(POP0078)
Written evidence submitted by The Children’s Society (POP0078)
The Children’s Society is a leading national charity committed to improving the lives of thousands of children and young people every year. We work across the country with the most disadvantaged children through our specialist services. Our direct work with vulnerable young people supports missing children, children with experiences of sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, children experiencing and witnessing violence and abuse, children in or leaving care, children experiencing poor mental health and well-being and refugee, migrant and trafficked children. We work to champion the rights of young victims in all that we do.
We work regularly with children and young people who have come into contact with the police in many different contexts. Sadly, all too often these experiences are negative with young people reporting issues at every stage of their journeys through the criminal justice system both when they are viewed as a victim and as a ‘perpetrator’.
We know that children and young peoples’ experiences with individuals representing public bodies such as the police can set a precedent for how they engage with professionals throughout the course of their lives. We consider it vital that every individual working within police forces across England and Wales knows, understands, and respects the added vulnerabilities that come with being a young person as well as the additional factors that may make them particularly vulnerable.
The following response is informed by:
This response should be viewed with the caveat that The Children’s Society believes the age of criminal responsibility is too low, and that at its current level it is in breach of children’s rights as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Article 40.3 of the UNCRC requires member states to establish a minimum age of criminal responsibility and encourages states to set the age of criminal responsibility at 12-years-old, ‘at the very minimum’. There is an urgent need for the government to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 –years-old, as a minimum, to bring it in line with what is set out in the UNCRC. [1] We would also like to note that the future policing priorities will need to respond to challenges raised in recently published independent reviews into children’s social care and child sexual abuse, and new ways of working are needed to address gaps in the systems aimed to protect children from harm.
There is a clear need for a distinct shift in the way the police work with children and young people. Our long history of direct work with young people with experience of the criminal justice system highlights that there is a historic and systemic issue of the police not recognising that all children are vulnerable due to their age and that many children have additional vulnerabilities relating to their personal circumstances. Currently, the police clearly lack the training, knowledge and skills that would enable them to work in a child centred way. In order to rebuild trust between the police, young people and the communities that they live in it is vital that this is addressed.
Our response highlights some of the ways in which we think this can be achieved as well as demonstrates how variation across police forces when it comes to data collection, utilising disruption tactics and understanding policies and procedures has resulted in children and young people being placed at unnecessary risk of harm and often not receiving the response that they need.
Key recommendations:
1.1. Child centred approach. The future police service should develop an approach to children under 18 that is child centred. Police staff should have knowledge of childhood as a period of vulnerability as well as of additional factors that may make children more vulnerable.
1.2. Trauma informed practice. The College of Policing should embed high quality trauma informed practice training as well as high quality training on all issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion into police wide training programmes. This training should be evidence-based and informed by youth voice. It should also be part of continuous police-wide mandatory CPD, and no member of the police force should be allowed to progress within the organisation without being able to demonstrate a holistic commitment to applying these principles in their work.
1.3. Disruption of child exploitation. The police should receive regular training on the relevant legislative frameworks and the tools available to disrupt all forms of child exploitation. There should be local and national systems to monitor the use of disruption measures available to police to disrupt child exploitation, grooming for criminal or sexual abuse and modern slavery and trafficking.
1.4. Multi-agency working. There is a clear need for a framework of good practice that partnerships can use to approach multi-agency working with the aim of disrupting crime and violence affecting young people. The police must work with other agencies to build a bigger picture of a child’s vulnerabilities and plan disruption measures with them.
1.5. Data collection and information sharing. The Police must ensure that they are collecting and storing information about the risks and vulnerabilities facing children and young people in a consistent way to inform their responses to individual children as well as strategic responses to child sexual and criminal exploitation and other crimes affecting children. They must ensure that they have robust and up-to-date information sharing policies and protocols to ensure timely and proportionate information sharing about risks facing missing children and young people. The same system of flags and notifications should be deployed across all police forces to ensure consistency.
1.6. Addressing legislative gaps. There is a need to ensure that legislation provides police with effective tools to protect children from harm and to respond to those who perpetrate crimes against children and young people. Some of the gaps we have identified through our work include: the lack of a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation (CCE), an outdated definition of child sexual exploitation (CSE), the lack of tools to intervene and disrupt grooming of children under 18 for criminal and sexual exploitation as early as possible in the context of face-to-face as well as online contact, and the lack of clarity about the fact that forced concealment of drugs for child criminal exploitation purposes is a form of child abuse. We believe that these legislative gaps need to be addressed by the Government through the review of issues police face in responding to CCE and CSE, reasons behind the high attrition rates in cases of sexual and modern slavery offences against children, and through listening to voices of children and young people who have been in contact with police.
2.1. Every year police forces across the country come into contact with high a number of children through responding to reports of child abuse or exploitation, assessing the risks to missing children or in stop and search processes, arrests and police custody and when out and about in communities. Some of the most vulnerable children we work with in our projects have experiences of police in these different circumstances, yet their experiences will differ significantly depending on whether they are seen by police as a victim or an offender, the part of the country they are in, the level of training the police staff had on different issues that children experience and understanding of their vulnerability. Often their experience of police is a negative one.
2.2. The Children’s Society feels strongly that a modern police service must start by prioritising seeing the child first under all circumstances. A vital element of this is recognising and respecting that, owing to their age, development, dependency on adults and lack of agency over their lives, all children under the age of 18 are vulnerable and require a different approach to adults. Children may have additional vulnerabilities resulting from adverse experiences such as abuse and neglect at home or from persons outside their family, or offline and online grooming.
2.3. Police approaches to children should be child-centred and trauma informed across all levels of the policing workforce, from front line staff to strategic functions. Our practitioners have highlighted that this is not the case in practice, and that often police appear to mistrust young people, which can result in negative and blaming attitudes to the young people they come into contact with. There is a clear need to challenge and rectify this narrative if we are to start to rebuild young people’s trust in the police that sadly many vulnerable young people have lost.
2.4. A modern police service must be able to work in partnership with other agencies to build a full picture of a child’s life, understand presenting behaviours through an inclusive lens, and develop solutions for children that are protective and not punitive in their nature. Policing should embed knowledge and awareness of children’s vulnerabilities to enable the entire force to be active agents in challenging discriminatory practice within and outside the force, acting without bias and prejudice across all the work that they do.
2.5. Further to this, a modern police force must be one that looks inwardly and holds staff of all ranks to account. Whilst relating specifically to the Metropolitan police force, the interim findings from Baroness Casey’s report into police misconduct - which concluded the current misconduct system is not fit for purpose - must be used internally by all forces to assess their practice and make changes where needed.
2.6. Additionally, we believe there is a general accountability issue across police forces when it comes to lower-level protocol issues such as failing to issue a young person with a crime reference number when they report a crime perpetrated towards them or making sure that a young person knows their rights under the Victims Code of Practice.
2.7. These are just two small examples of where we know that the police are frequently failing to exercise their legal duties in relation to supporting children and young people. These everyday practices send a signal to young people that the police do not fully respect them. Alongside looking at big systemic issues, a modern police service needs to address the day-to-day issues that perpetuate the feeling of disrespect many young people report experiencing from the outset of any interaction with the criminal justice system (CJS). These issues can be easily addressed by reinforcing practice protocols already in place.
Trauma informed policing
2.8. We believe that a modern police force must work with young people in a trauma informed way, and that ring-fenced funding must be made available for high quality training, continuous professional development and regular trauma informed supervision for all police staff. There should be a force-wide focus on acknowledging what has happened to a young person and how that may contribute to a situation or behaviour, rather than focusing on the situation or behaviour itself. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are known to often negatively impact on a young person’s behaviour and ability to form healthy relationships with peers and adults. We believe that trauma informed approaches should be adopted by all those working directly with young people.
2.9. The police should have a good understanding of the impact of early childhood trauma and how this can impact behaviour both in the community and a child’s journey through the criminal justice system (CJS). We know the benefits of approaching young people in this way, uncovering ways to support them which are non-punitive and trying to understand the contextual factors influencing a young person’s behaviour. This in turn may enable police to signpost young people for targeted support as well as to support them in multi-agency working. This approach has the potential to tackle the root causes of certain behaviours and prevent young people from having repeat interactions with the police. There are several good examples of UK police forces adopting this approach, including the Violence Reduction Unit project, believed to the first of its kind in the UK, which aims to help Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary culturally adopt trauma informed policing.[2]
2.10. This sentiment is echoed by young people who have been involved in The Children’s Society’s projects. They took part in a youth participation project and recommended that the whole of police workforce should have training on how to work with children and young people, including those who have experienced trauma. Young people who took part in The ‘Big Up The Bill’ Campaign[3] asked police staff for the following:
Understanding of neurodiversity
2.11. We know from our direct work with young people with experience of the CJS that young people with neurodivergent needs are often not treated appropriately by police staff in roles across the force. It is vital that the police have a rich understanding of neurodiversity and how to communicate and work sensitively with young people who present with these needs. This issue is particularly pertinent in police custody.
2.12. There are some known examples of police custody suites that are designed to better meet the needs of people in custody. Nottingham Police Force’s trauma informed custody suite[4] is one of those examples. Professionals who took part in our Custody working group discussion stated that the police do know what good practice looks like and most police custody officers want to be able to work in this way, but there are numerous barriers that prevent them from doing it. One of the main barriers cited is a lack of resources to implement changes and a legacy of estates and custody that are often old with little commitment to invest in them.
“We would love to do things that reflect the needs of neurodiverse young people, but it takes time and money. It took months just to get fidget spinners and foam balls for detainees.” - Police custody staff
2.13. Irrespective of whether a force has the means to make physical changes to its custody settings or not, there are changes that custody staff could implement immediately that we know will have a positive impact on young people with a range of neurodiversity. For example, young people should not be expected to communicate their own specific needs and vulnerabilities, and they should never have to tell their story more than once. We believe it is vital that custody staff ensure that all relevant information about a young person is communicated to new staff as they come on shift – all young people deserve consistency in the way that police staff respond to them. However, we often hear that this is not happening in practice, and young people are being forced to have repeated difficult conversations with staff at every change of shift.
Multi-agency safeguarding conversations
2.14. When a young person is arrested, their vulnerability is often not visible or known to the police, and this often leads to an inappropriate police response and criminalisation of children. We know that better collaboration and information sharing between agencies with safeguarding responsibility for children and young people would enable custody staff to know more about young people’s vulnerabilities. This could lead to improved safety planning, safeguarding in custody and could be a vital tool to intervene early in instances of child criminal exploitation. This could subsequently divert more young people away from future entry into the criminal justice system.
2.15. A child coming into police custody could and should signify the beginning of the end of the exploitation they have experienced. However, we know through our direct work with children and young people that often the warning signs of CCE are missed as custody staff do not have the necessary information available to them. Additionally, our Counting Lives report[5] found that often a lack of a common language amongst professionals acted as a barrier to recognising and safeguarding victims of CCE.
2.16. The test and learn phase of our Disrupting Exploitation programme enabled practitioners on the frontline to test and trial new projects. One project highlighted that the point of arrest was a potential reachable moment for young people at risk of exploitation – a moment when support needs are identified and support offered to a child. The programme collaborated with the Metropolitan Police Service and piloted a multi-agency risk assessment ‘safeguarding conversation’ in a London custody suite to better share vulnerability information at the point of arrest. The pilot also delivered Appropriate Adult provision during Notting Hill Carnival to support young people who were arrested during the event.
2.17. Some of the learning from this work is presented below. The findings have enabled us to identify opportunities where communication between agencies with safeguarding responsibility for children in custody could be strengthened. Ultimately, The Children’s Society would like to see a more child-centred approach to police custody.
2.18. There is currently no standard mechanism for sharing information about a young person’s vulnerabilities between the police and social services. Some children’s services use a flagging system to alert police to certain vulnerabilities, but these flags cannot be viewed by custody officers, and there is currently no mechanism for them to access this information. We also know that risks related to a young person’s release, particularly around debt bondage related to criminal exploitation or escalation of violence against the young person, are not always understood or shared with social services.
2.19. The Children’s Society has worked in partnership with a London Borough to help them improve information sharing between their children’s services and custody staff. We worked with both the local authority’s children’s services and officers from the local police custody suite to develop a set of questions that could be easily answered by the Emergency Duty Team at the local authority and would provide custody staff with the necessary information to carry out an appropriate risk assessment.
2.20. The questions are answered either over the phone or using secure email and are, in most cases, answered within 2 hours of the police making the request. This process enables the police to have a safeguarding conversation about the young person, learn about any neurodiversity and alert social services to the fact that a young person living in their area has been arrested. This enables the local authority to be able to carry out an accurate risk assessment and offer timely support.
Be committed to anti-discrimination
2.21. A modern police force must be anti-racist and anti-discriminatory from the top down. Strategic leaders within the police must make a concerted effort to model an understanding of how racism and other forms of discrimination impact young people. They must put clear and transparent mechanisms in place to deal quickly and effectively with any instances of racism or discrimination by police staff of any rank. These mechanisms must be embedded in daily practice through training and roleplay.
2.22. They must do more to understand how young people experience racism and other forms of discrimination at the hands of the police across all policies and procedures and ensure that these experiences are responded to in strategic and policy planning. The issue of adultification[6] of some children, particularly those from Black communities, must be addressed and changes implemented immediately. There must be ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of these changes, and forces should be held to account if a culture of racism and discrimination persists.
2.23. High quality training on working in an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory way must be a central part of police training as well as part of continuous CPD.
Utilising Multi-agency working and disruption techniques
2.24. To prevent children and young people from entering the CJS and disrupt their grooming and exploitation, a modern police force should utilise disruption techniques and consider other agencies as active safeguarding partners.
2.25. We know that there are many local police forces who already work well as part of multi-agency partnerships to safeguard vulnerable young people, such as Multiagency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs) or Multiagency Safeguarding Hubs (MASHs). However, we know from our direct practice that there is a lack of consistency and effectiveness in the way local safeguarding structures approach and tackle issues relating to young people’s involvement in serious violence and exploitation. We frequently hear from strategic safeguarding leads across the country that a lack of guidance, standards and procedures around how to approach safeguarding in relation to serious violence can result in multi-agency structures having limited reach and buy-in, in turn constraining the overall impact they can have on the lives of children and young people.
2.26. Recently, The Children’s Society’s national Prevention programme carried out research into how Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) meetings are working across England and Wales and found significant appetite for best practice guidelines on how to run these types of multi-agency meetings. During a recent workshop attended by those sitting on MACEs in a variety of roles it was noted, for example, that professionals have the following concerns:
- multi-agency confidence in discussing and responding to contextual safeguarding issues,
- working across local authority borders, and
- how to effectively chair MACE meetings in the absence of training or guidance.
2.27. The Children’s Society believe that there is a clear need for a framework of good practice that partnerships can use to approach multi-agency working with the aim of disrupting crime and violence affecting young people.
2.28. Furthermore, interviews with our practitioners about the response to Violence
Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in their local areas revealed that often the police or other agencies focus on what the young person should have done or could do to keep themselves safe, rather than focusing on disrupting perpetrator’s behaviour.
‘Other times there is a heavy focus on what the young person can do to keep themselves safe rather than it being about the perpetrator.’ - Practitioner interview
2.29. Some examples of good multiagency working were discussed in terms of identifying perpetrators and disrupting exploitation before it occurs.
‘We have police-led monthly meetings, and they look at perpetrators and hotspots and young people that are identified as a concern, and sometimes they are brilliant ways that they can try and disrupt exploitation.’- Practitioner interview
2.30. However, several conversations highlighted difficulties in agencies utilising disruption tools available to them. One practitioner discussed the fact that referrals made into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) are often rejected despite them feeling confident that they reach threshold.
‘And sometimes when you make recommendations they are rejected, so for instance you might make a NRM referral, and they get rejected by the police. In my view it is enough but, in their eyes, they are not enough so they say no.’ - Practitioner interview
2.31. Another practitioner described how the police in their local area often refused to implement Child Abduction Warning Notices (CAWNs) because they felt they were ineffective, but when pressed for alternatives gave nothing in response.
‘With CAWNs, the amount of time we have talked about them, and the police have said they are not worth the piece of paper that they are written on. That is the go-to we get from the police and so we ask what are the other measures that you can put in place and get nothing back.’ - Practitioner interview
2.32. The police must make better use of disruption tools available to them and engage in multi-agency working to ensure that proportionate information about contextual risks is shared and disruption activities put in place.
Young people who go missing
2.33. Children and young people who run away or go missing from home or care can be very vulnerable. Children in care go missing more frequently than other children.
2.34. As highlighted in the Children’s Society’s First Step report, there is an historic issue relating to a lack of consistent data collection on children and young people who go missing from home and care both at a force wide level and nationally. Our research also found variations between police forces in terms of how they interpret risk assessment criteria which can determine the amount of time and resources police will put into a case. This then leads to variations in whether children and young people are offered a Return Home Interview and follow up support after a missing episode.[7]
2.35. Despite the Government commitment to introducing a National Missing Persons Database in 2017, it has still not been introduced. A National Missing Persons Database should allow recording and sharing information about missing children, and, if designed well, could store information in one place, e.g. information about previously identified risks, where young people go missing from and to, and whom they go missing with. It would allow for information to be shared within the police force but also, importantly, with other police forces as children often go missing from one area to another. Currently, police forces use different systems for recording information on missing children that don’t work with each other.
2.36. In the year ending 31 March 2021 43% of looked after children were placed outside of their home local authority, an increase from the previous year. They often go missing in areas they are not familiar with and must travel longer distances to try to get home. They are more likely to be found outside the boundaries of their home local authority areas. We know that a child going missing is an indicator of potential sexual and / or criminal exploitation.[8]
2.37. Children and young people continue to be placed in out of area children’s homes and semi-independent accommodation due to a lack of suitable local provision and the uneven distribution of children’s homes across the country.
2.38. 71% of police forces that submitted evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) inquiry into out of area placements for looked after young people stated that placing looked after children out of area increases their risk of exploitation often resulting in them being coerced into going missing.[9]
2.39. We know that challenges remain regarding poor information sharing of relevant details from Return Home Interviews (RHI) between the police, local authorities and other safeguarding partners regarding risks. Our First Step report found that having a good, shared understanding between police, RHI providers and children’s social care staff on what information is important to be shared from RHIs can help with this and in turn improve the police response to missing young people. [10] Having information sharing protocols and intelligence sharing forms that allow agencies to quickly share proportionate information about risk - such as the Philomena Protocol - can also help drive a shared understanding of risk.
2.40. Improving information sharing from RHIs between safeguarding agencies is something that The Children’s Society and NWGs Benchmarking Tool for missing and exploited children and young people has been supporting local agencies to do. [11] The tool draws on evidence gathered as part of The Children’s Society’s First Step report and learning from our direct work in this area over many years, as well as evidence from the NWG’s extensive experience working on the issue of missing and child exploitation.
2.41. The Benchmarking Tool is a series of overarching and thematic checklists that helps local safeguarding partnerships to assess their response to missing children. The tool aims to support local safeguarding partnerships, or equivalent relevant multi-agency groups, to think holistically about the responses that they provide to children and young people who go missing from home or care.
2.42. Local police forces are key partners when using the tool locally. Areas and forces that have already used the tool in their partnership have reported positive improvements to the local police response to missing children. For example, one area found that the length of time it took to report children and young people as missing was preventing parents and carers reporting them to the police. They made changes to the police call handlers’ script to reduce the amount of time they would be on the phone, thus improving the area’s response to the previously hidden cases of missing children.[12] We would like to encourage police forces to play a key role in introducing the tool in their areas.
Young people at risk of Child Criminal Exploitation
2.43. The Children’s Society works with many young people who are victims of sexual or criminal exploitation who may also be seen as perpetrators of crime by law enforcement agencies. For example, young people who are arrested for drug related offences that result from coercion or control by criminal groups.[13]
2.44. Our frontline services continue to encounter situations where young people, who have clearly been identifiable as victims of trafficking, are not able to benefit from the statutory defence under section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and are criminalised. Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act is a defence which protects young people who plead that they have committed a criminal offence, because they were compelled to do so by virtue of slavery or relevant exploitation.
2.45. During the focus group with our Disrupting Exploitation team the practitioners spoke of the need for increased accountability in the police. They discussed how important it was for police to follow due process and to know and understand the legislation that applied to children. They stressed that there is legislation that can be useful for police to protect children in exploitation situations, but that often, police officers are not familiar with this legislation and fail to apply it.
2.46. Disruption activity and communication should also happen in cases where perpetrators are charged and prosecuted for alternative crimes rather than those reported to the police by the victim. For example, in cases of children who have been criminally or sexually exploited and who are victims of modern slavery, their exploiters may be prosecuted only for drug related crimes rather than on modern slavery charges.[14]
Recommendations
2.47. Child centred approach. The future police service should develop an approach to children under 18 that is child centred and build an understanding of childhood as a period of vulnerability and the additional vulnerabilities that children may face.
2.48. Trauma informed practice. The College of Policing should embed high quality trauma informed practice training as well as high quality training on all issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion into police wide training programmes. This training should be evidence- based and informed by youth voice. High quality and robust trauma informed practice training as well as high quality training on all issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion should be part of continuous police-wide mandatory CPD; no member of the police force should be allowed to progress within the organisation without being able to demonstrate a holistic commitment to applying these principles in their work.
2.49. Inspections. HMICFRS inspections should inspect the extent to which trauma informed and equality, diversity and inclusion practice is embedded at both a force-wide level and across all roles within each force.
2.50. Improving custody. Custody should be seen as a reachable moment allowing for an improved safeguarding response to a child. A set of questions for custody staff promoting a safeguarding approach should be rolled out across England and Wales. Custody staff should make a request for information to a local authorities Emergency Duty Team every time they bring a young person into custody, and relevant safeguarding information should be passed back to children’s services by the police.
2.51. Information sharing. The Police must ensure that they have robust and up-to-date information sharing policies and protocols to ensure timely and proportionate information sharing about risks facing missing children and young people. The same system of flags and notifications should be deployed across all police forces to ensure consistency.
2.52. Improving response to missing children. Local police forces should encourage the use of The Children’s Society’s and NWG’s Benchmarking Tool for missing and exploited children and young people within their local safeguarding partnership.[15]
2.53. Disruption of child exploitation. The police should receive regular training on the relevant legislative frameworks and the tools available to disrupt all forms of child exploitation. There should be local and national systems to monitor the use of disruption measures available to police to disrupt child exploitation, grooming for criminal or sexual abuse and modern slavery and trafficking. The gaps in legislation preventing effective early disruption action by police against those who groom and coerce children should be addressed.
2.54. Victim’s rights. The right of a child to receive support as a victim should not start or be dependent on a child making a report of a crime to police. The onus should be on professionals to identify child victims of crime and provide support to enable them to disclose their experiences and access services to help them recover from trauma they’ve experienced. Police staff should play an active role in preventing and intervening early where children may be victims of crime and ensuring that children are receiving relevant support when they report crimes to police.
3.1. The Children’s Society feel strongly that there is a need for police forces in England and Wales to place a greater focus on prevention. We know that early intervention and prevention are the best tools available to the police and other safeguarding agencies to ensure that vulnerable children and young people are kept safe from harm.
3.2. Our long history of working with vulnerable young people shows us that all too often effective prevention and early intervention measures are not being put in place despite clear signs that young people may be at risk.
3.3. For example, for young people who have experienced exploitation, our direct practice shows that even when they have been identified as being at risk and have been referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), they may still miss out on vital help and support to prevent any issues from escalating then or in the future.
3.4. One of our Disrupting Exploitation practitioners highlighted a case of a young person who, then aged 14, was found by the police a long way from their home with an adult woman in possession of Class A drugs. An NRM referral was made but no support was put in place for this young person. This lack of intervention offered at this reachable moment, meant that the young person was not given the support that they needed, and three years down the line, at 17, they were arrested and charged with robbery.
3.5. This case is not unique, and it is desperately disappointing to hear about cases such as these where there was a clear moment in a young person’s life when an early intervention could have prevented them from experiencing further traumas and becoming even more entangled in criminal activity. We know that it is not the job of the police alone to ensure that young people receive preventative work that they deserve. There is a clear need for better multi-agency working to ensure that the holistic needs of a young person are met, and they receive the specialised and targeted support that they need, early on.
3.6. The working group that we consulted with as part of this process highlighted a number of areas where the police force could improve to support the introduction of more effective preventative measures targeting children and young people at risk of harm.
Measures of success
3.7. A serving officer who took part in our consultation told us that the police are funded based on results, and preventative work is hard to evidence and measure. Therefore, despite police knowledge that this type of work is needed it can be difficult to put in place without adequate funding.
“Even if police are on board with prevention, without the ability to measure something then it can get left out.” – Police custody sergeant
3.8. There was a clear sense that the police are a very target-driven body that is expected to reach clearly defined KPIs, and may struggle to measure the outcomes of some of the softer interventions that they put in place for individuals. It was felt that there is a need for a shift in the way that police forces measure and report on success. A shift towards a more outcomes focused model of reporting, may enable a greater focus on preventative and early intervention work.
Meaningful preventative work
3.9. Throughout the consultation activity with the custody working group it became clear that participants felt frustrated that in most cases they were only able to signpost a young person onto a service that often had a long waiting list and did not always work holistically with the young person. There was a clear sense of the need for more meaningful prevention work.
“If we are going to be talking about prevention it can’t just be that a child gets arrested and we sign post them on. It needs to be multi –agency, and we need to lower thresholds. We need to be recognising a 12-year-old stealing a bike as a sign that we need to look at the entire context of their lives and see if there is an intervention we can make at that stage.” – Children’s Society Practitioner
Better police understanding of child criminal exploitation
3.10. Whilst there is a fairly good understanding of what constitutes county lines exploitation, in the absence of a statutory definition of CCE, we know that there is a varied understanding and response to young people who are victims of criminal exploitation, and that this understanding is not always related to the county lines model.
3.11. We recommend that all police personnel should receive training on how to identify children targeted for criminal exploitation or exploited through involvement in forced criminality. Furthermore, they should be made aware of provisions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 that can be used to disrupt these forms of exploitations. This training should cover issues related to children who are British nationals exploited in the ‘county line’ drug networks and children trafficked into the UK from abroad.
3.12. Young people who go missing and are being criminally exploited are still often seen as ‘making a choice’ and dealt with as offenders rather than victims of trafficking and criminal exploitation. We believe that the provisions contained in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to protect and disrupt all forms of exploitation and trafficking are often not adequately applied in cases of children who go missing and are trafficked to sell drugs in other areas or for other forms of criminal exploitation.
3.13. The latest statistical release from the National Crime Agency (NCA) into the use of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) saw 4,586 potential victims of modern slavery being referred into the NRM in quarter 3 of 2022, the highest number of referrals received in a quarter since the NRM began in 2009. This has, in part been attributed to an increase in county line exploitation referrals within labour exploitation and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being referred the NRM. However, we believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg and many children and young people who have been exploited by criminal groups are not being seen as victims and are more likely to be criminalised as a result.[16]
3.14. In our practice we see cases of both British children and children trafficked from abroad being exploited criminally. We also regularly find that the local authorities do not have sufficient information on where their young person was picked up by the police so they are not able to fully risk assess where to place the young person and which placement locations would present risks.
3.15. Some of the boys and young men we work with have also disclosed that they suffered serious sexual abuse and violence by their traffickers in the UK but are very reluctant to disclose this. It is important that frontline practitioners in police and social care are trained in using a trauma-informed approach for working with young people.
3.16. We know from our direct practice and policy work that there is significant variation across police forces when it comes to the way that vulnerabilities and risks relating to CCE are flagged across multiple police systems. Without a consistent approach to this we know that the type of response that young people receive varies from force to force. It is thus vital that there is greater consistency across police forces in how CCE flags are used.
“Reachable moments – everyone understands them in the context of youth violence – like a young person getting stabbed, people can relate to that. But when you have a child who is picked up for possession with intent to supply, I think there is a disconnect there – people seem to find it easier to identify with a child who has been stabbed and think that they can reach them now – I haven’t seen the reachable moment-thing done within the police context and have been working in a police station for 2 years.” – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
Recommendations
3.17. Measuring prevention and intervention police work. There must be a force wide shift in reporting on and measuring outcomes of police intervention and prevention work. There is a clear need for a move away from the payment-by-results model currently in operation, and funding should be provided to police forces wishing to invest in meaningful and well evidenced prevention work.
3.18. Better response to children experiencing CCE. A lot of training and protocols are already in place but are not put into practice. Also, police officers’ knowledge of legislation and the tools available to disrupt and prevent CCE is often incomplete. Police forces should ensure all police officers, especially those newly joining the force, participate in training on CCE and how to respond to young people who are victims of CCE. Knowledge and understanding of this area and relevant legislative approaches should be regularly updated and tested.
3.19. Identifying potential victims of CCE. The College of Policing and policing bodies should mandate that all police personnel should receive training on how to identify children targeted for criminal exploitation or exploited through involvement in forced criminality and made aware of provisions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 that can be used to disrupt these forms of exploitations. This training should cover issues related to children who are British nationals exploited in the ‘county line’ drug networks and children trafficked into the UK from abroad.
3.20. NRM referrals for criminally exploited children. The College of Policing and policing bodies should ensure that the Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidance on Modern Slavery is followed and children who are coerced into criminal exploitation are referred into NRM. The guidance should be updated to give advice on responses to young adults aged over 18 who are care leavers. The guidance should also stipulate what ongoing monitoring should be in place to ensure that victims of trafficking are not victimised again through other forms of forced criminality.
3.21. Missing children. HMIC through their inspections of police forces should assess the effectiveness of police responses to children who go missing and are trafficked for criminal exploitation, including how they signpost children to services providing advocacy and early support.
Community policing
5.1. In a consultation session with The Children’s Society practitioners, there was a clear sense that police forces should be focusing on community policing roles and that PCSOs need to have an authentic interest and understanding in the community that they are working in.
“It is the most important thing we need, people that actually want to make change in their communities – people that want to be there – not just there to tick boxes to get promoted – these roles should be seen as important and should be incentivised better.” – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
5.2. The role of PCSO needs to be protected and remain a purely community based one. They must seek to understand existing perceptions that people have about the police especially in those areas where there is frequent police presence and truly embed themselves into the community.
“With young people and families that I work with they are in areas which are often high crime areas – so what they see of the police is cars coming out, arrests being made, people being taken away. With policing they really need to understand the holistic multi-layers of what is going on in people’s lives – you don’t get that by just coming in once or twice, you have to really live in an area and be embedded within a community to understand it – if the police spend more time understanding the areas then better community work could be done with young people and families.” - – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
5.3. We heard about the importance of community police officers having the capacity to build relationships with young people and take on more of a detached youth work style role. There was a clear sense that there has been a reduction in the amount of time the PCSOs are able to spend really getting to know and understand the communities they serve.
“PCSOs used to come in and play football, it meant that the kids had the chance to play with them, laugh with them and build relationships so if there were any instances where they had to arrest the police had a good context and understanding of their lives.’ – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
Practice example of police building relationship with young people
The Children’s Society run a session at a youth centre in West London in partnership with the police in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The police funded a 10-week boxing programme for young people in the community and provide the boxing equipment and refreshments for each session. They get involved with the session and participate in the boxing with the young people. They sit with the young people and play with them after the boxing has ended. The young people that the police identified and invited to the sessions are those who haven’t necessarily come to the police station before, but intelligence suggests that they are at risk of having future police involvement.
There are two youth workers present at the session who speak to the young people and identify if they have any additional or unmet needs that they can support with. Through these sessions The Children’s Society have been able to build relationships with these young people and their families and have been able to offer support where needed.
The community police officers have been able to build good relationships with these young people and their families. |
5.4. Whilst we know that many PCSOs form strong bonds with young people and their communities, it is not always these officers that have the first interactions with a young person if there is suspicion that a crime has been committed. It will be the response team that attend an incident – these officers often have not had the same level of training as PCSOs in terms of working in a child centred and trauma informed way.
5.5. An example of good practice discussed during our consultation session included a system in Hampshire where when the force receives a domestic abuse related call, a local domestic abuse charity worker attends as well so there is an additional person there to be able to speak to the family and get a good understanding of what is going on for them.
Increasing the visibility and importance of PCSOs in communities
5.6. Our practitioners spoke about how the police force shouldn’t necessarily prioritise or focus on individual roles, but that everyone within their own role, should strive to understand their responsibilities and duties. In terms of community policing, they said that issues such as after-care and victim support needed to be improved in order to build trust with communities.
“PCSOs don’t arrest, they are there to forge relationships with community.” – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
5.7. Highlighting the importance and relevance of PCSOs, the practitioners said that it was important for police forces to protect PCSO roles for what they were intended to be.
5.8. In terms of Safer School Police Officers, our practitioners said that in their view, these roles didn’t always work well because they don’t have the mechanisms in place to share information and the role is not supported by the police. Furthermore, they said that there is often no contextual safeguarding in schools, and the role is created and then ignored.
5.9. Practitioners identified number of key factors and actions to improving community policing and building trust. These were:
- Accountability
- Looking inwards, and
- Training and relearning what they should already know.
5.10. They added that communities should be included in all future consultations on how to improve the police force, and their concerns and views should be valued and respected.
Recommendation
5.11. The role of Police Community Support Officer must be protected to remain exclusively in the communities that they serve, they must demonstrate a commitment to authentically engaging and building relationships with children and families in their communities and be given time and space to develop relationships in the way that best fits the people in their localities.
6.1. Sir Mark Rowley has made a commitment to focus on professionalism, raising standards and rooting out those who do not deserve to be serving Metropolitan (Met) Police Officers. He takes over the roll as commissioner at a time when trust in the Met is low and, in some communities, non-existent.
6.2. There is a clear need for the Met to readdress power imbalances between the police, children and young people and the communities that they live in.
6.3. In discussing the need for a greater focus on accountability, and the fact that officers should be held accountable for their behaviour, practitioners discussed how, following the Child Q case and the subsequent inquiry, parents in the school community had highlighted the need for the police to come into the school and issue a public apology to the students, parents, and staff who had all suffered from the huge breach of trust that took place. Such an action would demonstrate that the Met is serious about owning up to its mistakes and being accountable to the communities it serves.
6.4. The question of how to address the relationship between police and young people is seen by practitioners as a challenging one that has no easy solution. They report that offered the chance, young people are not necessarily going to choose to engage with the police given the history, publicity and many personal experiences with law enforcement. The lack of trust and accountability is also seen by our practitioners as a generational issue; a perspective and lived experience that is passed down.
6.5. Practitioners suggested that much of what needs to be done is simply for the police force to follow due process, to know and apply the relevant legislation, and to develop robust training and revision of required duties.
6.6. An example of an effective training strategy was the delivery of sexual violence and misogyny training right when an officer starts at the police force. One practitioner explained how it could be really challenging for officers who had been on the force for a long time before receiving such training, to change their views and attitudes. Whereas an officer who has just joined the force and participates in this kind of training will be able to apply what they have learned from day one.
6.7. Thinking outside the box – our practitioners spoke of the need for funding youth programmes that are well evidenced, holistic and that could help in reframing conversations. They felt there was a lack of creative thinking when it came to projects for young people, which tend to mostly focus on a stereotypical and narrow idea of what young people are into nowadays, i.e. rap or sports.
“Why is it always a music project? Young people are into all sorts of things, like the stock market for example. We have to offer them something that they can benefit from.” – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
6.8. Practitioners said that more funding and attention should be place on diversionary programmes that over time have been defunded and phased out. Police should have conversations with young people who have committed a crime that reframe their skills so that young people can apply these skills in more positive ways.
“Instead of arresting someone for selling drugs for example, why don’t we say they have the power to reframe the conversation, that they have a useful set of transferable skills that can be put to use elsewhere.” – Disrupting Exploitation focus group
6.9. An example from The Children’s Society’s diversionary activity is the CLIMB project. CLIMB, partnered with the West Mercia Police and Crime Commissioner, is a unique programme providing positive activities for young people who may otherwise be drawn into criminal activity. The project offers sports, dance, arts music and more. They work with young people who are missing school or college, starting to be reported as missing, or at risk of being drawn into criminal activity. CLIMB helps young people build their resilience and so they're better able to deal with the challenges of modern childhood. This transformative service will help children develop new skills, form real friendships and learn how to recognise people and situations that might put them at risk. Working with schools, police, social care, activity providers and many other groups across the region, together we will build safer communities, where children can be hopeful about their future.
Recommendations
6.10. Met police: The Met must make bold steps to readdress power imbalances between the police, children and young people and the communities that they live in. They must address issues of systematic racism, misogyny, homophobia and other prejudices through continuous CPD and high-quality trauma informed practice training as well as high quality training on all issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion. Training and CPD must be evidence- based and informed by youth voice. No member of the Met should be allowed to progress within the organisation without being able to demonstrate a holistic commitment to applying these principles in their work.
6.11. The Met must ensure that they are up to date with safeguarding and process documents in relation to working with children and young people, they must be confident in knowing and applying relevant legislation that helps keep children and young people safe.
7.1. We know that a significant barrier to national conviction rates in relation to crimes perpetrated towards children and young people is young people not supporting a police investigation which often stems from distrust and previous negative experiences.
7.2. In 2017 the Children’s Society submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to police forces in England and Wales concerning the time period from 1 October 2015 to 31 September 2016 to try and gain a better understanding of the rates of reported sexual offences perpetrated towards children and young people as well as the rates of conviction for these offences. We found that just 8.3% of sexual offences perpetrated towards children and young people resulted in charges and summons. Further analysis revealed that the most common reason (27%) for cases not resulting in action against the perpetrator was evidential difficulties linked to victims not supporting police investigations.
7.3. The final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICAS) reported that only 7% of victims and survivors informed the police at the time of a sexual offence and only 18% told the police at any point. When allegations are reported to the police, fewer still result in conviction. The IICSA report highlights high attrition rates in recent year. [17]
7.4. We know that negative experiences with the police can result in children and young people not wanting to continue with or even pursue criminal proceedings. For example, children and young people who have previous negative experience of statutory services, including police, often do not believe that they will be taken seriously or that they and their families will be kept safe during police investigations.
7.5. Young people’s experience of the police is not always related to their experiences of reporting an offence against them. Many young people encounter police in a variety of situations; from day-to-day contact in the community to being found after a missing episode. Research highlights that children’s overall impression of the criminal justice system could largely be influenced by their experience with individual police officers.[18] If these day-to-day contacts and experiences are not positive, it may be more difficult for a young person to trust the police when it comes to supporting a criminal case.
7.6. As outlined above, we believe that a police force that acts without prejudice and takes account of diversity, inclusion, and context in all interactions with young people will foster more positive and trusting relationships with young people across England and Wales. This sentiment is echoed by what young people we work with tell us.[19]
7.7. Our FOI found that the second most common reason for cases not ending in conviction rates was evidential difficulties where victims have supported the police investigation. Around 26% of cases where victims were children under 18 had this outcome recorded.
7.8. Building evidence for prosecution is a very important issue of course. The CPS crime report for 2015-16 indicated that 60% of successful prosecution in rape cases were due to the defendant pleading guilty which may suggest that the evidence presented would have been difficult to contest in court. Understanding what good evidence can be built by professionals and other adults involved in a child’s life is crucial to ensure that the onus is not on a child to provide all the evidence needed.
7.9. From our direct work we know that the successful outcome of investigation often depends on the young person’s ability to provide evidence. Considering that many children and young people can take a long time to feel ready to disclose abuse and, due to trauma experienced, they may find it difficult to recall details that would be sufficient for successful outcome.
7.10. In many cases young people who experience sexual offences are known to a range of agencies and statutory services who may hold vital pieces of evidence that could help with prosecution. For example, they may be aware that a child is going missing and spending time with a person and there is a risk of sexual abuse. Currently, there is little guidance for professionals in safeguarding roles about what information would be helpful as possible evidence in cases where a child discloses abuse.
Recommendation
7.11. Identifying and sharing good practice in taking action against perpetrators. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners should work with those areas that have a higher rate of prosecutions for sexual offences against children to identify and share good practice across other forces.
Data on victims – child sexual abuse and exploitation, child criminal exploitation and modern slavery
7.12. Despite the increased efforts across all agencies to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation, the true scale of sexual offending against children and services they receive in response is still not fully known. This is firstly, because many victims of sexual offences do not report these crimes to the police and secondly because the data published does not always differentiate between the offences and outcomes as experienced by children and adults. Currently there are significant gaps in the data about children’s experiences of crime.
7.13. Numerous reports and governments strategy highlighted the shocking scale of sexual offences against children, including in the latest strategy on Tackling Child Abuse. However shocking the scale of reported sexual offending against children is, it is even more shocking how few of the crimes reported result in the perpetrators being charged with a sexual offence, and that even fewer result in a successful conviction. The recent Rape Review exposed the failure of the criminal justice system in relation to children aged 16 and 17 and adults, but failures of the system to prosecute those who offend against children are equally serious.
7.14. In March 2020, the ONS released a compendium of data on child abuse and the criminal justice system in England and Wales, covering the period up to March 2019.[20] This included statistics and research on child abuse from across government and the voluntary sector, giving a clearer picture of child sexual abuse victims’ experience of the system. It showed, for example, that 73,260 sexual offences against children were reported to the police, 8 814 child abuse cases taken to trial, and 6 971 cases ended in conviction.
7.15. The mismatch between the reported number of child abuse cases and eventual convictions shows the system is not working for young victims. However, this compendium and many of the data sets below it was an ad hoc rather than a regular release, and equivalent data will not be released until March 2023. This leaves Government and the sector without vital evidence that could be used to positively shape criminal justice processes.
7.16. Due to the current way in which crime data is published, it is very hard to track a crime committed against children from when it is recorded through to prosecution and sentencing. This makes it harder to understand why and at what points crimes against children, including sexual abuse and modern slavery cases, drop out the system. It is difficult to understand the experiences of children from different groups and of different ages who are victims of crime.
7.17. Further, due to the way the data is collected, despite older teenagers being at high risk of sexual offences they are often not included in numbers reported on child sexual abuse. The Child Sexual Abuse strategy acknowledged that: ‘Over 83,000 child sexual abuse offences (including obscene publications) were recorded by police in the year ending March 2020, an increase of approximately 267% since 2013. Due to the way this data is collected, and different sexual offences defined, these figures do not capture certain sexual offences committed against 16 and 17-year-olds, such as rape, as well as sexual assault committed against children over the age of 13’. Our analysis of police reported crimes data shows that these two categories of sexual offences make up the biggest groups of sexual offences reported to police[21]. This indicates that the true scale of recorded sexual offences against children is much higher.
7.18. It is crucial that we build a better understanding of the scale of offences committed against children and the journey a young victim or witness takes through the criminal justice system, including related outcomes of police investigations and criminal proceedings.
7.19. Better data collection would improve accountability, by more accurately highlighting the number of cases that drop out as they progress through the system, at which points they drop out, and crucially a clearer picture of why cases drop out at certain points. Only this base level of knowledge would allow the Government and local authorities to plan and deliver the support children need, such as through registered intermediaries and child independent sexual violence advisors.
7.20. There are also no published numbers on the scale of the use of disruption instruments available to the police, such as Sexual Risk Order, Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders used to protect children, including vulnerable 16- and 17-year-olds, from abuse. A response to a written parliamentary question in 2019, showed that 39 Modern Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders were issued by the Crown Court and 15 Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders by the Magistrates’ Court[22]. Given the scale of suspected exploitation, these figures clearly indicate that these orders are not being used extensively enough. The IICSA report into also highlighted this gap[23]. The requirement to analyse and publish these data sets should be part of police business.
7.21. Further to the data set on the scale of the issue, it is also important that data is collated to reflect how children experience the system that is meant to support them. Our practitioners report on a fragmented system that is difficult to navigate, that is process- and label driven with long waiting times. Moreover, the system differs from one place to another, with no one taking responsibility for making children’s experiences within the system positive. To make the system centred on the needs of the child, it needs to be understood from the point of view of children caught up in the system. Data and mapping of those experiences is needed to deliver for child victims of crime.
Scale of child exploitation
7.22. The true scale of child exploitation is not known, many children who are being exploited or groomed fall through the cracks of statutory support and therefore are not identified in official statistics. This issue has also been highlighted in the recent report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse[24]. Children in Need (CiN) statistics, collected by children’s social services, is a helpful starting point to understand the number of children at risk of exploitation or being exploited. CiN figures highlight that many needs assessments of children referred to social services due to concerns about potential harm, identify factors strongly associated with child criminal or sexual exploitation. Whilst NRM data is often the tip of the iceberg, from 1 October 2019 to 31 September 2020 a total of 5,115 children were referred to NRM, of them 2,550 due to concerns of criminal exploitation, 477 due to sexual exploitation, 191 due to combination of sexual or criminal exploitation[25].
7.23. Without a clear statutory definition of what constitutes child criminal exploitation, it is challenging for agencies to identify victims of CCE, address their needs, and collect data in order to better understand the extent of the problem on a local, regional and national level. The collection of reliable data on victims of crime by age and type of crime, and outcomes of investigations would facilitate the monitoring of performance across different police forces.
7.24. The Children’s Society are therefore advocating for the introduction of a single statutory definition of child criminal exploitation in primary legislation. This definition would be the start improving the child protection and criminal justice response to this form of exploitation and hopefully lead to more successful prosecutions of perpetrators of child criminal exploitation. This definition would be used across law enforcement and safeguarding agencies to aid identification and response to children under the age of 18 who are used and exploited by criminal networks or individuals to undertake acts that constitute criminal offence. The aim of a definition should be to reflect that children can be exploited for any criminal offence, including in county lines drug dealing or shoplifting or for financial fraud purposes, and that adequate recording of data across agencies will aid in the formulation of coherent responses to this issue.
Recommendations
7.25. Statutory definition of CCE. Including a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation in the Victims’ Bill would strengthen the serious violence duty and ensure the duty is focused on safeguarding children from exploitation and violence.
7.26. Data on child victims of crime and outcomes of investigations: Data collection on crimes and outcomes of crimes against children, by children’s age, gender and ethnicity, would help to identify systems that work or don’t work. Data should be available at national and local level.
7.27. Data on the use of disruption tools: Collection of data on the use of disruption tools to keep child victims safe should be required under the Victims’ Bill.
7.28. Police role in the implementation of IICSA recommendations. The final IICSA report makes several recommendations aimed at improving responses to children who are victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. Police should play a crucial role in their implementation.
8.1. The Children’s Society believes that a modern police force should fully understand and promote the rights of children who may still be seen and treated as offenders despite the offences happening as a result of being a victim of exploitation. We work with many young people who are victims of sexual or criminal exploitation who may also be seen as perpetrators of crime by law enforcement agencies, for example, young people who are arrested for drug related offences that result from coercion or control by criminal groups[26],[27].
8.2. There is a need to recognise the complexity of response and, to ensure that children and young people’s rights as victims of crime are always prioritised. Law enforcement agencies should be prompted to consider possible exploitation when responding to children arrested for what is seen as offending behaviour. Children should be offered access to advocacy and support services in these circumstances.
8.3. Several of our national programmes support young people who are criminally exploited and are victims of trafficking and Modern Day Slavery. Young people who are criminally exploited are often forced or coerced to commit crime – such as the selling of drugs, committing theft, or carrying a weapon. Therefore, their victim status becomes complicated by their offender status. This dual status - and the emphasis on crimes committed - means that criminally exploited young people often do not end up receiving the right support for the crimes committed against them and are instead punished for the crimes they have been forced or coerced to carry out. This is further compounded by race and gender, as young black boys who are exploited are far more likely to be criminalised compared to their white female counterparts through a process of ‘adultification’[28] whereby their vulnerability linked to childhood is denied by professionals.
8.4. Our frontline services continue to encounter problems where young people, who have clearly been identified as victims of trafficking, are not able to benefit from the statutory defence under section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and are instead criminalised. Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act is a defence which protects young people who plead that they have committed a criminal offence, because they were compelled to do so by virtue of slavery or relevant exploitation.
8.5. In one case, The Children’s Society supported several Vietnamese children who were found in cannabis factories. Though they had received positive Reasonable Grounds decisions, criminal cases against them were pursued through to trial because they had not yet received Conclusive Grounds decisions through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). Our practitioners asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to reconsider the decision to charge these young people and request special measures to protect them. However, as they were deemed to be perpetrators and not victims by the CPS, this was not possible. The impact of the process on the young people was significant and detrimental.
8.6. We have also encountered problems arising from insufficient knowledge among criminal and immigration solicitors, social workers and other frontline agencies working with young people about the Modern Slavery Act and the protections that it offers. For example, due to a lack of awareness among criminal solicitors, our practitioners need to do extensive advocacy on behalf of the young people they support in order to obtain positive outcomes from solicitors. Similarly, as there is no mandatory training on the NRM or Modern Slavery Act for social workers, many remain unaware of the legislation or their duties in relation to the act and what they should be doing to safeguard children as part of it.
8.7. In one service area (London), we have observed a lack of consistency in terms of solicitors’ understanding of the Section 45 defence, as well as use of the NRM. Staff state that they have observed a pattern in their area, reporting that if a young person has a hearing coming up, solicitors use the NRM as a ‘buzzword’, but are not entirely sure what the purpose of the NRM is in court. If a Conclusive Grounds decision has not yet been reached, the court hearing will often be adjourned. If the case is repeatedly adjourned, this has a hugely detrimental effect on a young person’s wellbeing, as well as preventing them from accessing the support services they are entitled to.
8.8. In addition, even where a child is not entitled to Section 45 defence because they are charged with a Schedule 4 offence (excluded from S45 defence due to the serious nature of the offence committed) where that offence has been committed as a result of being a victim of exploitation or modern slavery, they still need to be provided with support to help them recover from the trauma of exploitation and to prevent any further exploitation on release. Without such support the risk of re-victimisation and repeat offending on release remains high and children are failed.
Recommendations
8.9. Monitoring of support provided to victims. Police forces and PCCs should put in place systems for monitoring how the victim’s rights to be informed about the progress of investigations, outcomes of investigations, access to therapeutic support are implemented locally and to adjust practices as needed.
8.10. Training on working with children. As recommended earlier in this document we advocate for all staff in law enforcement agencies to receive training on how to work with children, in addition to mandatory safeguarding training. The training should cover the use of appropriate language.
8.11. Voice of a child. We believe that PCCs should commission opportunities/ projects to enable children who are victim of crimes and those who come into contact with police to provide feedback on their experiences - not only in the cases where there is a wish to make a complaint.
Gaps in legislation
The Children’s Society’s research and learning from practice identifies gaps in legislation that, in our view, prevent effective identification and support for child victims, act as a barrier to prosecution of offenders, and create confusion in relation to what constitutes a crime and how to disrupt it.
Some of the issues that we identified in our research:
Some of these gaps have also been recognised and highlighted in research by other organisations[33],[34].
Recommendations
8.12. Right of children as victims of crime. We believe that the Victims’ Bill should recognise and ensure that children receive specialist support from law enforcement and other agencies when they are victims of crime.
8.13. Introduction of statutory definition of CCE. We believe the Victims’ Bill should introduce the statutory definition of child criminal exploitation to ensure that children exploited criminally are seen and treated as victims first.
8.14. Addressing legislative gaps. We believe that legislative gaps preventing effective protection of children from crime need to be addressed by the Government. This should be done through a review of issues that police forces face in responding to CCE and CSE, reasons behind the high attrition rates in cases of sexual and modern slavery offences against children, and through listening to voices of children and young people who have been in contact with police.
8.15. Earlier identification and support for victims. The right of a child to receive support as a victim should not start or be dependent on a child making a report of a crime to police. The onus should be on professionals to identify child victims of crime early on, and to provide support to enable them to disclose their experiences and receive services to help them recover from trauma experienced. The Victims’ Bill should define the child victim of crime and ensure that the definition includes those children who have committed an offence as a result of their own exploitation. When a child comes into contact with law enforcement services, this should serve as a trigger for assessment of the child’s needs as a potential victim of abuse and exploitation.
8.16. Disruption activity against perpetrators. We believe that there should be a requirement on police, as part of a child safeguarding response, to undertake disruption activity against the perpetrator. Thee should also be a requirement around the reporting and oversight of the disruption activity.
8.17. Earlier disruption enabled. We also believe that the gaps in legal tools available to police to undertake early disruption activity against persons who groom children for abuse and exploitation should be addressed. We believe that ‘coercive and controlling behaviour in relation to a child for abuse and exploitation purposes’ needs to be defined in the law. This would build on the successful concept of coercive and controlling behaviour between people aged 16+ in the context of domestic violence and enable law enforcement to disrupt exploitation earlier in the cycle.
8.18. Offender management in relation to modern slavery crimes. Where the prosecution happens on alternative charges rather than charges related to offences committed against the child (eg. drug related offences in cases where CSE or Modern Slavery offences were also present) child victims of crime should still be informed, consulted and safeguarded when the perpetrator is released. The legislation and guidance should stipulate and clarify how these offenders should be monitored on release in relation to the ongoing risk they pose to children. They cannot be added to the Sex Offender register or issued with Sexual Harm Prevention Orders or Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders as they have not received a conviction for these crimes.
November 2022
[1] The United Nations Convention on the Rights if the Child, 1990. Available at: https://downloads.unicef.org.uk/wpontent/uploads/2010/05/UNCRC_united_nations_convention_on_the_rights_of_the_child.pdf?_ga=2.57813290.1021078853.1569841619-996489424.1569841619
[2] https://www.hampshire-pcc.gov.uk/commissioner-champions-trauma-informed-policing
[3] Big up the bill - Tackling Child Exploitation (researchinpractice.org.uk)
[4] Northamptonshire Police introduce ‘Trauma-Informed Custody’ for detained children | Northamptonshire Police (northants.police.uk)
[5] The Children’s Society, Counting Lives. 2019. Available at: https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/counting-lives-report.pdf
[6] Davis, J., Marsh, N. 2020. Boys to Men: The cost of adultification in safeguarding responses to Black boys. Listen Up Research, UK. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00009?crawler=true
[7] the-first-step.pdf (childrenssociety.org.uk)
[8] Children looked after in England including adoption: 2020 to 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), no-place-at-home.pdf (childrenssociety.org.uk)
[9] https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/no-place-at-home.pdf
[10] the-first-step.pdf (childrenssociety.org.uk)
[11] Missing Children Response Assessment Tool (surveygizmo.eu)
[12] Missing Children Benchmarking Tool - Brief.pdf - Google Drive
[13] Turner, A. et al 2015 Counting lives. Responding to children who are criminally exploited. The Children’s Society. https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/counting-lives-report.pdf, www.iicsa.org.uk/document/child-sexual-exploitation-organised-networks-investigation-report-february-2022, https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00009?crawler=true
[14] Disrupting child exploitation. A proposal for legislative change The Children’s Society February 2021
[15] For more information about how police forces could use the Benchmarking Tool locally please get in touch with Hannah.Chetwynd@childrenssociety.org.uk
[16] Modern Slavery: National Referral Mechanism and Duty to Notify statistics UK, Quarter 3 2022 – July to September - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[17] The Report of the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse - October 2022 | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
[18] Becket et all (2015) Children and young people’s perspectives on the police’s role in safeguarding: a report for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies
[19] Big up the bill - Tackling Child Exploitation (researchinpractice.org.uk)
[20] Child sexual abuse in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
[21] Briefing on attrition rates in reported cases of sexual offences against children under 18. The Children’s Society available from https://tce.researchinpractice.org.uk/briefing-on-attrition-rates-in-reported-cases-of-sexual-offences-against-children-under-18/
[22] Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders and Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders, Questions for Ministry of Justice. 2020. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-12-30/133074
[23] IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. 2022. Child sexual exploitation by organised neworks – investigation report https://www.iicsa.org.uk/document/child-sexual-exploitation-organised-networks-investigation-report-february-2022
[24] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
[25] National Referral Mechanism statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[26] 16 IIASCA report also outlines how children who are victims of sexual exploitation are seen as offenders. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/document/child-sexual-exploitation-organised-networks-investigation-report-february-2022
[27] Turner, A. et al 2015 Counting lives. Responding to children who are criminally exploited. The Children’s Society. https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/counting-lives-report.pdf
[28] Davis, J., Marsh, N. 2020. Boys to Men: The cost of adultification in safeguarding responses to Black boys. Listen Up Research, UK. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00009?crawler=true
[29] Pona, I., Baillie, D. 2015. Old Enough to Know Better? Why Sexually exploited older teenagers are being overlooked. The Children’s Society. 2015 https://shop.childrenssociety.org.uk/old-enough-to-know-better-digital-download.html
[30] Disrupting child exploitation. A proposal for legislative change The Children’s Society February 2021
[31]ibid ;
[32] Turner, A. et al 2015 Counting live. Responding to children who are criminally exploited. The Children’s Society. Available from https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/counting-lives-report.pdf
[33] IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. 2022. Child sexual exploitation by organised neworks – investigation report https://www.iicsa.org.uk/document/child-sexual-exploitation-organised-networks-investigation-report-february-2022 ; CRES report
[34] Crest Advisory. 2020. County Lines and Looked after Children. https://b9cf6cd4-6aad-4419-a368-724e7d1352b9.usrfiles.com/ugd/b9cf6c_83c53411e21d4d40a79a6e0966ad7ea5.pdf