CYP Now - Child criminal exploitation 'still not properly understood', Ofsted warns

Local agencies still don't fully understand the scale of and risks posed by "county lines" drug running and other forms of child criminal exploitation, and must learn lessons from past child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases if they are to tackle the issue, a report has found.

A thematic report by Ofsted, HMI Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the Care Quality Commission and HMI Probation, found that much has been done by many local partnerships across the country to deal with child sexual exploitation, but learning must be used to successfully tackle other forms of exploitation.

"All children are vulnerable to exploitation, and agencies, locally and nationally, do not yet fully understand the scale or level of risk to children," the report states.

County lines crime occurs when individuals or gangs use vulnerable children and adults to transport and sell class A drugs primarily from urban areas into market or coastal towns or rural areas, establishing new drug markets or take over existing ones.

Perpetrators also use children to transport and hide weapons and to secure dwellings of vulnerable people in an area, so that they can use them as a base from which to sell drugs.

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