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Can police prioritize children they encounter by risk of future harm involving those who witnessed domestic abuse? We tracked the prevalence and frequency of future harm involving all 6670 children who Kent Police (UK) found witnessing domestic abuse and referred to Social Services in 2012. A 3-year tracking period lasted exactly 1065 days after the date of each initial referral. Four categories of events were tracked for each child: (1) further witnessing of domestic abuse, (2) a child being named as a suspected offender of a criminal offense, (3) a child being reported as a victim of a criminal offense, and (4) a child being reported as a missing person from the home. Further harmful events were highly prevalent (48%), yet over 92% of those events were repeated reports of witnessing domestic abuse. Less than 3% of the cohort went on to become a victim of crime, 1.6% were reported missing, and 6% were named as offenders in a crime over the 3 years. Total events including new witnessing of DA were heavily concentrated in a “power few”: under 10% were reported in 50% of the 8685 subsequent events over the next 3 years. Tracking subsequent harm to children present at domestic abuse shows more than enough concentration of future events to justify selective targeting of resources for further efforts to protect these children, ideally by using advanced predictive analytics such as random forests modeling.

Glue sniffing and the misuse of solvents by children and teenagers have seriously affected school populations throughout the United Kingdom during the last 10 years. Children with special educational needs seem more likely to indulge in solvent abuse than other children because some tend to suffer from anxieties, frustrations and inferiority feelings generated by the stresses arising both from their conditions and the attitudes of other people towards them, writes Dr Denis O'Connor, lecturer and director of the Counselling Clinic for adolescents, School of Education, Newcastle University.