Poor parental mental health has overtaken domestic violence as the most commonly reported factor in social worker assessments into whether a child is at risk of serious harm or neglect, according to new research.
Growing rates of mental illness – in both parents and children – were an increasingly important driver of child safeguarding interventions in England, the latest comprehensive survey of children’s social care pressures found.
Housing insecurity and homelessness, rising poverty, gang violence and the “significantly underestimated” lasting effects of the pandemic were also major factors in child protection work, the research found.