§ Mr. Ieuan Wyn JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many children have been placed on protection registers in each local authority area in Wales during each of the last five years.
§ Mr. Gwilym JonesChild protection registers provide the only centrally available source of information in this area.
Children placed on the registers are classified by categories of abuse—for example, neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse.
Each addition to the register may be either an entirely new case or a reclassification of an existing registration. In particular in 1992, following implementation of the Children Act 1989, the category of grave concern was abolished and it is known that 86 of those added to the register were reclassifications from grave concern to other categories. Numbers of additions to the register are shown in the table.
643W
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 Powys 42 48 73 48 78 South Glamorgan 1— 226 276 224 231 West Glamorgan 82 50 101 135 60 Wales 1— 1,152 1,249 1,392 1,428 1Not available. Information on the registers is used by loal authority social services departments to manage their child protection work. It is not intended specifically to establish the extent of child abuse and comparisons between years may be affected by changes in the administrative arrangements of local authorities.