Children - Drug and Alcohol Testing Nov 2024
Case reference FOI2024/01897
Received 12 November 2024
Published 27 December 2024
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information regarding child protection in the UK.
Please provide answers on the attached and accompanying spreadsheet.
1. Please could you supply the name, email address and telephone number of the commissioner with responsibility for children in need of help and/or protection.
For questions 2-6 inclusive, please supply the following information as a total at the end of the year for the financial years 2021/22 – 2024/25 (year to date).
For questions 2-6 inclusive, please supply the following information specific to those cases where drug and/or alcohol misuse is a factor.
2. Please advise on the number of children identified as children in need.
CLARIFICATION: I'm only interested in children with a CIN plan.
3. Please advise on the number of children who were subject to Section 47 enquiries.
4. Please advise on the number of children who were subject to child protection conferences.
5. Please advise on the number of children who were the subject of a child protection plan.
6. Please advise on the number of children whose cases were taken to court proceedings concluding in care/placement/adoption orders.
7. Please advise as to which of the above stages may use drug and alcohol testing as evidence and reasons as to why it is/isn’t used.
8. For each financial year 2023/24 and 2024/25, how many hair drug and alcohol tests were conducted?
9. In a situation where hair drug/alcohol testing is used as evidence, do you have a preferred provider for this service? If not, please provide a list of providers used in these cases and the total expenditure with each provider for financial years 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information regarding child protection in the UK.
Please provide answers on the attached and accompanying spreadsheet.
1. Please could you supply the name, email address and telephone number of the commissioner with responsibility for children in need of help and/or protection.
For questions 2-6 inclusive, please supply the following information as a total at the end of the year for the financial years 2021/22 – 2024/25 (year to date).
For questions 2-6 inclusive, please supply the following information specific to those cases where drug and/or alcohol misuse is a factor.
2. Please advise on the number of children identified as children in need.
CLARIFICATION: I'm only interested in children with a CIN plan.
3. Please advise on the number of children who were subject to Section 47 enquiries.
4. Please advise on the number of children who were subject to child protection conferences.
5. Please advise on the number of children who were the subject of a child protection plan.
6. Please advise on the number of children whose cases were taken to court proceedings concluding in care/placement/adoption orders.
7. Please advise as to which of the above stages may use drug and alcohol testing as evidence and reasons as to why it is/isn’t used.
8. For each financial year 2023/24 and 2024/25, how many hair drug and alcohol tests were conducted?
9. In a situation where hair drug/alcohol testing is used as evidence, do you have a preferred provider for this service? If not, please provide a list of providers used in these cases and the total expenditure with each provider for financial years 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Answer: The information for questions 2-7 is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that there are 11,365 files for questions 2-6 which would need to be checked for the requested information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file (947 hours). Another initial search has shown that there are approx. 400 files for question 7 which would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 15 minutes (100 hours) to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 1,047 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers for questions 1, 8 and 9 as requested. Please advise us if this is something you require.
The Service Area has also confirmed, for questions 2-6 they can advise whether drugs or alcohol were identified as a factor on the original Child and Family Assessment (however this could have been a few years ago in some cases) if you would like to resubmit the request in those terms.
Documents
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