Does complexity theory offer anything to the understanding of children in need?

This article discusses how complexity theory is being used to understand social phenomena. It notes that published articles tend to discuss these ideas in relation to social care without quantification. It demonstrates that there is quantitative evidence that one aspect of complexity thinking, ‘self‐organising criticality’, could be at work in generating children in need in England as defined by the Children Act 1989. The article is based on a secondary analysis of data on the weekly costs of children in need derived from the Children in Need Census 2005. Data were provided by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It concludes that the distribution of the frequency of weekly cost of children in need shows that a mechanism involving self‐organising criticality may indeed be at work in creating children in need served by local authorities.