Guidance

Children in need census 2023 to 2024: specification

Specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the 2023 to 2024 children in need census.

Documents

Children in need census 2023 to 2024

Details

This is technical information about submitting data for the children in need census for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

It is for:

  • suppliers of software for local authority management information systems (MIS)
  • users of local authority MIS software

It explains:

  • changes to the previous year’s census collection
  • what data local authorities should supply at child level
  • how to structure the data in XML
  • how to check the data against the validation rules
Published 8 November 2022