Child protection enquiry total hits new annual high but proportion finding abuse continues to shrink

The number of annual child protection enquiries has hit a new high but the proportion of those finding abuse or neglect has continued to fall, official figures show.
Directors warned that the 3.5% hike in the number of section 47 enquiries, from 2021-22 to 2022-23, reflected the erosion of preventive services on the back of “a decade of austerity”.
At the same time, an academic specialising in the overemphasis of safeguarding risks said that the increasing number of section 47s that