made about domestic abuse has increased by more than a quarter in a year. The NSPCC Helpline Made 276 referrals to agencies in Scotland las year where the main concern was domestic abuse. That’s up 27% on the previous 12 months.

This is another of those Reporting Scotland stories not fully written up on their website. Often this means that the dramatic figures will not stand up to scrutiny. However, I can see no NSPCC post to check so, here’s what Reporting Scotland don’t tell you about this deeply distressing phenomenon.

Proportionally 4 times as many children in England & Wales face domestic abuse compared to Scotland 

From Open Democracy on 25 June 2025:

An exclusive investigation by Open Democracy has found that 377,000 children in England and Wales have been identified by local authorities as being at risk of domestic abuse in the past five years. Perhaps even more shockingly, 396 of these children have died in the same period. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/child-victims-domestic-abuse-national-crisis-family-courts-england-wales/

From March 2025:

The Scottish Government has today (26 March 2025) published the latest official annual Children’s Social Work Statistics for Scotland regarding child protection. This uses data collected from all 32 local authorities in Scotland on child protection processes from 1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024.

During the 2023-2024 year, 3,167 children were registered onto the child protection register, a decrease of 2% from 2022-23 (3,234). The figures show that a total of 2,129 children were on the Child Protection Register on 31 July 2024, an increase of 3% since 2023 (2,077).

The most common concerns identified at child protection planning meetings for children registered during the 2023-24 year were: domestic abuse (45% of children registered), neglect (42% of children registered), parental substance use (39% of children registered), parental mental ill health (37% of children registered), and emotional abuse (33% of children registered). https://www.celcis.org/news/news-pages/latest-child-protection-statistics-scotland-published#:~:text=The%20Scottish%20Government%20has%20today%20%2826%20March%202025%29,from%201%20August%202023%20to%2031%20July%202024.

All things being equal, you’d expect the figure for England & Wales to be around 11 times larger than the roughly 1 500 (45% of 3 167) reported as being at risk of domestic abuse in Scotland, or 16 500 but it’s around 75 000 (377 000 over 5 years), more than 4 times higher.

Children’s mental health referrals and waiting times soar in England to three and four times the levels in Scotland as child poverty, youth violence, youth unemployment and domestic violence fall steadily here

In the Guardian today, the above graph and:

More than 1 million children were referred to mental health services across England last year, with referrals up 10% from the year previous, according to a report by the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza. She said the country faced a “crisis” in young people’s mental health.

The number of patients who had an active referral to children and young people’s mental health services across England surpassed 1 million for the first time in 2024-25. This was almost double the number recorded in 2018-19, and an almost 10% rise on the previous year. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/29/england-children-mental-health-crisis-million-referrals

and

All things being equal, per head of population, you might expect Scotland to have had around 10% or just over 100 000.

According to Public Health Scotland, the figure was 33 316, around one third of the level in England. https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/child-and-adolescent-mental-health-services-camhs-waiting-times/child-and-adolescent-mental-health-services-camhs-waiting-times-quarter-ending-december-2025/

The average* wait for treatment in Scotland was around 5 weeks or 35 days, just over a quarter of the length.

Also Scotland met the national standard (90% starting treatment within 18 weeks) throughout 2025, with quarterly figures typically 90–91.8%. https://www.gov.scot/news/continued-progress-on-child-mental-health-waiting-times/

*Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports do not publish a single overall mean/average wait time. Using the median (50th percentile) we get consistently 5 weeks across most 2025 quarters. This means half of those starting treatment began within about 5 weeks of referral.

What might explain this shocking difference? – Lower child poverty, lower violent youth crime, lower youth unemployment, lower levels of domestic abuse seen by children?

For the evidence that all of these are true, evidence-based claims, try searching for them here, (the magnifying glass icon).