In the most recent King’s Speech, the government reaffirmed its pledge to enhance legislation around child sexual exploitation (CSE) to strengthen definitions of specific online offences.
Labour’s £92mn plan for Young Futures Hubs – a series of youth hubs funded by the Home Office –will work with young people deemed to be most at risk of exploitation as well as involvement in violent crime.
Simon Bailey, former National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, wants to see multi-agency working across all government departments with responsibilities for young people as well as the implementation of a cabinet minister accountable for safeguarding children.
“Too often children are failed because partners did not share information or understand the risk to the child they are responsible for protecting. Information sharing when there is a risk to a child should be mandatory,” says Bailey.
Labour’s newly appointed children’s minister Janet Daby has worked as a social worker and was shadow youth justice minister before the election.
Former Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield praises Daby’s cross-sector experience (see box) and adds that “with the Young Future Hubs you have an opportunity to build deep, strategic, and highly knowledgeable partnerships between the police, children’s services, schools and others.
“This is more than just passing on information about a child, this is about strategic priority in identifying which children need help,” she adds.
Helen Lincoln, chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) Families, Communities and Young People Policy Committee explains that “while the police have a crucial role in identifying, investigating, and disrupting child sexual exploitation, a range of agencies, including local authorities, voluntary agencies and health and education services, must work together in a multi-agency way to protect children from harm”.
Lincoln adds that while the ADCS is keen “to learn more on the government’s plans for cross-departmental working to tackle CSE” and how this aligns with plans for children’s social care reform, “we must also tackle the social, cultural and moral issues surrounding the root causes of abuse and the casual acceptance of degrading and over sexualised representations of children and young people in our society today so that they can have safe and happy childhoods”.
Lynn Perry, chief executive of charity Barnardo’s, calls for greater understanding of how children are exploited across all public services.
She also urges the government to ensure that children affected by CSE, and child criminal exploitation, which is often interlinked, are guaranteed to be treated as victims “who should be protected and supported”.
While police forces are implementing measures to improve the investigation of CSE cases through multi-agency working, experts agree that this needs to be implemented from the top down, across local and national government, to support professionals in finding the confidence to better protect children at risk of CSE.
Expert view: Review needed to tackle inconsistency
Tim Loughton, former children’s minister who published the 2011 Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan
One of the good things to have come out of the plan is that it got caught in the public consciousness due to a tsunami of celebrities being implicated in this, but since then it has gone off the radar again. We need to have a proper audit across these reports as to whether they are being pursued seriously and why inconsistencies are recurring. Is it because this has taken much more of a lower priority than it did 12 years ago, or are there various forces who just don’t know how to do it properly? It would be good to review the CSE action plan now to assess its impact and what needs to be done.
You need to have a physical bringing together of services. Joint agency training is the best way to promote joint working, and that’s something which hasn’t been pursued.
Expert view: Boost police training on vulnerability
Anne Longfield, former Children’s Commissioner for England and chair of the Commission on Young Lives
There remains huge swathes of work to do to improve identifying risk, understanding vulnerability and liaison with other agencies, and that wider context of vulnerability around children.
Police often say that they don’t have the resources and the specialisms, and that it’s not clear where their work ends and other agencies take over. There needs to be new mechanisms to join up services locally, and officers need to have in-depth knowledge on how to deal with vulnerable children on the ground. I’m not convinced the police have appreciated that scale of increase in vulnerability to violence.
Areas such as work with siblings are rarely covered, and police need to start looking ahead and work with others to wrap protection around children rather than waiting for the worst to happen.
