Support for victims needed
By Richard Crellin, policy, research and public affairs team leader, The Children’s Society
The last year has been really tough for children, with many unable to attend school, see friends or family, or escape problems at home.
But for predators looking to sexually exploit young people, successive lockdowns may have presented new opportunities.
Grooming children using money, gifts, food and offers of friendship and affection, is nothing new. However, such offers may have seemed attractive to children who were feeling lonely, lacking routine, or who had little respite from issues at home including everything from financial problems to domestic abuse.
It could take years to understand the extent to which perpetrators have used this to their advantage.
The easing of restrictions means there is now more opportunity for friends, teachers, youth workers and GPs to identify abuse and for children to tell someone they have been exploited.
While awareness of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has improved, still too often, professionals dismiss children as troublemakers or attention-seekers.
Many children feel unable to report abuse until they are much older, if ever. Perpetrators threaten them with terrible consequences if they speak out.
Our specialist services have continued to receive new referrals – with some reporting falls under lockdown followed by increases when schools re-opened – but these will be the tip of the iceberg.
An increased proportion have been for online grooming, such as children being coerced into sharing explicit images. Predators may have taken advantage of children spending more time online while avoiding arousing suspicion in quieter public spaces.
We have seen increasing links between CSE and child criminal exploitation. We have heard of sexual abuse being filmed and used as leverage to coerce children into crimes, which can range from young people being exploited to hold packages for county lines drug dealing. Sexual abuse may be even harder for professionals to detect in the context of criminal exploitation, where some are further behind the curve in identifying children as victims. After the year we’ve had, it’s vital that professionals and the public identify and report signs that a child may be being exploited.
Supporting exploitation victims has been particularly challenging during the pandemic. Our services adapted to help children by phone and online. This support has been more important than ever, but even before Covid, investment was needed in help for victims.
Our new Home Office-funded Support Rethought service is piloting help for children and their parents or carers within six weeks of children reporting sexual abuse or exploitation in three areas. More services like this are needed to end the postcode lottery in support.
Legislative change is also required, including a clear commitment to the support victims should receive when perpetrators are prosecuted as part of the government’s planned Victims Bill. It must also use its Online Harms Bill to make the digital world a safer place for children and young people and better protect them from grooming and exploitation.
Prevention is better than cure, however. We need the government to reverse years of funding cuts which have forced councils to prioritise the statutory services for children already in harm’s way while cutting non-statutory early help services which could have helped protect them from emerging risks.
The pandemic has undoubtedly increased dangers for many children. But it has also brought many of them into sharper focus and thrown down the gauntlet to everyone to meet that challenge head on and better protect vulnerable children.
Improve knowledge of risks
By Emma James, senior policy adviser, Barnardo’s
After 18 months of the pandemic, our initial fears that lockdowns would lead to children becoming more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, amongst other harms, appear to have been justified.
Children have been spending more time isolated, online and out of view from trusted professionals. As a result, police forces reported a substantial rise in the number of child abuse perpetrators approaching children online and the Internet Watch Foundation says reports of child abuse images online increased by almost 50 per cent.
This reality is reflected in Barnardo’s frontline services. In the past year, referrals to our specialist child sexual abuse service in Wales has seen a 125 per cent increase, while those to our Trusted Relationships service in northern England, which provides early support for children at risk of exploitation, are almost three times higher than last year.
It’s not just that more children are at risk of harm, but also that vulnerable children are increasingly experiencing multiple harms. We know that domestic abuse at home can increase a child’s vulnerability to other dangers. Meanwhile, abuse and exploitation are increasingly starting online before moving offline as children are persuaded to meet their abuser “in real life”.
Furthermore, the legacy of the pandemic has left certain groups more vulnerable. Children with unstable family and housing situations are at greater risk as relationships have broken down due to the pressures of lockdown. Our services also cite poverty as a key risk factor in children being both sexually and criminally exploited. In August, 61 per cent of Barnardo’s frontline staff said they were supporting children in or at risk of poverty.
Even before the pandemic, children experiencing sexual abuse and exploitation were too often failed by the system – not identified early enough, or given timely and appropriate support, and in some cases not being protected from further harm.
The pandemic has led us to re-evaluate our methods of reaching children to ensure they can access the right support at the right time. This includes our pandemic-response programme See, Hear, Respond. Funded by the Department for Education and delivered through more than 80 charity partners, it reached more than 100,000 “hidden” vulnerable children not receiving statutory support. The programme delivered detached youth work to more than 27,000 children at risk of being exploited.
Rising levels of online sexual exploitation and abuse has led to increasing opportunities for perpetrators to harm children offline too. We need to ensure we identify and support children and young people who are at risk much earlier, by better understanding the complexity of the harms they face. Re-examining how we assess risk, record data and track trends in abuse will be crucial, as is ensuring professionals have the training and confidence to recognise and record abuse when they suspect it.
All parts of society have a responsibility to protect children from abuse and exploitation and the Online Harms Bill will be a real test. We want to see a reversal in the trend towards end-to-end encryption on social media as well as the reintroduction of measures to prevent children from accessing pornography sites. Moreover, multi-year funding for specialist support for victims and children at risk must be included in the forthcoming Spending Review. Until we take a collective responsibility for protecting children, we will not come close to tackling this heinous crime.
Youth work support vital
By Abbee McLatchie, director of youth work, National Youth Agency (NYA)
The independent inquiry into CSE in Rotherham (2015) was very clear that the relationship between young people and youth workers was one area of successful practice. In NYA’s recent report Between the Line (2021) the number of missing vulnerable children soared through the pandemic with reduced contact time by social care teams and absence from school or college.
Too many young people are not identified until exploitation is deeply ingrained in their lives. The exploitation develops over a long period, including the gaining of “trust” and “loyalty” by gangs or abusive relationships. This brings more pressure being put on young people, exploited themselves and in the grooming of others.
Youth work provides a counterpoint that builds long term, trusted relationships with young people and across communities. Complementary to statutory services, youth work can help identify young people at risk of being drawn into risky behaviour and supports those who disclose or are involved in abusive or exploitative relationships and activities.
Yet there simply aren’t enough qualified youth workers to go around. There is a raft of funded community projects that support children and young people most vulnerable to exploitation. There is a myriad of interventions under different terms, like mentors, coaches and trusted adult workers. However, there is patchwork provision, only some that recognises the role of qualified youth workers.
Using the National Youth Work Curriculum to inform practice, youth workers have a wealth of contextualised safeguarding knowledge, supporting young people within the community, building on their lived experiences. Good youth work recognises that young people need the opportunity to grow and take positive risks. It understands the networks and relationships between groups of young people and between them and their communities, families and cultures. Youth work actively responds to these networks, helping young people to form stronger relationships and collective identities, in their personal and social development.
Having youth work as part of the Department for Education’s Alterative Provision Specialist Taskforce is a positive step. Supported by NYA, this will embed youth workers in multi-disciplinary teams to support vulnerable young people, at risk of dropping out of school, becoming exploited and being involved in gangs and crime. They will deliver targeted, wraparound support to reduce truancy, the risk of involvement in serious violence and improve mental health and wellbeing.
Also, where teams of outreach youth workers are consistent and visible over a sustained period, young people who were involved in county lines have contacted them to ask for help. The outreach team works with the police to ensure the young person is brought back to a place of safety. Their presence – and the trusted relationship with the outreach team – ensures young people feel comfortable to ask for support.
As such, youth workers are trusted adults, with the knowledge and training for age-appropriate support of young people’s development and relationships through adolescence, and the importance of safeguarding.
Recognised as an essential service during the pandemic – and qualified youth workers defined as key workers – youth work provides a safe environment for young people, early support and intervention where needed, while also guiding young people to appropriate services to reduce risks.
