Home Affairs CommitteeSupplementary written evidence from The Children’s Society [LCG 17a]

Introduction

This supplementary evidence contains our proposed recommendations, as requested by the Committee, regarding the changes for how the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) works with child victims of sexual exploitation. We have also included two key recommendations we would like to highlight to the Committee on the importance of return interviews in both identifying on-going support for victims of localised grooming and providing intelligence for prosecutions.

This evidence should be read alongside our Written Evidence Submission from October 2012 and Oral Evidence given by Martine Osmond, Senior Practitioner at The Children’s Society, Torbay on 19 March 2013 where we made several recommendations about the importance of multi-agency working and tackling negative attitudes towards children who are victims of child sexual exploitation (CSE). The full list of our recommendation is also in an Appendix below.

Return Interviews

Recommendation 1: The forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care should require local authorities to offer return interviews, delivered by an independent professional a child or young person is comfortable speaking with, to all children who run away or go missing from home or care within 72 hours of a missing incident.

Missing is a key indicator of sexual exploitation and grooming. A return interview can help agencies understand why the young person went missing and identify the most effective type of follow up support they should receive. This can prevent future missing episodes, aid disruption of sexual exploitation, as well as reduce further risks to young people at risk of sexual exploitation.

Recommendation 2: The forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care should require local authorities to have a set of standard procedures in place stipulating what questions should be asked during the return interview, how risks should be assessed, and how information should be recorded and shared with the police and CPS if abuse is suspected or disclosed by a young person.

Return interviews are a very useful tool for social services and police to collect intelligence about perpetrators and hot spot locations where grooming of children is taking place. They can also help the police with building evidence for the prosecution. Local authorities must ensure that they collect, monitor and interrogate intelligence from these interviews and share this with the police and CPS to help them build up evidence for prosecution. Freedom of Information requests that we conducted in January 2012 with local authorities found that 74 out of 152 did not provide figures for the number of return interviews runaway children received.1

CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) Changes

Recommendation 3: The new CPS guidance should state that young people should have one consistent adult to support them from the beginning to the end of the prosecution process to enable them to give better evidence.

This person should be independent from the police and CPS process so they are not tainted with any negativity that the young person may have towards the process. Our projects find that young people are not given adequate support when they report allegations of child sexual exploitation or serious sexual violence and when they go through the court proceedings. The mechanisms of grooming for child sexual exploitation such as alcohol and drugs and emotional and physical manipulation can mean that children are perceived as unreliable witnesses who may have changed their story. Only through the support of an adult that they trust can the young person start to come to terms with what has happened and tell their story in a way that will produce the evidence needed for a successful prosecution. In addition victims of CSE often find themselves having to repeat their personal and traumatic story to numerous strangers and agencies or professionals. Having one consistent adult to talk to throughout the process would also address this situation.

Our services often provide this support to young people as illustrated in the case study below.

Case study

Joey (aged 14) met another young man online and they soon became quite close. When they met, Joey realised the man was older than he had initially said but they still began a sexual relationship. Joey believed he was in love and that they were in a loving relationship. Soon he realised he was not the only one and that this man was even older than he had claimed to be. The relationship became violent.

After the case was reported to the police, Joey felt overwhelmed by the amount of professionals wanting to talk to him about what had happened and he began to refuse to engage. Joey refused to do an ABE interview (Achieving Best Evidence interview where the child is asked to say what happened to them in their own words.) The police asked The Children’s Society in Lancashire to become involved and to visit Joey. Through our work with him, Joey was able to tell his story and find support for all the confusion and mixed feelings he had. Joey chose to make a statement and with this the police were able to continue the investigation and collect enough evidence to put the case forward.

The CPS did a thorough job, not only based on evidence provided, but also by requiring files from professionals working with Joey in order to better prepare the case. Joey felt that they were taking him seriously. Through our worker, the police kept Joey and his family informed of each stage and what it meant. Because they felt supported, Joey and his mum were able to pass on extra information and evidence that helped with the case. We also arranged for Joey to visit court in preparation for the trial. Joey felt extremely distraught and anxious when confronted with the reality of his case going to court. However, due to the positive collaboration in this case and the quality of evidence provided, the offender changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to a custodial sentence of six years.

Recommendation 4: The new CPS guidance must state that young people should only be taken through the court process as a last resort. Third party evidence and expert witnesses should be used as much as possible.

As illustrated by the case study above, The Children’s Society often provides third party evidence where a disclosure has been made to us and a child may find it difficult to or not want to give evidence in court due to the traumatic process they have been through. This can be vital to achieving successful prosecutions as it provides the victim with the support they need to disclose fully and provides access to crucial intelligence that the CPS may not otherwise have access to. Expert witnesses should also be used to explain the nature of child sexual exploitation, the methods of grooming and the reasons why the child may not be perceived as a reliable witness. This will add credibility to their story and help ensure the CPS and court can fully understand their vulnerability.

Recommendation 5: The new CPS guidance must to state that young people should be supported so that they do not feel they are alone when they disclose sexual exploitation.

A balance needs to be struck between not contaminating the evidence and supporting young people and enabling them to understand that they are not alone and that other young people have made complaints. This is important for two reasons: firstly so that they do not feel like they are the only ones who have “blabbed” and therefore risk being isolated from peers and; secondly so that professionals can help them realise that perceived boyfriends have actually committed offences with other victims and that they are in an abusive relationship.

APPENDIX

FULL LIST OF RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE CHILDREN’S SOCIETY WRITTEN EVIDENCE SUBMISSION

Identification and Early Support for Child Victims of Localised Grooming

1. Social care services should assess referrals jointly with the police to ensure that there is a shared understanding of thresholds for intervention and ensure they work together to safeguard children in their local area.

2. Guidance2 should be amended so that all children in care have a statutory right to independent advocacy as part of care reviews and placement planning, not just as part of complaint processes.

3. The obligation for homes to notify agencies of “Involvement or suspected involvement of a child accommodated at the home in prostitution” under Schedule 5 of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001, which relates to “Events and Notifications”, should be changed to “suspicion that a child accommodated in a home is at risk of abuse or child sexual exploitation”.

Equipping Professionals and Services with Knowledge to Identify Signs of Sexual Exploitation

4. Children’s home staff should receive training on how to identify the warning signs of grooming, including running away, why young people may have been sexually exploited and how to better support young people who have experienced sexual exploitation. This should be continuous tailored training due to the high turn-over of staff in care homes.

5. All police staff should receive awareness raising training on how to identify the warning signs of grooming, including running away, why young people may have been sexually exploited and the actions that need to be taken if they come across a young person who may have experienced, or be at risk of, sexual exploitation.

6. All frontline professionals and staff that work with children (such as GPs, hospital staff, parents, landlords, judges, magistrates, teachers, church leaders, youth workers, pub landlords and public venue security staff) should receive tailored training on how to identify the warning signs of grooming, including running away, and the actions that need to be taken if they come across a young person who may have experienced, or be at risk of, sexual exploitation.

7. Hotel front-of-house, domestic and security staff should receive training on how to identify the warning signs of grooming, including running away, and the actions that need to be taken if they come across a young person who may have experienced, or be at risk of, sexual exploitation. Our Say Something If You See Something campaign with the National Working Group has developed partnerships with hotels and is delivering awareness raising training to all staff to combat the problem of hotels unwittingly being used as a venue for sexual exploitation.

The Support Provided to Victims and Witnesses by a Range of Agencies such as the Crown Prosecution Service, Police and Voluntary Agencies

8. Special measures such as giving evidence by live link and more choice about how they give evidence should be used where appropriate and desired by the child. These should also include access to support before, during and after the court process.

Quality of Partnership Working between LSCBS, Care Services and Police within and between Local Authority Areas

9. All LSCBs should establish a multi-agency missing and CSE subgroup involving the police, social services and the voluntary sector who should work to joint protocols and appoint a lead individual responsible for co-ordinating work in this area.

10. Local authorities should be supported by central government and Association of Chief Polic Officers (ACPO) to set up a local multi-agency information sharing process, for instance a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) to ensure that information is shared between agencies on individual running away and CSE incidents and patterns of running away in the local area.

11. The revised statutory guidance children who run away or go missing from home or care should state that every child or young person who runs away from home or care should receive a return interview from a responsible adult, that the child or young person is comfortable speaking with and disclosing information to, within 72 hours of a missing incident.

12. An additional evaluation of the ACPO pilots that assesses the safeguarding and risk assessment procedures in place when a child is classified as “absent” should take place before it is rolled out nationally.

The Quality of Data Collection, Data Sharing and Research on Child Victims of Localised Grooming

13. All Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards (LSCBs) should establish a multi-agency CSE and missing subgroup that collects data and intelligence on sexual exploitation and missing episodes to help monitor cases, direct resources and gather evidence for prosecutions.

14. The forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care should require that local authorities offer return interviews, delivered by an independent professional a child or young person is comfortable speaking with, to all children who run away or go missing from home or care.

15. The forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care should require local authorities to have standard procedures in place stipulating what questions should be asked during the return interview, how risks should be assessed and, how information should be recorded and shared with the police and CPS if abuse is suspected or disclosed by a young person.

CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) Changes

16. The new CPS guidance should state that young people should have one consistent adult to support them from the beginning to the end of the prosecution process to enable them to give better evidence.

17. The new CPS guidance should state that young people should only be taken through the court process as a last resort. Third party evidence and expert witnesses should be used as much as possible.

18. The new CPS guidance must to state that young people should be supported so that they do not feel they are alone when they disclose sexual exploitation.

April 2013