Today, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published information about the number of children subject to applications to deprive them of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the high court (DoL applications) in their Family Court Statistics Quarterly release.
It shows that 1,280 children were subject to applications to deprive them of their liberty in 2024 in England and Wales. This compares to 1,368 children in 2023. 1
MoJ began collecting and publishing data about DoL applications under the inherent jurisdiction in July 2023. Prior to this, children subject to DoL applications did not appear in national administrative data.
What does this release of data show?
How many applications were made?
There were 321 applications – relating to 321 individual children – for DoL orders in the high court between October and December 2024. In total, there have been 1,280 applications to deprive children of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction in 2024 in England and Wales.
In 2017/18 data from Cafcass England showed that there were around 100 applications in England only. While the data is not directly comparable, this suggests that there has been an approximately ten-fold increase in DoL applications in the last seven years.
How does this compare to applications for secure accommodation orders?
In 2024, there were 261 applications for secure accommodation orders to place children in a secure children’s home (see Figure 4). There was over five times the number of DoL applications, compared to secure accommodation applications.
This reflects a growing trend where applications for DoL orders – which authorise the deprivation of a child’s liberty in an unregulated secure placement – vastly outnumber applications to place children in registered secure accommodation. There is severe shortage of places in secure children’s homes, with around 50 children waiting for a place on any given day.
What was the outcome of applications?
A deprivation of liberty order was made in 89.9% of cases issued in 2024. It is not clear what happened in the other 10% of cases.
How long are children subject to DoL orders?
Data shows that the majority of children are subject to a DoL order for more than six months, suggesting that these are not short-term measures.
Between July 2023 (when data was first available) and June 2024, 1,042 cases have had a final order made. Of these cases, one-fifth (21.0%) of children were subject to a DoL order for more than 12 months. 32.9% of children were subject to a DoL order for between six and 12 months.
Over one-fifth of children (23.4%) were subject to orders for less than three months, and 22.6% for between three and six months.
What do we know about the children involved?
Over half of children (57.3%) subject to applications in 2024 were aged between 13-15 years, 32.3% were aged between 16 and 18, and 10.3% were 12 or under (see Figure 3).
There was an equal gender split (female: 51.5%; male: 48.4%) (see Figure 6).
The MoJ data release does not tell us why the application was made, the ethnicity of children subject to applications, or whether a DoL order was made.
For further information about the needs and characteristics of children subject to DoLs applications, see here.
