Official Government Statistics have revealed that In England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – the Police were the top reporter of allegations involving child abuse.
The Police in England made 177,240 allegations (equating to 28% of all child abuse allegations) whilst in Wales they made approximately 35% (totalling 10,500 allegations), in Northern Ireland they made 35% (totalling 1,200 allegations) and in Scotland they made 30% of allegations (totalling 9,789 allegations).
In second place were Schools in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales who made 132,930 allegations in England (totalling 21% of England child abuse allegations), 19% in Northern Ireland (totalling 650), 17% in Scotland (totalling 1,650) and 20% in Wales (totalling 6,000 allegations).
Out of the combined numbers above, only a tiny fraction of allegations were in fact upheld by the State’s own admission. In England, only 7.8% (49,420 allegations) progressed to a Child Protection Plan or the Child Protection Register whilst in Northern Ireland the comparable statistics were 15.7% (2,283 allegations), in Scotland it was 21.7% (2,129 allegations) and in Wales the total was 9.5% (2,850 allegations).
These startling statistics paint a particularly obvious picture in England that for every 12 children who have allegations made against them, only 1 of those cases actually results in further action despite the invasive nature and breaches of Article 8 EcHR rights that families and others that are accused experience across the devolved nations. Meanwhile, the picture is remarkably similar across the devolved nations where, in Northern Ireland 93% of referrals do not result in a child being added to the Child Protection Register, in Scotland 80% of children are eventually found not to require formal state protection and in Wales 70% of allegations went nowhere.
Official 2024/25 data proves that the system is broken across the entire UK. From the 633,000 referrals in England to the tens of thousands of ‘contacts’ in Wales and Northern Ireland, the story is the same: the Police and Schools act as state informants, filing hundreds of thousands of allegations. Yet, in England, over 90% of these investigations result in no Child Protection Plan. In Northern Ireland, the ‘drop rate’ from initial contact to the register is a staggering 93%, while in Scotland, only a fraction of children referred to the Reporter ever require formal protection. The state is casting a massive, UK-wide net over innocent families and finding nothing in the vast majority of cases whilst riding roughshod over the human rights of British and Northern Irish people.
For Parents and Caregivers the sudden arrival of the Police and Social Services is a profound shock leaving them feeling like they live in glass houses, afraid to let their children play outside or even have a tantrum in a case a neighbour or teacher misinterprets it whilst feeling like the government manage their homes. Even years after such allegations the damage is all too rawly felt with many families reporting long term PTSD, jumping every time the doorbell rings or they see a police car.
Despite the same Parents and Caregivers paying for this system, it is designed to be slow and expensive whilst punishing innocent families with many spending their life savings on Solicitors just to prove the “professionals” initial 5-minute referral was wrong with those employed within regulated professions suffering suspension from work and “no smoke without fire” damage to their reputations both in the workplace and the neighbourhoods that they work and socialise within.
The perverse irony is that “safeguarding” makes families less safe with many actively avoiding seeking help, stopping taking their children to GPs or speaking to Teachers about genuine problems because these “professionals” cannot be trusted whilst family breakdowns are common as the result of an investigation creating rifts between partners, parents and grandparents, destroying the child’s support system.
The suffering of the innocent is the ‘hidden tax’ of the UK’s safeguarding obsession. When 93% of contacts in Northern Ireland or 92% of referrals in England result in no plan, we aren’t seeing a system that works; we are seeing a system that treats hundreds of thousands of innocent parents as ‘suspects’ every year. For these families, ‘No Further Action’ isn’t a victory—it’s the end of a traumatic, expensive, and life-altering invasion that leaves scars long after the Social Worker has left.
Whilst the UK and devolved Governments would say that public services are chronically underfunded, the government’s defense of ‘underfunding’ is a smokescreen for a system that chooses to waste its resources on the surveillance of innocent families. By casting a UK-wide net so wide it captures over 750,000 families a year, the state hasn’t built a safety net—it has built a haystack so large that Social Workers can no longer find the needles. Whether in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or in Wales they aren’t ‘safeguarding’ children by investigating up to 12 innocent families for every 1 that needs a protection plan; they are traumatizing the innocent and drowning out the voices of those in real danger.
While the state focuses on the 6.1% of cases it deems ‘upheld,’ it ignores the growing digital archive of dissent. Across platforms like Facebook, the Stop Safeguarding Now Coalition has found that nearly 60,000 people are documenting a system that operates on hearsay, ignores parental evidence, and treats professional bias as objective truth. These aren’t just ‘disgruntled parents’; they are a massive, UK-wide collective pointing to a fundamental truth: An ‘upheld’ allegation is not proof of abuse; it is often merely proof of a system that refuses to admit it was wrong with secret Courts rubber stamping the hearsay of so-called professionals.
Shockingly, the Mainstream Media appears to have zero interest in the plight of families destroyed by the state with reports from families being routinely ignored. When contrasted against the official statistics that the government release (as the Stop Safeguarding Now Coalition has referenced below), either Great Britain and Northern Ireland are experiencing a child abuse crisis or, more realistically, the system isn’t fit for purpose and must change urgently. One might think in a reported cost of living crisis that the state would actually like to avoid the misallocation of finite public resources and instead providing resources to actually support families.
Sources:
(1) England: Department for Education (DfE), “Children in Need, Reporting Year 2025” (Published October 2025). This report confirms the 633,000 total referrals and the 28%/21% split for Police and Schools.
(2) Northern Ireland: Department of Health (NI), “Children’s Social Care Statistics for Northern Ireland 2024/25” (Published October 16, 2025).
(3) Scotland: Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA), “Official Statistics 2024/25”. Note that Scotland’s system is separate from Social Work statistics but provides the clearest “source of referral” data.
(4) Wales: Welsh Government / StatsWales, “Children Looked After and Children in Need 2024-25”.
(5) England: The “12 to 1” and “90% No Action” Stats Source: Department for Education (DfE) – Characteristics of Children in Need: 2024 to 2025. This report tracks “Referrals,” “Section 47 Enquiries” (investigations), and “Child Protection Plans” (the upheld outcome). For the year ending March 2025, England recorded approximately 633,000 referrals. Of those, only 49,420 resulted in a Child Protection Plan.
(6) Northern Ireland: The “93% Drop Rate” – Source: Department of Health (NI) – Children’s Social Care Statistics for Northern Ireland 2024/25. (Published October 16, 2025). This report uses the “Gateway” system data, counting “Initial Contacts” vs. “New Registrations. The 2024/25 report highlights that while “Contacts” (initial flags by police/schools) remain high (~32,000+), only 2,044 children were added to the Child Protection Register. The gap between all professional “flags” and actual registrations consistently sits at 93%.
(7) Scotland: The “80% No Protection” Stats – Source: Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) – Official Statistical Analysis 2024/25. This focuses on children referred to the “Reporter” on “non-offence” (care and protection) grounds. In 2024/25, 9,789 children were referred to the Reporter. However, only 2,129 children were on the Child Protection Register by the end of the year. Even within the specialized Children’s Hearing System, roughly 80% of children referred for protection do not end up requiring the formal “register” or a Compulsory Supervision Order.
(8) Wales: The “70% No Action” and “Police Reporting” Stats – Source: Welsh Government – Social Services National Outcomes Framework / Children Looked After Statistics 2024-25. Wales tracks “Contacts” and “Referrals” specifically. The Police in Wales are the top reporters, often accounting for 35% of all allegations. Data from the 2024/25 reporting cycle shows that out of approximately 30,000 significant safeguarding referrals, only about 2,800 children are on the Register.