SCRA Annual Report published

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) has recently published its Annual Report 2010/11, which provides a detailed statistical breakdown of its activities during the year.

The report shows that the number of referrals to the Reporter has continued to fall for the fourth consecutive year. The total number of children and young people referred during 2010/11 amounted to 39,217, which is a reduction of 7.8% over the previous year. SCRA points out however, that this still amounts to 4.3% of the number of children currently living in Scotland.

Most referrals to the Reporter involved welfare concerns -  33,710 children were referred on care and protection grounds, while 8,126 were referred on offence grounds. As before, the most frequent grounds for referral were that the child was a ‘victim of a Schedule 1 offence’ and lack of parental care. There were also 13,474 Supervision Requirements applied during the year.

Neil Hunter, SCRA’s Principal Reporter/Chief Executive, said:

“There continues to be a significant number of children and young people who require compulsory measures of intervention in their lives - this equates to 1.5% of all children in Scotland.

“There is also a concern about the length of time children and young people are on supervision. Our figures show that significant numbers of children and young people remain on supervision for more than five years. Supervision should be a short to medium term measure to improve a child’s situation, not a long term solution where they require compulsory intervention for several years. Therefore, this is an issue which we have started to explore with our partners in the Hearings System.”