Angela Wileman Date: 20^th October 2009

Email [FOI #19190 email] Our ref: FOI.09.5254

Dear Ms Wileman

Freedom of Information Request

I refer to your recent Freedom of Information Request. Your request asked for the following information: -

Your request

I would like to know numerical statistics in order by year during the period of 1998 to 2008 (or as far back as you can go) for the following;

1) How many children were taken into local authority care on interim care orders and emergency protection orders under the category of emotional harm during the above period? I do not wish you to include any children for any other categories of harm/abuse.

2) Out of these children who were taken into care for emotional harm how many of them were specifically for domestic violence between their parents? Again I do not wish you to include children who had violence directed at them as that would fall into a different category being physical abuse.

3) Out of these children who were put into care for domestic violence how many were returned to family or extended family?

4) Out of these how many children were put on full care orders?

5) Of the children put on full care orders how many were adopted during these periods.

Council's response

I can confirm the following information with regards to your FOI request above.

South Tyneside Council do not record emotional abuse as a separate statistic, we therefore do not hold the information you require.

I hope this information is of assistance to you.

Copyright procedure

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use this information for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you re doing and news reporting. Any other re-use of this information, for example commercial publication requires the permission of the Council as the Copyright holder. All re-use requests will be treated under the Re-Use of Public Information Regulation 2006.

Appeal procedure

Should you wish to appeal against the decision made about this matter you can write to the Records Management Team Leader to have your case reviewed by our Internal Review Panel. This should be sent to us within four weeks and must clearly state the reasons for your appeal and your FOI reference number. The Records Management Team address is as follows: Records Management Team, Town Hall and Civic Buildings, Westoe Road, South Shields, Tyne and Wear, NE33 2RL.

Information Commissioner's office (ICO)

Should you remain dissatisfied, you can appeal against our final decision by writing to the Information Commissioner to have your case independently reviewed.

The Information Commissioner is the Government's Independent Body responsible for overseeing the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

Please do note that the ICO will only review cases that have exhausted the Council's internal appeal procedures. All correspondence to the ICO must quote the Council's reference number and your reasons for your appeal.

The ICO's contact details are as follows: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF. More information can be found on the ICO's website at www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk.

If you have any further queries about this matter then please do not hesitate to contact me on the number below:

Yours sincerely

Amanda Bradley

Head of Early Intervention and Safeguarding

Tel: 0191 424 4749

Email: [email address]