Last month, 23-year-old Edwin Dillon was jailed for 10 years for sexually exploiting five teenage girls. The case was a major victory for Blackburn with Darwen's Engage team, a multi-agency service dedicated to tackling child sexual exploitation (CSE).
While Engage is committed to continuing its work with vulnerable young people, the approach to the issue remains patchy across the country. But the threat of an increase in cases of exploitation is very real, experts have warned.
"If young people don't have jobs, they will be encouraged to survive through the informal economy (prostitution). At the same time, there are going to be fewer services to divert them from this." This is the assessment of Professor Jenny Pearce from the University of Bedfordshire, which last month published research showing that fewer than a quarter of the country's Local Safeguarding Children's Boards (LSCBs) have a strategy to protect children from sexual exploitation.
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