What this is
According to the Care Inspectorate’s second annual restrictive practice bulletin, 417 services provided residential care and support for children and young people in Scotland at 31 December 2024. Reporting covers 1 January to 31 December 2024, and 99% of services submitted a return.
It is collected under the Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Requirements for Care Services) Regulations 2011, and Scotland is the only UK nation publishing a routine statutory census of restraint incidents in children’s services, using terms agreed through the Scottish Physical Restraint Action Group.
What it records
According to the bulletin, of the 417 services, 357 were care homes for children and young people (1,814 places), 32 were special residential schools (415 places), and four were secure accommodation (68 places).
In 2024 there were 6,263 incidents of physical restraint, 68 fewer than 2023, a fall of 1.1%. The median across all services was one incident, down from two. There were 509 incidents of seclusion, 220 fewer than the previous year, a fall of 30.2%, alongside 1,778 incidents of other restrictive practice.
The rate per place is where the bulletin bites. Care homes reported 1.3 incidents per place. Special residential schools reported 5.6, up from 4.3, the only service type where the rate rose. Secure accommodation reported 21.9, the highest by a wide margin. Seclusion follows the same shape: 5.5 per place in secure accommodation, 0.1 in special residential schools.
The statutory test is that no service user is restrained “unless it is the only practicable means of securing the welfare and safety of that or any other service user and there are exceptional circumstances”.
How to read it
Compare rates, never totals. Raw counts are highest in care homes because there are 357 of them: that says something about the size of the sector, not about the children in it.
A falling national count does not mean any individual service improved. Neither does a falling count in one service if the same children appear in every entry, which is concentration rather than improvement. The bulletin warns that in some services a few children experienced most incidents.
So the question for a provider is not how many restraints last year. It is incidents per place and per child, and which children the number is made of.
Where it stops
One calendar year, one nation, children’s residential services only. It does not cover schools generally, adult services, or restraint in a family home.
It is a census, but not every service returned. The bulletin carries its own caveat: reporting expectations for education settings attached to care settings “have been applied inconsistently”, which it offers as the likely reason for the rise in special schools, so the move from 4.3 to 5.6 may reflect counting rather than practice. Secure accommodation figures reach the Inspectorate for onward referral because it has no education remit, so they arrive by a different route.
No publication day can be fixed: the bulletin states “Published July 2025”, while the web page shows a last-updated date of 7 May 2026. The figures are confirmed, because the bulletin and its media release agree on all of them.
Sources
- Care Inspectorate (Scotland), Restrictive Practice 2024: A statistical bulletin, July 2025 · https://ci-web-media-production-bucket.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/resources/annual_data_reports/restrictive-practice/restrictive_practice_statistical_bulletin_2024-8206.pdf
- Care Inspectorate (Scotland), Restrictive practice 2024 statistical bulletin, media release, 7 May 2026 · https://www.careinspectorate.scot/news-and-media/restrictive-practice-2024-statistical
Where a service is reporting restraint incidents without knowing its denominator, our vulnerable and volatile persons training covers the de-escalation, the recording and the review that make a rate mean something.
Reviewed 20 October 2026.