those looked after by the local authority, who also show significantly higher rates of serious violent offending compared to the general child population. For this reason, we are using the number of children looked after by the local authority in England as of 31st March of each year as our core indicator for this sector. A child is considered looked after if they are provided with accommodation for longer than 24 hours or a court has ordered them to be placed in the care of the local authority or for adoption. The corresponding data for Wales isn’t available at the time of our latest update.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure shows a mixed picture. The number of children looked after has steadily increased over the past decade, but has now fallen for the second year in a row. As of 31st March 2025, 81,770 children in England were being looked after by the local authority. This is down 2.1% from the previous year (2023/24), but remains 2.2% up on the year before Covid (2019/20) and 17.7% up on 2014/15.