Andy Bilson’s current research focuses on the overemphasis and exaggeration of risk in the child protection system and the increasing separation of children from parents through adoption and care.
I am working with the Parents, Families and Allies Network to promote parental advocacy and activism in child protection reform and in late 2018 David Tobis and I brought together parents and their allies from countries across the UK, Australia and the US to develop the International Parent Advocacy Network.
My research in the news
Consultation response:
Deadline 4 Sept 2026
See the 5 simple changes to make a kinder child protection system and tell government to make them.
Consultation response: Deadline 4 Sept 2026
Why this matters now The Government is proposing to expand information-sharing between services and create new child protection teams. This ...
Parent Blame
This study examined national trends in how children with disabilities and mental health concerns are treated within children's social care ...
My experience of a child protection investigation
Ruth Hardy-Mullings a journalist with Community Care tells the story of her experience of being investigated because her baby had ...
Withdraw FII
Community Care • 13 October 2025Andy Bilson & Taliah Drayak Our article argues that fabricated or induced illness (FII) should ...
FII – When Safeguarding Harms
Why We’re Calling for the Withdrawal of FII Guidance For evidence see: a) The argument for abandoning the FII label; ...
Call for action on FII
Coverage of my research into mortality from FII in BASW's Professional Social Work My research into Mortality and serious harm ...
Every fourth child in need
My research with Matt Jay @ UCL estimates that 1 in every 4 children receive social services intervention before the ...
Bruising in PreMobile Babies Resources
I'm testing out AI for teaching around my research. Here's a podcast and supporting materials generated with AI by Notebook ...
We’re investigating more but not protecting better
This article in the British Association of Social Workers' journal Professional Social Work summarises my presentations to the ISSA conference ...
Peer Parent Advocacy: A Solution for Child Welfare
This presentation was for the ISSA conference in Bulgaria. It starts by outlining the Investigative turn taking place in Anglo ...
Baby Wrongly Taken
This article (on 17/11/24) includes my comments on the high rate of children investigated in Wales and the problem with ...
Targeting of investigations has dramatically worsened
The latest children in need statistics show that there is a continued worsening of the targeting of child protection investigations ...
Bruising – Family Law Bar Association
My presentation at the national conference of the Family Law Bar Association on 14th October 2023 is below along with ...
Social work interventions in Scotland
One in four of all children in Scotland are referred to children’s social care before their fifth birthday and 1 ...
Disabled parents children taken into care
Channel 5 News item about the discrimination faced by disabled mothers in Britain’s family courts which can lead to the ...
Changing Policies for Bruised Babies
"Professor Andy Bilson explains how his research demonstrates how existing protocols on pre-mobile bruising mislead staff and risk exposing parents ...
Why specialist safeguarding units won’t work
Following Sir Alan Wood calling for the establishment of specialist child protection teams to create “… a highly skilled high ...
Justice for Families
Emily Dugan: The Times I am proud to have played a part in the excellent Times campaign which has covered: ...
Bruising in babies
My new and as yet unpublished research on policies has found that 7 local authorities have policies saying that all ...
Response to RCPCH draft guidance on FII
Here is my written response to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health on their draft guidance on Perplexing ...
Born into care: Evidence of a failed state
BBC Radio 5 live coverage starts 11 minutes in to program and coverage in the Times My new research (Accepted ...
BBC: From Cradle to Care
Broadcast on Wed 13 Nov 2019 Over the past decade, the number of newborns being taken into care has more ...
Fabricated or Induced Illness
This BBC news covers 2 cases of families where undiagnosed illness were wrongly categorised as fabricated or induced illness. A ...
The Poor Parents
Tortoise Media has produced useful presentations of some of my data on referral rates and children placed for adoption. The ...
Fabricated and Induced Illness
My contribution on the Radio 5 Investigates programme about Fabricated and Induced Illness I come in just before 39 minutes ...
Professional Social Work
One in every 23 children in Scotland is involved in child protection investigations a piece about my study from Professional ...
Response to NAO report on Today
Here's my interview from the Today Programme on 23rd January 2019. The National Audit Office report is Pressures on Children's ...
Masterclass: Analysing and Reforming Child Protection Systems
David Tobis and Andy Bilson are leading a Masterclass in child protection system reform to be held at the University ...
BBC on Parent Advocacy & increases in children in care
The BBC coverage of the first gathering of the International Parent Advocacy Network along with data on the rapidly increasing ...
Emotional Harm
Coverage by the Guardian of my analysis of national statistics on children placed on child protection plans for the Transparency ...
NICE Consultation
Child Maltreatment: when to suspect maltreatment in under 18s The NICE guideline exaggerates the incidence of maltreatment and should be ...
Adoption and child protection trends for children aged under five
This study provides an analysis of the ‘investigative turn’ in England by comparing two largegroups of children, one whose fifth ...
Increase in Child Protection Investigations but fewer finding abuse
Children and Young People Now: An increasing proportion of children are subject to official child protection investigations before their fifth ...
Postcode lottery in child protection and adoption
BBC: For a child born in England in 2011-2012, the chances of being placed for adoption by the age of ...
More parents accused of child abuse
The Conversation: More parents accused of child abuse than ever before Parents in English-speaking countries are now increasingly likely to ...