The Rotherham CSE independent report, by Professor Alexis Jay and published by Rotherham Council, found that concerns over a network of abusers who had groomed and exploited girls in the town had been raised by youth workers more than a decade before, but safeguarding agencies had not acted. The case also highlighted a lack of awareness of what constitutes CSE among police and child protection professionals and how to tackle it effectively.
Rotherham report
The government appointed Louise Casey, head of the Troubled Families Unit, to conduct an urgent inspection of Rotherham Council. Published in January 2015, Casey's report concluded the council was "not fit for purpose", and a team of commissioners was appointed to take over its running.
An Ofsted inspection of children's services launched in September 2014 and published that November rated the department "inadequate".
As a result of new police inquiries, 19 men and two women were convicted in 2016 and 2017 of sexual offences in the town dating back to the late 1980s; one ringleader was jailed for 35 years.
Policy response to Rotherham
In the wake of the Rotherham scandal, the then coalition government published a report outlining how it was going to address some of the key criticisms raised in the Jay and Casey reports. This became the first of a number of government policy papers focused on improving agencies' response to CSE.
Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation, HM government, March 2015
This cross-government report highlighted the need for a "fundamental change of attitude" among professionals and the public about the nature of CSE. In Rotherham, victims had not been believed when speaking out about abuse, and when evidence emerged of an abuse network of mainly men of Pakistani heritage some professionals had been reluctant to act because of what the report calls "misplaced concerns about political correctness".
It outlined plans for a public awareness campaign on reporting CSE, improved guidance for professionals on identifying it, and better training for staff in schools and the health service on the signs of abuse. A requirement was also introduced for police forces to train all new and existing staff in responding to child sexual abuse.
The report also detailed changes to information sharing practice across police forces, local authorities, health and wellbeing boards and local safeguarding children boards, with the aim of making it easier to share intelligence.
In addition, it announced plans to create a national Centre of Expertise for Child Sexual Abuse to identify gaps in evidence on abuse and how best to tackle it, and a range of measures to enhance frontline social work practice. Meanwhile, £1.24m was provided to NWG Network to establish and manage the national CSE Response Unit, which opened in September 2016, to assist local safeguarding agencies and practitioners in tackling CSE.
CSE: Definition and Guide for Practitioners, DfE, February 2017
This advice replaced 2009 guidance Safeguarding Children and Young People From Sexual Exploitation, updating the definition of CSE and explaining its correlation with child sexual abuse.
The definition has been used as the basis for developing a shared language between agencies of what CSE is, however experts such as Dr Sophie Hallett believe the narrowness of the definition restricts the scope of practitioners' response (see expert view, below).
The guidance also outlines the links CSE has to other forms of abuse and how certain groups of children may have characteristics that make them more vulnerable to being exploited. It lists behaviours exploited children may display and gives examples of how children are exploited.
The guide also sets out what practitioners and managers should do to prevent CSE and how they should respond to young victims.
Tackling CSE: Progress Report, HM government, February 2017
This update to the March 2015 report outlines the steps taken to fulfil the government's pledges to tackle CSE. This includes the conviction of 5,879 offenders for child sexual abuse offences in 2015. Other key outcomes include an extra £14m for supporting victims, the creation of both the Centre for Expertise and CSE Response Unit, and the launch of a whistleblowing helpline run by the NSPCC.
As markers of success, it cites a 24 per cent rise in the recording of child sexual abuse offences in 2014/15, a 14 per cent rise in prosecutions, a 19 per cent rise in convictions and a doubling in referrals in the first four months of the helpline being operational.
It also outlines plans for increased investment to protect children from online predators, and to create a Missing Persons Register to reflect the vulnerability to sexual exploitation experienced by young people who run away from home or care. The government also pledged to spend £2.2m on a campaign to educate young people about respectful and safe behaviour.
Scale of the problem
There are no definitive statistics that measure the number of instances or cases of CSE in England. Police conviction figures do not differentiate between CSE or sexual abuse.
Since 2014/15, the DfE has required local authorities to record when CSE is a factor in children in need assessments. This shows that CSE was a factor in 18,800 children in need assessments in 2016/17. This equates to four per cent of all assessments carried out last year, a rise of a quarter since 2014/15 (see graphics).
A regional breakdown of the DfE assessment data shows that the prevalence of CSE is fairly consistent across England (see table). However, the rate is highest in the South West (5.5 per cent) and lowest in the South East (3.2 per cent).
Multi-agency working
Over the past five years, serious case reviews into the handling of CSE in Rotherham and other high profile cases in Oxfordshire and Rochdale have been critical of joint working between safeguarding agencies.
Sharing of information and intelligence by local authorities, police, health and education is key to understanding patterns of CSE, disrupting and deterring perpetrators, and helping and protecting children. This was why CSE was the "deep dive" element for the first five joint targeted area inspections carried out by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and criminal justice inspectorates.
The inspections conducted in Central Bedfordshire, Croydon, Liverpool, Oxfordshire and South Tyneside in the first half of 2016 found evidence of encouraging practice with all areas having strategies and plans in place. Prevention and awareness raising in communities was strong. There were also signs that areas were improving their understanding of the context in which CSE occurs, and developing work with hotels, taxi firms and transport companies (see Dr Carlene Firmin expert view, below).
However, the inspectorates found too much "variability" in the response to CSE from police, health and youth justice agencies, and that these organisations rely too much on local authorities to take the lead.
Areas that have proved most effective in developing multi-agency working have created specialist teams made up of professionals from a range of agencies. For example, Oxfordshire's Kingfisher team hold regular multi-agency meetings to ensure information is shared with all organisations in a "timely manner" aiding early identification of children at risk.
In Newcastle, police and the city council created an "exploitation hub" whose work has helped support young victims of sexual exploitation and ensure perpetrators have been prosecuted (see practice example).
Improving knowledge
Despite the increased media profile and policy attention given to CSE in recent years, there are still significant holes in knowledge on the scale of the problem and evidence on effective practice (see research evidence).
The government-funded CSE Response Unit offers local safeguarding organisations and practitioners access to more than 1,000 CSE resources and learning materials. The network is also available to voluntary groups and private providers.
The unit offers feedback and peer review to local safeguarding children boards and provides targeted improvement support. There is an out-of-hours helpline to enable a quick response to developing child protection concerns.
In February 2017, the Centre of Expertise on CSA was launched with £8m of Home Office funding until 2020. Hosted by Barnardo's, the centre aims to collate latest evidence on CSA and CSE, identify areas that need more research and disseminate knowledge to practitioners through a regional network of practice improvement advisers.
A key piece of work in its first year has been an evidence review of commissioning practice around services to tackle CSE in five councils. It found plenty of evidence of good commissioning practice, but respondents reported significant cuts to prevention services at a time when demand was rising. Professionals were particularly concerned about agencies' ability to respond effectively to the growing role of online channels in CSE.
The DfE also funded four CSE-focused initiatives in the first phase of the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme. Analysis of the programme found all four projects had reduced CSE risks, while young people participating in the projects reported improved emotional and behavioural wellbeing. One of these, the Empower and Protect Project in South Yorkshire, has seen four councils work together with social business Catch 22 to improve young people's resilience (see practice example).
With reports regularly emerging of children being groomed and exploited for sex in a range of settings - from sports clubs to care homes, in the family home or online - the demands on safeguarding agencies to improve knowledge and practice are set to continue.
EXPERT VIEW WE NEED A BROADER UNDERSTANDING
By Dr Sophie Hallett, lecturer in social policy, the school of social sciences, Cardiff University
"Grooming" has become the way of both explaining and understanding how young people come to experience CSE. This focus can make it difficult for practitioners to understand the reasons why CSE takes place, and - vitally - mean that instances of CSE that do not fit this grooming model go unnoticed.
It is the element of exchange that sets sexual exploitation apart from other forms of sexual abuse. Crucial to understanding why and how CSE happens is recognising the meeting (and taking advantage) of unmet needs that takes place in sexually exploitative encounters and relationships.
The abuse that occurs within CSE is always the responsibility of the perpetrator, but CSE is bound up with other difficulties young people are experiencing - which can mean, for example, that young people exchange sex as a way of coping, or as a way of regaining a feeling of control over their bodies. Difficulties which also mean they can reject support, and do not recognise themselves as being abused. To say this is not to underplay the significant harms they experience nor the concern we should feel about young people in such circumstances.
If we acknowledge these aspects of CSE, it opens up the space to recognise the sexual exploitation that occurs but which currently sits outside of the narrow parameters of CSE as currently portrayed throughout UK policy and practice guidance. The exchange element in definitions of CSE is lost, and cumbersome, with the focus being on "what" it is that young people receive, rather than directing us to consider the "why", outside of any grooming narrative.
Educating young people about healthy relationships goes only so far as a means of responding to CSE, as does protecting young people by removing them from their abusers. Tackling the underlying problems and difficulties experienced by young people is key. Dealing with sexual exploitation as an isolated issue may, conversely, end up leaving young people more vulnerable if these other problems are not also addressed.
Creating opportunities for young people to build positive relationships is vital, as is promoting young people's active participation in their own support and facilitating a practice context in which professionals can work with them to mitigate risk. This would require a policy and guidance shift to both a fuller recognition of the problem and of the practice challenges involved in responding to it.
- Dr Sophie Hallett is the author of Making Sense of CSE: Exchange, Abuse And Young People, published by Policy Press, 2017
EXPERT VIEW WE MUST RECOGNISE THE CONTEXT IN WHICH CSE OCCURS
By Dr Carlene Firmin, principal research fellow, University of Bedfordshire
CSE is a safeguarding risk that is posed largely outside of a child's family and to this extent is not well-accommodated by child protection interventions, structures or policy frameworks.
Contextual Safeguarding has provided a language to articulate this challenge and a framework for developing a response. I initially developed it following a series of reviews into multi-agency responses to cases of peer-on-peer abuse where it became evident that risks were escalating in young people's peer groups, schools, community and online contexts, whereas interventions and assessments largely targeted them and their families.
In order to reduce risk, intervention plans needed to target the social contexts in which abuse, including CSE, was occurring - and these were generally extra-familial. Such interventions required partnerships with a range of sectors including education, youth work, retail, transport, community safety and housing. The extent to which these interventions were successful needed to be measured by a change in the contexts themselves rather than in the behaviours of any individual child at risk in that context.
Working with practitioners to apply this framework in different parts of the country over the last four years has demonstrated the relevance of Contextual Safeguarding to the CSE agenda. Interventions to change the physical design or cultural norms within schools have been introduced following incidents of student peer-on-peer abuse.
Social workers and police officers have spent time in shopping centres and eateries where young people have been groomed, and in doing so built relationships with the staff who manage those spaces to become their "eyes and ears" and take proactive steps to flagging concerns before they escalate. I have worked with transport analysts to identify ways that data on young people's journeys can be used to identify contexts where they may be vulnerable overnight or during the school day.
Recently I spoke to a social worker who, following her engagement with the idea of Contextual Safeguarding, decided to meet her young person when she was spending time with her peers and got to know this group: when the young person went missing her social worker knew who in her peer group to contact.
At the heart of these approaches is a shift from agencies referring safeguarding concerns to social care to being active agents in creating safe spaces for young people and delivering interventions in partnership with social care.
ADCS VIEW A TRULY MULTI-ACENGY RESPONSE IS NEEDED
By Alison Michalska, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) and corporate director for children and adults, Nottingham City Council
After several years of intense focus and attention on the sexual exploitation of children and young people, the knowledge of professionals and the awareness of public has developed immeasurably. We know that children and young people may initially appear to be willing participants in their own abuse but because of their vulnerabilities and the imbalance of power, they must be treated as victims. We know that CSE happens in rural villages as well as big cities, that it is not limited to one community or ethnicity, there is no single model of perpetration and that boys as well as girls can be abused.
While statistics suggest girls are several times more likely to be exploited than boys, the abuse of boys and young men has received less focus in both research and policy terms, so the true numbers of male CSE victims are likely to be higher than first thought.
Another growing risk requiring urgent policy and practice focus is the use of new technologies to facilitate or commit abuse and exploitation. The use of mobile phones and social media is commonplace and the pace and scale of change is mindboggling, as are the dangers. A truly multi-agency response is needed to tackle this issue, close working with heath partners and the police is key. Schools have an important role to play, as do parents and the tech companies.
One of the biggest gaps in our collective knowledge is "what works" both in the preventative space and in working with children and young people who have experienced abuse and exploitation. We must listen to, and learn from, victims, survivors and their families, to inform our responses in the future. We also need to do more to educate all children and young people to recognise all forms of CSE.
FURTHER READING
- Local Commissioning of Services Addressing CSA and CSE in England, Centre of Expertise on CSA, January 2018
- CSE and Mental Health Thematic Evaluation, Spring Consortium, July 2017
- Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation: Progress Report, HM government, February 2017
- Child Sexual Exploitation: Definition and Guidance for Practitioners, Department for Education, February 2017
- Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation, HM government, March 2015
- Report of Inspection of Rotherham Council, Louise Casey, Department for Communities and Local Government, February 2015
- Independent Inquiry into CSE in Rotherham, Professor Alexis Jay, August 2014
