Children: Sexual Exploitation

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, child sexual exploitation has devastating consequences, despite the fact that children’s right to be protected from sexual abuse is enshrined in national, European and international law. We have heard that only 20 per cent of local authorities have access to specialist services, even though it has clearly been shown that cases are more easily identified when specialist services are available. This was emphasised recently in an article in the Guardian by Carlene Firmin, who pointed out that, if local authorities do not take proactive steps to identify cases, they think that there is no problem to address and, if they do not think that there is a problem, they do not identify the resources and put them in place to address it.

This debate follows the recent notorious Derby case where many young girls were abused, two of whom were in public care. In order to find out what lessons had been learnt, I looked at the serious case review. These reviews have been patchy in quality in the past, but since Ofsted has been looking at them they have improved and are well worth looking at. I understand that the Munro review, published this morning, suggests that Ofsted inspection should now cease, so I hope that the raised quality and value of these reviews continues. I am concerned about how safeguarding will be enshrined in the new slimmed-down Ofsted inspections of schools. Can the Minister tell us something about that?

I turn to the Derby case. The serious case review reveals that concerns about the welfare of the two young women in care, who were among those abused, emerged at a very early stage—one from birth and the other from primary school age. From 2008, they were engaged in disturbed and risky behaviour, including criminal activity, absconding and drug and alcohol misuse. Practitioners in health and education and in children’s social care all failed to recognise the significance of these behaviours in terms of abuse and they failed to intervene effectively.

Often when I am faced with speaking about issues such as this, I turn to the coal face. The coal face in this case is my friend Carol Runciman, who is the lead member on children’s services in York. I asked her what she thought about these issues. She said:

“It doesn’t take a lot more money—what it takes is training and understanding of how things happen and how both young people and carers and parents can be alerted to the dangers … getting warnings out via social networking sites and sites, like school networks, that the young people use. Having a clearly identified point of contact is important—a designated teacher or teaching assistant in school who is trained to know what to do … having information in drop in centres for young people—youth clubs, young people’s drop in centres, even health centres—that all helps”.

We should listen to the coal face.