Are Disabled Children Being Targeted by the Child Protection System? A Growing Concern

Based on Professor Emeritus Andy Bilson’s research

By Nicola Reekie | PDA Space

Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic shift in how child protection services operate across the UK and the data suggests a deeply troubling trend: disabled children and their families are being disproportionately targeted.

Drawing on the research of Professor Andy Bilson, and supported by evidence submitted to the Law Commission by PFAN (read here), we can start to piece together a pattern of systemic overreach, inconsistency, and potential human rights breaches.

High Rates of investigations across England and Wales

For all children, the rate of Section 47 investigations last year was high, but it was much higher in Wales than in England:

• 286 per 10,000 children in Wales
• 187 per 10,000 children in England

That’s 1 investigation last year for every 35 children in Wales and 1 for every 53 in England.

But here’s the twist: substantiated concerns, those that actually result in child protection plans, remain relatively low:

• 22% of investigations in Wales
• 28% of investigations in England

This shows that many families are being investigated without clear evidence of harm.

What is happening to children with a disability?

There are some published figures in England but not in Wales so let’s start with those

When a child is found to be in need the primary need is recorded.

Fall in child’s disability or illness as primary need

Between 2015 and 2023 there was

• 4% fall in children whose primary need was the child’s disability or illness.

Yet we know from the crisis in special education that the number of children with special needs dramatically increased.

Local Authority Differences Are Stark

While one might expect a broadly consistent approach to identifying children in need  with a disability the reality is very different. The rate of children where the child’s primary need was their disability or illness varied from:

• 6 per 10,000 children in Leicestershire
• 106 per 10,000 in Milton Keynes

New research by Professor Bilson

We know that parents of children with a disability face parental blame from our own experience and the surveys of many groups including Professor Luke Clements and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. However, these findings are often challenged by saying that they represent a very small but vocal minority of parents with a disabled child. Professor Bilson has set out to see whether this is true.

The government collects data about the concerns that social workers found at the end of an assessment. Professor Bilson used freedom of information requests to find out how many social work assessments contained concerns about a child’s physical disability, learning disability or mental health. He then went on to look at what happened to children following an assessment where the social worker had these concerns.

One Assessment for every 7 children with a disability!

Professor Bilson found that:

• Assessments with these concerns almost doubled from 69,490 in 2015 to 123,030 in 2021 (a 77% increase)
• One in every four assessments had these concerns in 2021

This makes the fall in children in need with a primary need of disability or illness quite shocking!

Even more shocking is that the last census found that 811,000 children had a long-term health problem or a disability. So this is:

• One assessment for every 7 children with a long-term health problem or a disability

What happened to these children after assessment

Because children can be assessed multiple times, he went on to look at what happened to children when they became a child in need. He got information about disabled children and others [1] who became a child in need in the first six months 2015 to 2023 and what happened to them before the end of the year.

He found that:

• Disabled children in need increased by 77% compared to 12% for other children
• Disabled children where the primary need was abuse or neglect leaped by 133%
• 7 out of 10 disabled children in need had an abuse related primary need

This confirms the findings of surveys that the approach to children with a disability is largely one of parent blame.

High level of child protection investigations

When we look at Section 47 investigations (formal child protection investigations), across England between 2015 and 2023:

• Child protection investigations leaped by 145% compared to 45% for other children
• The proportion of investigations leading to a child protection plan fell to 40%
• Almost half of disabled children in need were investigated

Whilst 7 out of 10 disabled children in need had a primary need of abuse or neglect less than 2 out of 10 were placed on a child protection plan.

Many parents of disabled children report that social workers will not offer help unless they go through a child protection conference. Whilst this may be a way to “game the system” the cost of accepting that they have harmed their child is extremely high including possibly limiting future employment. Disabled children have a right to services as a child in need and parents should never accept that they have harmed their child to get services.

Regional variations

Using census data Professor Bilson was able to calculate the proportion of  disabled children in 2022 who became a child in need or went on to be investigated under section 47 in each local authority in England

The proportion of disabled children who became a child in need following an assessment in the first 6 months of 2022 varied from:

• 18 per 10,000 disabled children in Doncaster; to
• 974 per 10,000 in Middlesborough.

And the proportion of disabled children facing a child protection investigation varied from:

• 11 per 10,000 in Doncaster; to
• 499 per 10,000 in Middlesborough

That is an astonishing rate of 1 in 20 disabled children being investigated in Middlesborough from a 6months sample compared to 1 in 1,000 in Doncaster!

It is extremely unlikely that disabled children in Middlesborough are almost 50 times more likely to be at risk of significant harm than those in Doncaster.

This kind of inconsistency raises serious questions about thresholds for intervention and whether the child protection system is being applied fairly.

What Does This Mean for Human Rights?

These findings don’t just highlight inefficiency or poor practice — they raise red flags for human rights violations:

A. Violation of the Right to Family Life

Under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, families have a right to private and family life. The current system’s use of surveillance, investigation, and intervention, often without cause, may be in breach of this right.

B. Discrimination Through Inconsistency

Different thresholds and practices between local authorities may result in discriminatory outcomes, especially for disabled children and their families. This potentially violates both the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

C.Procedural Injustice

Families are being pulled into traumatic and damaging processes without adequate transparency or recourse. Instead of receiving help, they are often met with suspicion and judgement — which can damage family bonds and mental health.

D.The Call for Reform

The message is clear: we need to reform the child protection system so that it:

• Respects family rights
• Applies thresholds fairly and consistently
• Supports — rather than targets — disabled children and their families

Final Thought

As someone deeply connected to the experiences of neurodivergent families, I see the real-world impact of these policies every day. The data backs up what many parents have been saying for years: the system is broken and it’s hurting the very families it claims to protect.

It’s time to shift from surveillance to support.

If you want to explore this further, I highly recommend reading the evidence submitted by PFAN to the Law Commission:

Click here to access the full document

[1] Disabled children are those where the social worker said there was a concern about disability or mental health at assessment. Other children had none of these concerns.