Response to the National Action Plan: Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation

Peter Davies, Chief Executive of The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre and ACPO lead for child protection and child abuse investigation said:

“Protecting children from harm is a key concern for the police and a good deal of work has been undertaken both nationally and locally to improve our ability to detect and target child sexual offenders. Through CEOP, thousands of officers across the country have received specialist training in understanding and investigating child abuse. It is a priority for the service and every force must actively gather intelligence, and continue to work to share best practice and specialist skills.

"The National Action Plan published today, follows on from the recent CEOP assessment of this critical issue, and highlights areas where we must continue to build on our success both within individual forces and with multi-agency working. Some areas of the UK already have victim focused services with agencies effectively working together to identify victims of child sexual exploitation.

"A key challenge to overcome is improving confidence of victims, many who are extremely vulnerable, to come forward and report their abuse in the knowledge that they will be fully supported throughout.

"We have already come a long way in bringing this form of child abuse out of the dark, and we remain committed to build upon this work. Government, other local agencies (including the police) and voluntary community sector partners all have a part to play in ensuring children are protected at an early stage and children also need to have the awareness that they can take action to protect themselves. Spotting the early signs of child sexual exploitation and giving anyone with a role in protecting children the awareness to do so is vital.”

A link to the Department For Education's National Action Plan: Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation can be found here: http://www.education.gov.uk/a00200288/tackling-child-sexual-exploitation-action-plan

The CEOP latest annual report shows the work that has been done to protect children from harm in the past 12 months (2010/11).

• 414 children have been safeguarded or protected from sexual abuse either directly or indirectly as the result of CEOP activity.
• 513 suspected child sexual offenders have been arrested – for offences ranging from possession of indecent images to rape – as a result of intelligence reports from CEOP and/or through the deployment of CEOP resources.
• 132 high risk child sexual offender networks have been disrupted or dismantled as a result of CEOP activity
• 2,084 child protection professionals have attended CEOP’s specialist training courses.

Since CEOP was set up in 2006:

• Over 70,000 teachers, trainers, police officers and youth leaders have registered to use CEOP’s Thinkuknow programme.
• More than 1,038 children have been safeguarded or protected
• 1,644 child sex offenders have been arrested - all achieved as a direct result of CEOP's intelligence reports and/or deployments of CEOP specialist resources.
• A cumulative total of 394 offender networks have been dismantled

Over eight million children and young people have viewed the Thinkuknow programme delivered to them.

Thematic assessment:

• A thematic assessment into so called ‘street grooming’ was commissioned by CEOP in January of this year, to identify patterns of offending, victimisation, or vulnerability within these cases; to assess the effectiveness of processes which might help identify this type of offending and victimisation; and to make recommendations that would improve interventions and reduce risk to children in the future. The assessment, ‘Out of Mind, out of Sight’ was published in June 2011.

• Four strands of evidence were drawn upon for this assessment over the six month timeframe.
  CEOP conducted a number of debriefings of practitioners, senior investigating officers and multi-agency teams to determine key issues facing the police and safeguarding community. A face-to-face consultation with children and young people who had experienced sexual exploitation, facilitated by the National Working Group on Sexual Exploitation, was undertaken to obtain a victim perspective on child sexual exploitation. A review of research literature on child sexual exploitation informed the findings and conclusions. CEOP also requested relevant data on cases of child sexual exploitation since 1 January 2008, from all police forces, LSCBs, children’s services and voluntary service sector providers, receiving a response from 46 police forces, 22 LSCBs and children’s services, and 12 voluntary sector organisations.

For more information please contact:

ACPO Press Office
Association of Chief Police Officers
e: press.office@acpo.pnn.police.uk