'Lack of evidence' on effectiveness of care home CSE support

The Department for Education report, Child Sexual Exploitation: Support in Children's Residential Homes, involved interviews with staff at 10 homes involved in such support, four of which were subject to an in-depth review.

This found work being carried out to support victims was not being robustly evidenced, with homes unable to back up claims that such work was successful.

Staff at many of the homes looked at in the report highlighted a number of improvements in victims' lives as a result of work they did with them, including removing the risk of further exploitation, building resilience and confidence, and boosting educational attainment.

But too often "information on the progress children made in relation to different outcomes was based mainly on non-systematic and unstructured observations by staff".

In addition, none of the homes the research team looked at collected long-term data about children's outcomes after they had left the settings.

The research team concluded that "while homes reported positive outcomes for children affected by CSE" the evidence to confirm this was "generally lacking".

The structure of support programmes was also not backed by robust evidence. For example, homes had developed a range of tools to carry out CSE risk assessments "but it was not clear what evidence was used to develop these tools and the extent to which they had been tested".

The report also said that the placement of children affected by CSE is based on guesswork, rather than clear evidence.