Information on Looked After Children
at 31st March 1997 and 1998

5. VARIATION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES

The number of children looked after varies considerably from authority to authority. The size of the authority, in terms of how many young people there are in the area, explains much of the variation in numbers. Other factors though, such as authority policy, social and economic factors, and just random variation, may also explain the variation in numbers of children looked after in different authorities in any one year.

Figure 2 shows, for 1998, the number of children looked after per 1,000 of the population aged 0-17 years. The average, across Scotland, is 9.4 children per 1,000 aged 0-17 years and this is shown on Figure 2 as a horizontal line. East Dunbartonshire has the lowest figure of around 4 children looked after per 1,000 population aged 0-17 years and Glasgow City has the highest at around 17 per 1,000 population aged 0-17 years.

There are a wide range of measures of social and economic variables which may be operating at local authority level. One of these measures, "children aged 0 to 4 years in households subject to family stress", is based on 1991 census data and is a weighted combination of data on lone parents, unemployment, occupancy norms, large families and long term illness.

The "family stress" measure was developed and agreed jointly with local authorities and The Scottish Office for use in the GAE funding distribution. It is only one of many social-economic measures but it has the advantages of relating specifically to children in disadvantaged circumstances.

This measure, of "family stress", is associated with the variation in the number of children looked after between authorities. In Glasgow the indicator, for "family stress" has the highest value at 221; the lowest value is -111 (Aberdeenshire) and the figure for East Dunbartonshire, which has the lowest number of children looked after per population aged 0-17 years, is amongst the lowest at -82.

It is possible to establish whether there is a statistical association between two different measures. There is clearly an association between the numbers of children looked after and the population in an authority; the more children there are in the area the greater the numbers that will be looked after by the authority. Similarly there is an association between the number of children looked after per 1,000 population aged 0-17 years and the indicator for "family stress".

Figure 3 is a plot of the number of children looked after and the indicator for "family stress". Each square represents one authority and the diagonal line shows the expected numbers of children looked after per population aged 0-17 years allowing for the variation on the "family stress" indicator. There is quite a lot of variation associated with the predicted values (R²=.60) but only one authority falls outside the range of expected variation.

Figure 2: Number of children looked after at 31st March 1998 per 1,000 population aged 0-17 years

Figure 3: Number of children looked after at 31st March 1998 per 1,000 population aged 0-17 years against indicator of "family stress".