Child Criminal Exploitation – Tackling Criminal Exploitation

For many years, gangs groomed vulnerable girls in towns like Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford with seeming impunity. Then, belatedly, society woke up to the horrific crime of child sexual exploitation (CSE). Now child protection experts say the UK needs another rapid leap forward in relation to child criminal exploitation (CCE).

CCE comes in different forms and includes “county lines” – when gangs and organised crime networks use children to sell drugs. Young people are made to transport drugs from one area to another, often across police and local authority boundaries. The “county line” is the mobile phone line used to take orders.

Tackling the problem requires professionals in schools, the police, social services and other settings to recognise young people involved in criminal activities like drug dealing may have been groomed and are therefore a victim of crime rather than a perpetrator.

It is difficult to say exactly how many young people are involved in county lines. London’s Rescue and Response support programme last year identified 4,013 individuals running lines from the capital to the shires. The majority are thought to be male with county lines gangs also involved in the sexual exploitation of vulnerable girls and young women.

Dame Carol Black’s independent review of drugs for the government published in February 2020 reported 27,000 young people had been identified as gang members, many of them involved in drug dealing. Aside from county lines, CCE includes forced shoplifting and using children’s bank accounts to transfer money, although more research is needed into the scope and scale of the problem, experts say.

Exploiters adapt

The Children’s Society report Counting Lives published in July 2019 found the number of 10- to 17-year-olds arrested for intent to supply drugs – a key indicator of involvement in county lines activity – rose by 49 per cent between 2015/16 and 2017/18 outside London.

Report author Iryna Pona says the exploiters are adapting all the time, targeting younger and more vulnerable young people, some as young as seven. Her report found nearly two-thirds of councils lacked a strategy for supporting victims of CCE.

Yet Gavin Moorghen, the British Association of Social Work’s professional officer for England, rejects the view that social services are the weak link. “There are excellent examples of social workers protecting children from CSE and CCE,” he says. “They are however being forced to work in silos without the right equipment, guidance and most importantly a unified approach.”

Victims of CCE are supported through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a system set up in 2009 to deal with the UK’s commitments on human trafficking. Figures for CCE referrals via the NRM were recently made available for the first time. Previously, these came under the wider category of child labour exploitation. Figures for the fourth quarter of 2019 showed there were 664 referrals for CCE and a further 138 in which CCE was suspected on top of other forms of exploitation.

In September 2018, a special police unit, the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre, was set up to track the problem. This year, the National Crime Agency estimated there were 3,000 county lines operating in 2019 – a 50 per cent increase on the previous year. In January 2020, the police revealed more than 2,500 arrests had been made in relation to county lines and more than 3,000 people safeguarded. But CCE projects report that many young victims are still being treated as criminals. While the more progressive sections of the police “get it” that young people can be victims of CCE, they say forces on the ground are still regularly “nicking” young people caught with Class A drugs despite the fact they have been groomed and are being exploited.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, says awareness is growing but not quickly enough. “Across agencies, there’s a lack of common understanding of the different ways in which CCE occurs, or the key risk factors for children,” she says. “Local-level initiatives to develop this understanding are improving, but it is far from reaching comprehensively across the police, NHS and schools.” She is also critical of the NRM, which she says has been undermined by long delays “during which there is a temptation to wait on an NRM decision rather than take action to help a child”.

Raising awareness in wider society is important, say campaigners. For example, in April teen soap Hollyoaks ran a one-hour special on its county lines storyline. But what matters most is what projects on the ground are doing to help young people.

Targeted youth services

So what works? Trauma-informed practice, intensive one-to-one support, and school visits are seen as key (see case studies). But the children’s commissioner also praises the minority of councils who have kept a meaningful detached youth work operation. One of these is Islington, which uses its Targeted Youth Support Team to engage young people at risk of getting involved in county lines. “We know we can only make Islington a fairer place by ensuring our young people are given the best possible start in life and given every chance to get on,” says councillor Kaya Comer-Schwartz, Islington Council’s executive member for children, young people and families.

The council has invested heavily in a programme of early intervention to help children and young people at risk of falling into a cycle of crime and violence, she explains.

“Our targeted youth services address underlying causes such as abuse and neglect to stop them becoming victims or perpetrators of crime,” she says. “Detached youth work enables us to build a productive and trusting relationship with some of our most vulnerable children and ensure they can play a vital part in our community.”

SHEFFIELD PROJECT WORKS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS AND THE COMMUNITY

Project 0114, run by the charity Sheffield Futures, aims to prevent young people in the city getting involved with CCE. It visits schools in areas where young people are assessed to be most at risk.

The scheme operates in selected primary and secondary schools, with the work delivered by youth workers and peer mentors.

It ranges from a one-off assembly to more informal chats with pupils in corridors near the school canteen at lunchtimes or several months’ regular involvement. For example, they worked with one referred pupil for five months.

The biggest challenge according to Louise Ellison, deputy services manager at Sheffield Futures, is getting the schools to allow them in.

Schools are “inundated” with offers and are reluctant to see children miss lessons, she says. Heads of year have to give the green light.

“Because it’s new and free, people are suspicious,” she says. But once schools understand how valuable it is, they become keen, she adds.

Project 0114 also provides open youth work sessions in the community for 10- to 13-year-olds. For this, they use five smaller charities, such as arts and media organisation My Life Project, which are already working in these areas effectively with young people.

The sessions are responsive to local events. For instance, after a 16-year-old young man was stabbed by another young person in the Lowedges area of Sheffield in 2018, they began offering additional youth work sessions in and around that neighbourhood.

The project has a good relationship with the police in Sheffield, but has found social workers’ approach to CCE can vary depending on the individual. “You always get one or two who are slow to recognise that it’s CCE,” says Ellison.

School closures due to Covid-19 limited their ability to operate. With no face-to-face work possible, many of their workers were furloughed.

However, the project has been doing some work remotely and once lockdown is fully lifted, they can get the project up and running again quickly, says Ellison.

MERSEYSIDE JOINED-UP WORK AND TRAINING FOR PROFESSIONALS IS KEY

Outside of London, Merseyside is the biggest exporter of county lines, says Vikki McKenna, service manager at Merseyside Missing and Child Exploitation Service – a project run by the charity Catch22.

Young people are being sent as far afield as Devon, Portsmouth, Kent, London and Aberdeen. This means joined-up working is vital and a key part of the approach on Merseyside, McKenna explains.

Her project is funded by the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner as well as the local authorities in St Helens and Knowsley.

There is a pan-Merseyside Child Exploitation Protocol covering the city region’s five councils to ensure information-sharing and similar processes are being used.

Young people, who may go missing for weeks on end, are referred via Multi-Agency Child Exploitation meetings. It is essential to keep working with the young people through these missing episodes, says McKenna.

She gives the example of one 16-year-old boy who wasn’t getting much love or support at home and fell into county lines, regularly going missing

However, after patient work, he is now in semi-independent living – learning how to cook for himself and manage on a budget – and has “thrived”, according to McKenna.

There have been no more missing episodes and he is doing a construction course at college.

Another key part of the project’s work is to provide CCE training to professionals across Merseyside.

Good training is essential amid efforts to tackle CCE, but the training on offer across the country can be a bit of a “mixed bag”, according to Gavin Moorghen, professional officer for England for the British Association of Social Workers.

Merseyside Missing and Child Exploitation Service delivers training to professionals from all agencies to improve understanding and awareness of both criminal and sexual exploitation.

Earlier this year, it presented a workshop to magistrates from across the region on child exploitation. It is also providing training to a number of McDonald’s managers in the area as fast food outlets are often where at risk young people gather.

McKenna says this is in line with “contextual safeguarding” – recognising and responding to threats to young people’s safety in the local area.

LONDON A SAFE SPACE FOR YOUNG MEN TO OPEN UP

The Stride Project works with young men who are more likely to get caught up in county lines

During lockdown, The Stride Project has been doing its best to maintain support for young people caught up in criminal exploitation.

It is run by The Children’s Society, a charity whose income has fallen by around £1m a month due to the forced closure of its charity shops and cancellation of fundraising events.

However, Stride itself is funded by City Bridge Trust until the end of March 2022 and its work with vulnerable young men may soon be needed more than ever.

Senior police say that while knife crime is down, they expect that once lockdown is lifted, turf wars could break out as gangs aim to reassert their positions.

Normally face-to-face meetings are central to the project’s work with boys and young men in seven London boroughs.

But the Covid-19 crisis meant the project’s two staff members – one practitioner and one service manager – are only able to meet a young person face to face where they are at “really significant risk”.

Stride is aiming to continue regular support by phone, but it’s a challenge. Young people may not always have phones or computers that allow effective remote working. The project is working with social workers and youth offending teams to get the young people the technology they need.

Even then, they may not be willing to have a structured session on the phone or home circumstances may not give them the necessary privacy to do so.

Estimates suggest only five per cent of vulnerable young people are attending school during lockdown. So Stride is also increasing young people’s home access to educational or fun activities.

Stride started in July 2017 and has worked with 77 young people in its first two years. The project only works with young men. This is because CCE most commonly involves boys. Girls are more likely to be caught up in CSE which is dealt with by separate projects, explains Sarah Hegarty, London operations manager for The Children’s Society.

It is also because there is a tendency for young men to receive less empathy than young women, she adds. Many arrive with “does not engage” on their referral notes.

The scheme uses a model of therapeutic support to get beyond these kind of judgments.

Many of the young men the project works with are young carers or have been subjected to domestic abuse. They are regularly trafficked out of London, groomed with drugs and alcohol, and controlled with threats of violence and sexual abuse.

It is essential they can share their feelings openly in a safe space, explains a Stride project worker.

“If we don’t tackle these underlying things, a young person is going to continue to be vulnerable to exploitation,” he says. “If we don’t explore some of the horrendous things they’ve experienced, how are they going to move forward with hope for the future.”

The project uses music to help users open up. One young person who was found by police outside London with drugs found it hard to articulate what he’d been through. It was only when he started using lyrics in his music that his experience of being groomed came out.

KENT WORKERS USE THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES TO REACH YOUNG PEOPLE

Kent Out There, run by St Giles Trust, was one of the very first dedicated CCE projects.

Since its launch in 2016, it has been building up a portrait of the typical young person involved in CCE in Kent. He is 15, white and often, but not exclusively, from a disadvantaged background.

His parents are usually not on benefits. But he is often from a single-parent family with mum or dad rarely around due to their long hours working to pay the bills.

The most common factor is that he is excluded from school or in a pupil referral unit. This is more common than being in care, says Evan Jones, head of CCE development at St Giles Trust.

“The young people are not thick, but they seem to have bought into the idea that they can’t achieve conventionally,” he says.

The staff were expecting to find kids who had travelled down from London. But in line with research done by Sussex University, CCE is now often being carried out by locals rather than young people sent down on the train from the capital.

They usually come to the project’s attention when a parent finds money or drugs and becomes seriously concerned.

The young people often think they are in control at this point. They’ll say to the worker: “I’m earning more money than you.”

But then something really bad happens – they lose the drugs or money and become fearful and need help.

This is when the experience of the St Giles staff comes into play. Nearly all of those who work directly with the young people have a criminal record, and these past experiences are key when it comes to building trust and getting the young people to open up.

“Lived experience counts the most in the most extreme situations,” says Jones.

Through intensive one-to-one sessions, workers can find out the young person’s story. It can take on average nine months.