§ Mr. Jim CunninghamTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how his Department monitors parental child abuse cases in the UK. [184173]
§ Margaret HodgeThis Department does not monitor parental child abuse cases. Rather, the Department collects information relating to children who are listed on the child protection register.
Children are placed on the child protection register when a multi-agency child protection conference considers them to be at continuing risk of significant harm. That risk may arise from a number of factors, one of which may be parental abuse, but the register does not record the source of the risk.
Children should be registered under one or more of the categories of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse or neglect, according to a decision by the chair of the child protection conference. The categories used for registration help indicate to those consulting the register the nature of presenting concerns. Recording information in this way also allows for the collation and analysis of information locally and nationally.
The Department publishes, on an annual basis, information relating to registrations, de-registrations and re-registrations of children on the child protection register.