Intro:
Welcome to the NSPCC Learning podcast, where we share learning and expertise in child protection from inside and outside of the organisation. We aim to create debate, encourage reflection and share good practice on how we can all work together to keep babies, children and young people safe.
Producer:
Welcome to the NSPCC Learning Podcast. In this episode recorded in January 2025, we're going to be looking at the issue of child criminal exploitation. Child criminal exploitation is a form of child abuse where a child or young person is forced or coerced to engage in criminal activity or commit any type of crime.
Since this podcast was recorded, the Crime and Policing Bill has been introduced into Parliament, which would introduce a new specific criminal offence of child criminal exploitation. This would target the adult as the primary offender in causing harm to the child by exploiting them to commit criminal activity.
I'm joined by two guests with a wealth of knowledge and experience on the topic to discuss what professionals working with children need to know about criminal exploitation and what can be done to prevent children from being criminally exploited. Denise and Tara, please could you introduce yourselves?
Denise Ellis:
Hi, my name is Denise Ellis and I'm the service head for the NSPCC Helpline. I have the lead role for child criminal exploitation as part of my safeguarding role at the Helpline and I have nearly 43 years experience of working with children and families from nought right up to 18 years of age. I previously worked for Manchester Safeguarding Unit, and I currently deliver training to professionals in regards to identifying the signs of child criminal exploitation.
Tara Mellowes:
My name is Tara Mellowes and I am a Detective Constable based with Leicestershire Police and I work within their exploitation team. So my kind of specialism is child criminal exploitation but we're a team that cross over, so I work alongside officers that specialise in child sexual exploitation and we work together within the exploitation team.
Producer:
Thank you both for joining us on the podcast. Tara, please could you kick things off by giving us a brief overview of what child criminal exploitation is?
Tara:
Annoyingly, we don't really have a statutory definition for child criminal exploitation. A lot of work is being done by some agencies to try and rectify that. However, we use a broader Home Office definition which is, effectively, it's a form of child abuse where the child is being exploited to take part in criminal activity, mainly on the behalf of somebody else.
It's essentially an individual or groups of people that would take advantage of the imbalance of power that would be between them and a child. That can include coercion, control, manipulation; it's just essentially using all of that to get that child to engage in criminal activity but on behalf of somebody else, for their own gain.
Producer:
Thanks Tara. And Denise, please can you tell us a bit more about the different forms that child criminal exploitation can take?
Denise:
Yeah, so there are many forms of child criminal exploitation. It can be the dealing and transporting of drugs or weapons. It could be growing cannabis. It can be [being] encouraged to get involved in theft and burglary. Street crime, such as begging and pickpocketing. Compulsory labour, forced labour. Sexual exploitation. Drug trafficking. Involvement in criminal gangs and violence, modern slavery and stealing or shoplifting. So there are a number of different ways in which children can be criminally exploited.
Producer:
Thanks, Denise. Another type of criminal exploitation that listeners may be familiar with is county lines. Tara, I know this is an area your work covers. Please, can you tell us a bit more about that form of exploitation?
Tara:
That's where the bulk of my work is. We see children being used as drug runners that are trafficked, mainly out of big cities into smaller cities in towns, essentially for the purposes of working on a county line. For those that probably don't know what a county line is, it's effectively a drug dealing line that operates within a town or a city, but may be orchestrated from another larger city outside that force area. And that tends to be mainly crack and heroin drug dealing. And so that's what I see the majority of and a lot of the children that come under my radar have been involved in that.
Producer:
And why are children targets for criminal exploitation? You mentioned earlier the imbalance of power between children and perpetrators, for example. Please can you perhaps expand on this and how children come to be targeted?
Tara:
I think vulnerability plays a huge part in that imbalance of power, which naturally exists between an adult and a child. And also I think it's really important to note that whilst there are some groups of children that I would say are more vulnerable to this kind of exploitation, I have seen children from all walks of life become involved.
I think we're naturally inclined to see, from a stereotypical perspective, mainly children from deprived areas of larger cities, areas where gang culture is more prominent, children with adverse childhood experiences, children that have gone through the social care system. Yes, they're the ones that come under my radar. But I've also worked with children from the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and I think the consistent factor that I see all through the children that I see is that area of vulnerability. It's that targeting of that vulnerability.
Whether that vulnerability within that child is that need for connection, and that's how those children get involved in gang culture. Whether that child's need and the target of the vulnerability is money. We talk about children that come from very deprived areas of the country. I've seen boys in particular who see it as their role within that family to make money for the family. That's how they can get involved. They're enticed by the ability to make a lot of money very quickly, or so they perceive it to be. What normally happens then unfortunately is that the perpetrators will target that vulnerability and create a kind of 'hook', if you like, whatever that 'hook' is to hook that child in.
If I took money, for example. The hook for that child is to have that money come in. Someone might say to the child, "right you go and sit in that trap house for me for five days in this area and I will pay you £500 for doing that for me." That child might go and do that, and they'll do it three or four times and not have any problem. It will feel maybe quite easy to them. They probably don't come under police radar. They're probably not getting arrested. So those three or four times that they've done it, it feels quite easy to make quite a large amount of money; but that's where the hook is.
And then that's when things do start to spiral. It might be that on the third or fourth time they've gone and done it, they're arrested by police. All of a sudden, they find themselves in a custody suite. It may be that something's happened and that child has either lost money or lost drugs, and that's how that spirals very, very quickly. I think that's where the children don't see the danger. Something that can feel quite easy or okay at first, they don't see the spiral that it can take very quickly.
Producer:
Listening to you there Tara, I think one of the key points for listeners to remember is that whilst some children are at increased risk, criminal exploitation can happen to any child. So everyone needs to be vigilant.
Denise, with this in mind, what are the signs of child criminal exploitation that professionals working with children need to look out for?
Denise:
Yeah, so with this, you need to be very careful. We refer to it as 'pennies in the bank'. So what we wouldn't want to do is for somebody just to think, oh, somebody I know has been seen away from home, missing from home or there's been a change in their appearance or they've been missing from school or their behaviours have changed.
So, you know, it can be [lots of] signs to look out for. Use of new slang words. Carrying weapons. Having two mobile phones, that's a common one. It could be graffiti-style tags. It can be a change in routine or places seen that they wouldn't normally have been seen. Increased social media usage; we know that young people do tend to be on social media a lot, but it's just looking out and being aware of some of those signs.
Again, committing petty crimes and being stopped and seen in places they wouldn't normally be. Wearing expensive clothing that can be a sign — if they've not got the receipt to show that it's been paid for. Where have those extra mobile phones come from? Where have those £200 trainers come from? Abusing drugs and alcohol. Refusing to seek medical help. Repeated sexual health conditions, unwanted pregnancies, getting involved in fights, more physical violence. So yeah, there are so many different things.
But in regards to county lines, one of the things that— there was one young person who'd said that they were travelling on a train at 12 years of age, going outside of the place, the geographical area where they normally lived. They said that they were invisible. No one stopped them. No one said hello or, you know, where are you going? Why are you on your own? This was a 12-year-old person who's being asked to travel solo to London and was having to go into an area they didn't know before. So if you see somebody and they seem lost or they might have a school uniform that just doesn't fit in with that geographical area. These are signs to look out for.
Producer:
Thanks Denise. And Tara, can you give us an overview of the risks associated with child criminal exploitation?
Tara:
I think the risks are absolutely huge and are so multifaceted, it's really hard to contain them into a very small, brief overview. But I think for me [the one] that jumps out, the most obvious, is the criminality element of it.
Speaking from a police perspective, our standpoint when we come across children is we don't want to criminalise children. It's not something that we feel comfortable doing. Our first standpoint will always be to look at the broader picture of what's going on for that child but criminalisation in itself, whether that's through being arrested for drug dealing, if they're getting involved in county line drug dealing, it's the criminalisation. If they are getting involved in other types of offending, whether those children are involved in a gang culture and a lifestyle, we get violent offending that crops up with it as well.
So that's the biggest kind of thing that I see; the risks that child is going to find themselves in a custody cell, or getting themselves involved in serious harm and violence against other people, against each other. That's the bit that I see the most of.
But then the tail end of that as well is the knock-on effect that that has on that child, whether that is the physical harm to themselves. Getting involved in county line drug dealing normally has an element of violence associated with it as well, particularly in areas where there's numerous county lines running; there can be animosity and violence between different entities that are operating in certain areas. Those that are getting involved, or starting to get involved, in gang culture and lifestyle, violence can be used as a bit of a test or a bit of an initiation to be able to become part of that element.
That kind of leads on to the physical and the psychological harm of what happens with those children. It's something, particularly the psychological element of it, [which] isn't something that's probably the most immediate to them. They can go years before those psychological elements become apparent and they all form part of, you know, quite adverse childhood experiences that we talk about when we talk about adults and how they behave and how they're formed later on in life and the impact of that is massive.
And I think that's where the concerns are for me. Even those children that have come through and been involved in CCE that maybe feel like they've come out of it unscathed, it's the impact that that has on later down the line.
Producer:
So there's both the short-term risks, such as criminalisation and physical abuse, but also those long-term impacts of adverse childhood experiences and trauma associated with the exploitation. So the risks are really clear. We also know that it can be really difficult to extricate children from criminal exploitation once they've become caught up in it. So prevention and early intervention takes on an increased importance. Denise, please can you tell us a bit more about this?
Denise:
Early intervention is incredibly important. It can provide targeted expert support to help children at risk to find a positive path forward away from criminality. So things to consider: early recognition nips things in the bud. That's one of the key things.
It prevents normalisation. And one of the things that we hear from young people who are being criminally exploited is that they think that it's normal. That it's normal to carry weapons. It's normal to carry drugs. It's not normal to be raped. It is never normal to [be] raped or abused in any way. It prevents escalation of more serious crime. Obviously the grooming and the drawing young people into this, what they portray as a fantastic world of, you know, do you want to have a £200 pair of trainers or do you wanna earn £500? For some young people that's a lure. That's kind of... "this sounds fabulous".
They don't have to do anything at first. But nipping things in the bud and early interventions prevents that escalation of more serious crime because nothing is free in this world. So if you've got a brand new £200 pair of trainers or mobile phone, there is some kind of payback for that. So it might start off with, "oh, can you just transport some cannabis for us?" But that cannabis then turns into Class A drugs such as cocaine, heroin, crack cocaine and the increase in criminalisation goes up and up. So early intervention breaks that kind of cycle.
It prevents criminalising children. We often hear professionals use criminalising language. You know, "oh the young person was promiscuous" — you're using blaming language for somebody who's a potential victim. So there should be no blaming. Young people who have been exploited are victims. It prevents entrenched criminal behaviour because once that becomes the normalisation, once that becomes part of your lifestyle, it's hard to break that cycle. So it's easier to break if early intervention is there.
It avoids going up in the chain of criminality. We've seen a hierarchy of gangs for instance. So you have the faces, you have the elders and the ones who are high up in that chain and that leads to the people who are on the streets, who are dealing with guns, who are dealing with drugs and weapons. So early intervention breaks that chain of going up in the hierarchal kind of more serious criminality.
It prevents serious health and fatalities. We know and we've seen that young people who are exploited are at risk of serious harm, so that early intervention is key. It provides life opportunities and alternative means of successes. So when children are seeing these lifestyles of, you know, these big mansions, these fantastic cars, things that people like pop stars and footballers have; they feel that they're entering into a world where all these things are gonna be given to them. But to break that cycle and get them on the path of other successes, of career choices, is what is amazing with early intervention. So they're just a few safeguarding examples of how early intervention can help.
Producer:
And what are some of the elements of strong early intervention? What does that look like?
Denise:
We often look at offender and victim. So, in order to focus on supporting young people who are trapped, it's important that we have to tackle exploitation. If you're a specialised practitioner, such as a caseworker or a police investigator, then it's about being able to recognise the signs of child exploitation, to identify the risks, the harm and to disrupt those offenders. I think that's the most important thing. You know, rather than the focus being on somebody who is shoplifting or who is carrying drugs or weapons, who is it that's targeted these young people? The focus has to be on them and disrupting their chain and line of exploitation.
It's about supporting frontline practitioners and promoting collaborative opportunities. Anyone working with young people has a crucial role in dealing with incidents when they happen and immediately, and again, it's that timeline. The earlier you can intervene and disrupt these exploitive behaviours, the more valuable that is for uncovering child exploitation. Everyone who engages with children has a part to play. Sometimes people just think it's children's services. You know, the family need a social worker. It's not just social services. Everyone has a role to play in listening and acting on those concerns.
Some people may have been sitting on concerns for more than six months. It's never too late. That would be my message. That would my key message. It's never too late to report abuse or to report any concerns that you have. So for the young girl who was 12, who travelled on that train and who felt that she was invisible; we shouldn't let young people be invisible. They are at risk if they are being exploited. They may not know it. Like I said before, it may seem just normal behaviour for them, but if they are being coerced or controlled or paid or isolated because they're not allowed to go anywhere until that person who's controlling them says they can. That's abuse.
Producer:
Absolutely, and I think we need to be really clear here that child criminal exploitation of any kind is a form of child abuse.
Tara, please can you go into a bit more detail about the work that the police does with children who are experiencing child criminal exploitation?
Tara:
I can only speak for the way that my force works; other forces have very different ways of working. So from my perspective, the support that we provide is from a context of if that child's been involved in criminal activity, they've been involved in criminal exploitation, and there is an element of disruption that could be done for that child, there's an element of disrupting the perpetrators, that's my role and that's what I would seek to do to protect that child but also to protect other children from those perpetrators. I can either do that with or without a child's support. Those are the tools that are given to me to be able to take that down the criminal justice route. I'm a police officer so I look to go down that route because that's what my job role entails.
But there's also an element of support with regards to being able to bring other professionals in to be able to help that child, to be able to tap into different resources, normally from a social care perspective, but there's also some really fantastic charities up and down the country that specialise in support that can be given to that child. When I step away from my role or the criminal justice element has been finalised, I have resources to be able to direct towards that child to be able to support the overarching and the longer term support, if that makes sense.
All forces have Working Together strategies, so if we've got a child that's starting to come under the radar — whether that's under police radar or whether that's under radar of social care, schools or professionals — we have a process where that concern is flagged up and then all of the agencies that are involved with that child come together. We look at where the threat might be, we look at what's going on and have a think about who is best placed to be able to do that, what you were talking about with the early intervention.
Sometimes it's the early intervention from a police perspective. We have a team of detectives, we have team of uniformed officers — PCs if you like, although they don't wear their uniform when they support the children — but they are kind of a resource to be able to go and visit children. They'll build a rapport with that child, they will go and have a chat, they will visit and they're just effectively a go-to point for that child. If that ends up with the child being able to talk more about what's happened to them to the police officer, or they may find it easier to talk to a social care professional that's been put in to support as well, there's both areas of support there.
Producer:
Thanks Tara. It's really interesting to get an insight into how the police respond to criminal exploitation. Now, obviously the police is just one avenue for support with this issue.
Denise, where else can people go to for support if they are concerned that a child they know or work with is being criminally exploited?
Denise:
So anyone who's got concern for a child, I would say reach out sooner rather than later. They can reach out to their statutory agencies, which is children's services or the police. They can reach out to their education. So if they're in school, to the head teacher. Speak to the designated safeguarding officer at the school. Every school should have a designated safeguarding officer.
Speak to their local GP or health services in regards to if they feel that there's any sexual exploitation. The NSPCC Helpline, there is also Childline, there are legal services. There is support out there. You might feel that you're the only one. You might feel that you don't want to get anybody into trouble.
What you are doing by reaching out, you are safeguarding. You are being the voice of that young person who may not have a voice or who may have lost their voice or who maybe so scared to reach out. They're hoping that someone who is a protective factor to them steps in and says, "enough is enough. I'm here to help. I'm here to listen. I'm not here to judge. I'm not here to blame. It's not your fault, let me help you." So the more that people do that, the more opportunity and the chance that we've got to reach out and safeguard more young people at risk.
Producer:
Thank you. I think that's the perfect message to end our discussion on today. Thank you, Denise and Tara for taking part in this podcast.
If you're listening and you want to learn more about child criminal exploitation, we have a suite of resources, including an elearning course on county lines, available on the NSPCC Learning website. Check the podcast shownotes for more information. Thanks for listening.
Outro:
Thanks for listening to this NSPCC Learning podcast. At the time of recording, this episode’s content was up to date but the world of safeguarding and child protection is ever changing – so, if you're looking for the most current safeguarding and child protection training, information or resources, please visit our website for professionals at nspcc.org.uk/learning.
