The proposal, included in updated draft guidance to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) codes of practice, has been introduced in response to failings in the case of Child Q in 2020.
The 15-year-old black girl was strip-searched at her London school by police officers while on her period after being wrongly accused of possessing cannabis.
The experience was deeply traumatic for the child and prompted protests about police discrimination. A review, carried out by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership in 2022 concluded that Child Q should never have been strip-searched.
In its response to the updated PACE guidance, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) says it is unclear what would be achieved by referring all cases where police conduct an intimate search or one that exposes the intimate parts (EIP) of a child.
“Unless the child is already known to the local authority, the referral may not meet the threshold for a social work intervention, so the purpose of a referral is unclear and may risk adding to a child and family’s distress,” its consultation response states.
The association has called for more discussions with the Home Office and police chiefs to understand how automatic social work involvement would help. If such a measure is designed to improve transparency and scrutiny of instances of strip searching – a concern raised by a 2023 review of the Chid Q case by the Children’s Commissioner for England – it is not a role best performed by children’s services, the ADCS says.
“This activity should be owned by forces, reviewed regularly and any anomalies identified and explored to support learning and improvements in practice, as well as children’s experiences and outcomes,” it states.
A 2022 review by the Children's Commissioner for England found there were 650 instances of strip searches of children between 2018-2020.
The ADCS welcomed many of the clarifications and new measures in the updated guidance, including raising the rank of officer needed to approve an EIP search to inspector level, and the requirement for a superintendent to be notified if a search takes places without an appropriate adult present.
However, ADCS members called for “stronger messaging” about the use of intimate searches on children and that it should only be in “exceptional” circumstances, such as a “potential threat to life”, that they be undertaken without an appropriate adult, parent or guardian being present.
The response adds: “This would arguably be better undertaken by medical professionals with the aid of specialist equipment, such as scanners, to minimise trauma.”
A report in June 2023 by Jim Gamble, independent child safeguarding commissioner at City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, found “a tentative optimism about the efforts to build and improve relationships between the police and the community” following the Child Q incident.
