Young Runaways (Sexual Exploitation)

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner.

This debate is timely, given the growing number of cases of sexual exploitation and grooming of children that have recently hit the headlines in Greater Manchester and elsewhere. Sadly, the latest case involves young girls in the Stockport area, many of whom are repeat runaways. Every five minutes, a child runs away from home or care, and I support the children’s charities’ view that if we can reduce the massive numbers of children and young people running away and going missing from home and care, we can reduce the number of children at risk from violence, drugs, alcohol, sexual exploitation and grooming. It is estimated that 100,000 children run away overnight every year before the age of 16. Missing children will be protected only when they are seen as a priority for every local authority, police force, school, community and youth worker in every part of the country.

I want to thank the Manchester Evening News and its reporter, Jen Williams, for doing a superb job in reporting the plight of Greater Manchester’s runaway and missing children in February this year, including the invaluable role of the Safe in the City project in working with runaways. People in our region were stunned to read that there were 11,819 police reports of children missing in Greater Manchester last year. Of these, 2,281 cases related to children aged 11 or younger. Another shocking figure is that Stockport has the highest number of reports to the police of children running from care across the whole of Greater Manchester at 41% against the regional average of 27%. That reflects not only the higher number of children’s homes in the borough, but the high risk to children living in the borough.

We know from Children’s Society research that children in care are three times more likely to run away and are more likely to appear in police statistics. However, for reasons that I will come to later, there is clear evidence that the number of children in care missing for more than 24 hours is greatly unreported to the Department for Education. I am also concerned, as the Children’s Society research shows, that two thirds of children who run away from their own homes are not reported missing by their parents, meaning that the number of episodes is greater than the available data suggest.

Running away is an important indicator that things are not right in a child’s life. Children’s charities estimate that one in five of those who run away are at risk from serious harm, and many will become involved in the things that worry parents and society the most—drugs, alcohol and falling prey to sexual predators. The recent Barnardo’s report, “Puppet on a string”, states that “going missing” and “disengagement from education” can be key indicators

“that a child is being groomed for sexual exploitation.”

It adds that 51% of the sexually exploited children it was working with when the survey was conducted

“went missing on a regular basis.”

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. There is enormous support across the House for what she is saying. The issue is of such magnitude that it is way beyond party politics, and we have a good opportunity today to discuss it.

Yesterday, I was in Torbay with Devon and Cornwall police to work with stakeholders on child sexual exploitation. Sadly, there have been two large paedophile rings in my constituency, so I have come to understand the devastating impact of such horrendous crimes on young people and their families. The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Does she agree—she alluded to this in her speech—that we need good local work where everybody in a community understands and accepts that there is a problem and works together? I heard of some very good examples yesterday—

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Lady that interventions must be brief.

[Ann Coffey]

I know that there is a particular problem in some seaside towns. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we have to have good local partnerships based on good data if we are all to help to overcome the problem. I agree with her.

It has been said that children living in care, particularly residential care, are more vulnerable to targeting by the perpetrators of sexual exploitation. I want to welcome the recent announcement by the Minister of an action plan to tackle child exploitation. It is important that it focuses on the link between running away and child sexual exploitation. Not all children who run away will be sexually exploited. However, all children who are sexually exploited will run away or go missing at some point. Either they will start running away as they become sexually exploited, or they will become sexually exploited as a result of running away.

I also welcome the fact that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, whose headquarters I visited recently, is to take responsibility for missing children. I await with interest its thematic assessment on the extent of child sexual exploitation. I hope that the fact that CEOP will have responsibility for missing children and sexual exploitation means that linking the two issues is now Government policy. I am pleased that there is an interdepartmental ministerial group on missing persons with a lead Minister involving the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department of Health. That is crucial if there are to be more effective partnerships at a local level.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, I have met Ofsted, the Missing Persons Bureau, CEOP, Greater Manchester police, the Association of Chief Police Officers, West Mercia police, local safeguarding children’s boards, the Children’s Society, Missing People, Railway Children and others. A number of common concerns keep appearing: the ongoing problem with collecting and sharing accurate data; the fact that not all local authorities are adhering to the statutory guidance for children who run away or go missing; and the different priority given to missing children by local safeguarding boards, which are responsible for co-ordinating all actions by local agencies.

On data collection, police forces vary in how they collect and analyse data on missing episodes, making for inconsistencies across the country. Poor data mean that local safeguarding boards will be badly informed. Accurate data would enable an intelligence-led response in each area to find out why children are running away, where they are going and what help they need. This would uncover patterns to prevent future sexual exploitation and enable convictions. I know that the Minister is aware that the collection and evaluation of data is a problem. He has rightly said that gathering data and evidence is the first major step to tackling child sexual exploitation and grooming. He is also right to say that the sexual grooming of children in the UK is a much bigger problem than has previously been recognised.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has just highlighted an extremely important issue, and I will be interested to hear how the Government intend to resolve it. The Minister is from the Department for Education; the Department of Health is involved; and the police, which are the responsibility of the Home Office, are also involved. The devolved Scottish Government have police, health and social care responsibilities; in my area, Wales, we have the Welsh Assembly; and in Northern Ireland there is another devolved Administration. Yet, in the UK context, child exploitation will cross all those borders. I want to know who holds the reins of responsibility for gathering information across the whole of the UK, because those who wish to indulge in exploitation will not worry about the fact that the Department of Health and the Department for Education happen to apply to England only.

[Ann Coffey]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point in relation to the UK as a whole. I, too, will be interested in the Minister’s response.

Looking at the data held by the Department for Education on children missing from care for longer than 24 hours, there is a huge discrepancy between figures on missing children reported to the Department by local authorities and the information that I have gathered separately from police forces. I asked a parliamentary question in March about how many looked-after children in each local authority area were absent for more than 24 hours, but the answers that came back did not correlate with the figures provided to me by local police forces.

Figures provided to the Department for Education by 152 local authorities show that in England in 2010 a total of 920 children were missing from their agreed placement for more than 24 hours. However, figures that I obtained from Greater Manchester police, Kent police and West Mercia police reveal that, in those areas alone, more children in care went missing for longer than 24 hours in 2010 than the 920 recorded by the Department for the whole of England.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I have lost count of the number of times that debates about child exploitation and child and people trafficking have been held in this Chamber and on the Floor of the House. I am pleased to hear that the Government have announced an action plan, but in previous debates we heard that children in this great United Kingdom have been sold at £16,000 a time for men to have their way with them. Young children who have not reached the age of sexual maturity do not know what is happening to them; they feel only the pain. In this day and age in our United Kingdom, we can have all the action plans that we want, but we need to know that they are working and that children are not being put through a horrific experience, which marks them for life.

[Ann Coffey]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He has brought home to us the sort of exploitation that we are talking about in his description of what happens to children. It is truly horrible, and he is right to say that we must take all available action to prevent it.

West Mercia police say that 266 children in care went missing for more than 24 hours in 2010, and Kent police figures for 2010 reveal that 826 children were recorded missing for more than 24 hours. However, an answer to a parliamentary question stated that in Stockport only 45 young people were missing from care for longer than 24 hours in the three years from 2008 to 2010. The Department for Education figures that I mentioned earlier are staggering, given that Stockport police has told me that there were 2,014 missing incidents between July 2009 and June 2010, of which 41% were from care homes.

The police have provided me with their most up-to-date figures for Stockport, which cover the first five months of this year up to Friday 17 June. They reveal that the police received 1,070 missing-from-home reports, generated by 284 children in Stockport under the age of 18; of those, 77 were reported missing from care, and they generated a massive 711 reports. Forty-six of the youngsters were missing for more than 24 hours, and of those 25 were from care.

That shows a clear pattern of repeated missing episodes and a consequent vulnerability to abuse, as well as further evidence of gross under-reporting by local authorities. In addition, two thirds of missing incidents from home are not reported by parents. As I have said, there is good evidence that repeated missing episodes are correlated to children being exposed to sexual grooming. If accurate data are not held by the Department for Education and the Home Office, it becomes more difficult to estimate the risk of sexual exploitation to which these children are exposed. It is important that we get it right.

On that point, ACPO pilots are looking at ways of achieving the collection of meaningful data on missing episodes, so as to determine when a child is missing. It is concerned that children’s homes are reporting children missing when a telephone call could establish where the child was.

All the evidence shows that sexual grooming starts by encouraging children to stay away from home, or persuading them to go home late, in order to create parental disputes and thus drive a wedge between child and home. Removing the protection of families and carers is the beginning of the grooming process, and the eventual outcome is the sexual exploitation of the child. The significance of that should not be lost in any redefinition of “missing”.

The “Puppet on a string” report states that the entrapment of children and young people in sexual exploitation does not occur overnight. If a child goes missing for a few hours, there is a danger that professionals will become complacent. However, that is when the child may be at risk from the gradual grooming process that I have described, and these early missing episodes may be the warning signs.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Experience in my constituency, and I suspect in many others, is that the homes may not be able to control the children and keep them in all the time, and the children will always indicate that they have human rights that must be respected. However, is there not a better and more definite way, with the homes and the local police co-ordinating on those who habitually stay out late or who may not return until the early hours of the morning? Could more not be done by the police, the local homes and the local authorities?

[Ann Coffey]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is right. We must have proper arrangements between children’s homes and the local police. If they do not work together, we will be unable to prevent children from going missing; and we will not know where those children who are that do go missing. He has made an important point.

Barnardo’s says that those who exploit children are all too aware of how the system works:

“These heartless men and women understand the police procedure on runaway children and know if a child goes missing on a regular basis, for a short period of time and then returns home safely, the case is unlikely to attract much attention.”

Turning to statutory guidance, another concern is the mixed picture that not all local authorities are adhering to the statutory guidance on children who run away from home or care, which was published in 2009. The guidance states that local authorities should have procedures in place for recording and sharing information between police, children’s services and the voluntary sector, and that the local authority should have a named person responsible for children and young people who go missing or who run away and that there should be return interviews.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of the independent return interview. As the Children’s Society has demonstrated, children are more willing to disclose what has happened to them to adults whom they do not perceive to be in authority. A 16-year-old at Manchester’s Safe in the City project said:

“It was horrible. I felt I could not talk to anyone—friends, family, police, teachers—no-one.”

Eventually, however, the child did talk to the Children’s Society.

I have asked a number of parliamentary questions about implementation of the guidance, but I have been repeatedly told that the information is not held centrally. Implementing statutory guidance should be a high priority for local authorities. Local safeguarding children’s boards have a responsibility to protect children in their areas. The young runaways action plan 2008 asked safeguarding boards to evaluate the risk of children running away and to put action plans in place. The Children’s Society’s “Stepping Up” report found that half of the local authorities surveyed had no protocol for managing cases of children and young people who are missing from home.

According to recent research by the international centre for the study of sexually exploited and trafficked young people at the university of Bedfordshire, there are protocols for responding to sexual exploitation in less than a quarter of local safeguarding children’s boards. Ten years on from the introduction of the dual strategy of protecting young people and proactively investigating their abusers, a third of the country has no plans for the delivery of such a strategy.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

An increasing proportion of the sexual grooming of children now takes place online. I imagine that policing that is complex and difficult and that it involves many officers. It is important that funding is kept in place, and if possible increased, to deal with what is a horrific crime.

[Ann Coffey]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. It is crucial that resources are available to support such initiatives and actions, because without those resources the actions will be meaningless.

Ofsted has a duty to inspect general safeguarding in an area, yet in a letter to the director of children’s services in Stockport in December 2010 following an annual children’s services assessment, it stated:

“In reaching this assessment, Ofsted has taken account of arrangements for making sure children are safe and stay safe.”

Astonishingly, in that letter and in the assessment itself, there was not one mention of the number of missing incidents reported to the Stockport police in that year. I am not clear how an assessment can be made of how well local safeguarding boards are discharging their responsibilities in relation to missing children, but one way might be for Ofsted, in its inspection of safeguarding in local areas, to assess whether local authorities are implementing statutory guidance in relation to the safeguarding of missing children. Another way might be for local safeguarding boards to publish information annually on numbers of missing children in their area together with the actions that they have taken and the outcomes of their interventions. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that. It is important that the statutory guidance is fully implemented in local areas, because such guidance is there for a purpose.

Furthermore, I want to see the development of early intervention programmes that target children who are at risk of running away. The Munro report stressed the value of early help in the area of child protection. I realise that funds are limited, but existing resources—education, health and police—could be used more effectively by developing innovative ways in which we can work with parents and voluntary agencies.

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady has been generous to us all with the amount of times that she has given way. Does she agree that the UK Council for Child Internet Safety has an important role to play? Many new tools have been made available for young people, teachers, parents and carers to raise awareness of the issues of being groomed online.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I will emphasise that point later in my speech.

There is good practice. We have seen proactive police work in West Mercia, and projects such as Safe in the City Manchester and SAFE@LAST in South Yorkshire demonstrate the value of good local partnerships. It is vital that children’s charities and projects that help young runaways continue to receive resources. I am concerned to hear about the disproportionate cuts that are being made to such valuable projects at a local level.

All local authorities and police forces need to understand the link between missing episodes and the vulnerability to harm that it indicates, which needs to be a high priority for child protection and safeguarding in every area of the country.

[David Simpson]

An early-day motion on guardianship was tabled in the House in 2010. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a way in which to deal with children who have gone through this horrific situation? I understand that guardianship is a requirement of the Council of Europe, and it may be an avenue that we can explore.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree that we must consider all possibilities. I know that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in this issue and a commitment to improve the situation for children.

In relation to Ofsted, I welcome the publication of the new minimum standards for children’s homes that came into force in April 2011. It set out how children’s homes should develop relationships and work with police forces to safeguard children and young people in their area.

I am also pleased that the recent Ofsted consultation on the new framework for inspection of schools includes an assessment of pupil behaviour and safety. Teachers and other school staff are in a prominent position to help children who run away from home or care and to identify behaviour, including absences, which may be indicative of serious issues in the child’s life. The all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults emphasises the connection between missing episodes and vulnerability to serious harm, including sexual exploitation, in its response to the Ofsted consultation.

We should focus on prevention, which means involving parents and children themselves. I would like all schools to provide information about the risks relating to running away and how children can get help if they are thinking of running away. The subject should also be included in the school’s curriculum, where it is appropriate. There should also be information available for parents about what to do if their child runs away or goes missing.

I welcome the fact that CEOP is going to make the prevention of running away a new educational theme, when it takes over responsibility for missing children on 1 July. I would also like to see all professionals in children’s social care and education being trained in risks relating to children running away to ensure that they can identify such children and refer them to the appropriate services. Such training should also be in the forthcoming youth strategy.

The harm that is done to a child abused for sex is incalculable. Children live with it for the rest of their lives and are haunted by the memories of their experiences. Some never recover, which applies not only to children but to families. We should not forget that children who live in caring families can also be targeted and groomed.

I recently attended a meeting of the coalition for the removal of pimping at which parents whose children had been groomed talked about their experiences. Two of my constituents spoke up and said that their pain will last a lifetime. They said that they were not listened to when they expressed concern to local agencies. They said:

“Our experience was that, at that stage, social services seemed to be focusing much more on our inadequate qualities as parents, rather than on the significant risk of child sexual exploitation, which we had brought to their attention.”

Their daughter subsequently gave detailed accounts of having been kept in flats in various parts of Greater Manchester and both sexually abused and sold for sex. Her evidence led to the eventual conviction of 10 men. The parents said that

“the traumatic nature of her experiences has caused her lasting psychiatric problems, including severe self-harm and has also resulted in one of us being off work for a period of two years through the stress of coping with this extended family trauma.”

Parents must be listened to, helped and supported if we are to prevent sexual grooming of children. This is not an issue that divides the political parties, and we must all work together for the sake of our children.

I congratulate the Minister on his commitment and on his positive responses. Together with his colleagues in the Department for Health and the Home Office, he has announced a number of initiatives that deal with the concerns expressed by parents and children’s charities. Sexual exploitation is an abomination, and no excuse can be offered by the perpetrators. Together, we must ensure that everybody working in this area understands the link between missing children and harm from sexual abuse and exploitation; that that training is given a high priority at a local level; that statutory guidance on runaways is fully implemented; and that local agencies work together with parents, children and children’s charities. It is only then that we will be able to protect and safeguard our children in the future from some of the horrific experiences suffered by our children in the past. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.