The rapidly increasing numbers of child victim of slavery referred into the NRM in recent years is a tragic indictment of the ruthlessness of criminals willing to exploit some of the youngest people in our society for their own ends. Child victims come from a large number of different countries and backgrounds and include those trafficked into the UK to be exploited through domestic servitude or criminal exploitation, as well as UK children groomed and exploited through county lines and other forms of criminal exploitation. Although there are clearly substantial differences between the different circumstances, all of these instances constitute child safeguarding issues and the responsibility of local authorities to provide appropriate support to those harmed by or at risk from them is clear.
Particularly in the case of victims of county lines criminal exploitation, child slavery cases will often constitute a very different pattern of risk and impact to traditional child safeguarding which focuses on preventing children from being harmed within the home. There is already significant work underway to develop child safeguarding practice and social care support to reflect these more recent patterns of exploitation. A third of councils are signed up to implementing the contextual safeguarding framework developed by the University of Bedfordshire, with other councils also working with partners on approaches to extra-familial harm. These approaches recognise the extra-familial risks children may be exposed to through the places they visit and the people they associate with and seek to target these risks through the lens of child protection.
There is differential progress on this issue and clearly there is more to do to expand and embed this approach so that the learning from early adopter areas is further developed and shared across all councils. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which is due to report in Spring 2022, is looking closely at the support provided to children facing these kinds of risks to identify how practice can be improved further. This includes considering how all statutory safeguarding partners work together, and the role of schools. There is also a focus in the review on the issue of children in care being placed in children’s homes out of their local area due to a lack of sufficiency of placements, which can make them vulnerable to criminal exploitation. The issue of insufficiency is one councils have been raising with the Government for some time, and we hope the review and the associated investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority will help to address this challenge.
There is a continued need to incorporate extra-familial safeguarding risks into early professional training and ongoing professional development across all safeguarding partners, so that people understand current child safeguarding risks from the outset of and throughout their careers; know how to engage appropriately with children who are victims, and can make informed and child centred judgements about the context in which children are making decisions; and are aware of the most effective ways to support children who have become victims of modern slavery and prevent it from reoccurring. Equally, training and practise should emphasise the importance and legality of sharing data about children who are at risk; this challenge is consistently highlighted in serious case reviews and improved understanding and confidence must be embedded across all agencies.
Exclusion from school is a significant indicator of vulnerability amongst young people, with excluded children at higher risk of being a victim or perpetrator of crime. We believe more could be done to prevent exclusions and support children who are excluded or in alternative provision. This includes making schools responsible for children they exclude, as recommended by the Timpson Review of School Exclusion. A more inclusive education and schools system would also provide more support to children at risk. Both fixed term and permanent exclusions are rising, as is the prevalence of ‘off-rolling’ and elective home education, meaning children are out of sight, which can increase risks.
The issue of criminals grooming children online became more apparent through the Covid-19 pandemic. We are calling for the Government to ensure that the Online Safety Bill ensures protection for children online, including consideration of the cross-platform nature of child abuse risks and the need for platforms to work together to address risk.
Critically, there is also a need to ensure that the system has the resources required to support the increased number of cases children’s services are dealing with. Figures indicate that even prior to the pandemic, the number and proportion of looked after children had increased from 64,470 or 57 in every 100,000 in 2009/10, to 80,080 or 67 in every 100,000 by 2019/20. Alongside this, councils also report that the children requiring support from children’s social care have more complex needs than they did a decade ago. Rising demand for services means that despite budgets for children’s social care rising by more than half a billion pounds in 2019/20 from the previous year, and more than £1.1 billion between 2017/18 and 2019/20, more than eight in 10 councils were still forced to overspend to ensure children were protected.
Rising caseloads and increasingly complex needs overall increase the challenges for professionals grappling with the complexity of child criminal exploitation and slavery cases, putting pressure on both casework time and capacity to support training and professional development. Additionally, the trends of increasing demand for child protection services, alongside significant overall cuts to council budgets, has led to a reduction in spending on preventative children’s services: the NAO found that spending in this area had fallen from 41% of children’s services budgets to just 25% in 2017/18. A reduction in youth services funding from £1.4bn in 2010/11 to £429m in 2019/20, leading to the loss of 4,500 youth work jobs and the closure of 750 youth centres is also a critical factor in relation to county lines exploitation in particular, given the crucial role in providing diversionary activities and youth support work these services can play.
In summary, this adds up to an extremely challenging picture for professionals working in children’s services. The spending review provided an additional £1.6bn per annum for councils over the next three years. This will help councils to meet some, but not all of the extra costs and demand pressures they will face just to maintain current service levels. In children’s services, additional funding for early help for some families and an extension of the Supporting Families programme will provide some extra support, however the funding landscape remains exceptionally challenging. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has indicated that its evidence shows additional funding will be required to ensure all children receive the support they need, and the LGA will be supporting the review to make this case to the Government.