Enhancing support for primary one: Appendix 2: Supporting evidence from health visitors (Public Health Scotland)

Health Visitor Data – Heys Dashboard

Latest Publication:
Early child development statistics - Scotland 2023 to 2024

In 2023/24,17% of those at 27-30 month review, and 18% of those at 4-5 year review had a concern noted about at least one area of their development.
These findings represent a small decrease in the percentage of children with a concern noted about at least one area of development at the 27-30 month review (18% in 2022/23) but increases at the 4-5 year reviews (17% respectively in 2022/23).
The most frequently recorded developmental concern varies at each review. Concerns about Gross Motor development were noted at 8%, 3% and 3% of reviews; about Speech, Language and Communication development at 7%, 12% and 8% of reviews, and about Emotional and Behavioural development at 2%, 7% and 10% of reviews at 13-15 months, 27-30 months, and 4-5 years, respectively in 2023/24.
There are marked and persistent socioeconomic inequalities in the percentage of children recorded as having a concern about their development at each of the reviews. The gap between those living in the most and least deprived areas is greatest at the 27-30 month review (16 percentage points) and smallest at the 13-15 month review (5 percentage points).
Since Oct 2020 there has been an upward shift across 6 data points or more in the number of children with at least 1 area of concern compared to the pre-pandemic baseline in both the 27-30 month and 4-5 year assessments.
The pre-pandemic median for % of children with at least one concern (27-30 month) was 14.72% and in latest data from Jan 2024-June 25 the median was 16.56%
The pre-pandemic median for % of children with at least one concern (4-5 year) was 11.19% and in latest data from Jan 2024-June 25 the median was 18.81%

Developmental concerns by domain

27-30 month review

12% (5,290) of children had a concern recorded for the Speech, language, and communication domain, and 7% had a documented concern about Emotional/behavioural development (3,027) and Personal/social development (2,973). 6% of children had a concern recorded for Problem solving (2,702). Concerns about other aspects of children’s development were less common, with up to 5% of children having a concern recorded for each domain: Fine motor (2,414, 5%); Gross motor (1,459, 3%); Vision (832, 2%); and Hearing (788, 2%). The proportion of concerns that were newly identified as a result of the 27-30 month review varied between the different developmental domains. A higher proportion of concerns in the Speech, language and communication, Fine motor, Problem solving, Personal/social and Emotional/behavioural domains were new (70-75%), compared to Hearing (61%) and Gross motor (60%). The lowest proportion of new concerns was in the Vision domain (47%).

4-5 year review: 2023-2024

10% (3,872) of children had a concern recorded for the Emotional/behavioural domain and 8% (3,233) for the Speech, language, and communication domain; whilst 6% of children had a concern recorded for the Fine motor (2,347) and Personal/social (2,249) domains. Concerns about other aspects of children’s development were less common, with up to 4% of children having a concern recorded for each domain: Problem solving (1,699, 4%); Vision (1,618, 4%); Gross motor (1,097, 3%); and Hearing (995, 2%). The proportion of concerns that were newly identified as a result of the 4-5 year review varied between the different developmental domains. A higher proportion of concerns in the Hearing, Fine Motor and Emotional/behavioural domains were new (between 49-55%).