News
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Hearth & Rescue Products and services (HMICFRS) today (Friday 9 February) printed a report following an inspection of the Met’s handling of child exploitation.
Today, senior officers thanked inspectors for their diligent work, acknowledged the findings are deeply concerning and laid out pressing plans to give a rob to our carrier, so no child is left unsafe.
It’s a precedence to make sure children and younger folks are safe and the Met is already making improvements since the HMICFRS acknowledged two ‘accelerated causes of concern’ concerning to how the carrier responds to missing children reports and investigations of child sexual and criminal exploitation.
Commander Kevin Southworth, lead for Public Protection on the Met, acknowledged:
“I’m deeply sorry to the children and households we be pleased let down and desire to reassure our communities that we’re already taking valuable steps to take care of these recommendations.
“We’re inserting more police resource into this situation and retraining officers to be pleased an even bigger working out of the complexities of child exploitation so we’re going to give you the option to continue our work to secure again the have confidence of Londoners.”
Since October 2023, the Met has:
- Skilled more than 1200 child protection officers so they’ll work with children and their households to situation the indicators of exploitation earlier and better give a rob to the most vulnerable across London.
- Skilled 400 officers responsible for missing children investigations across the complexities of those cases so they larger realize the dangers of exploitation, how to safeguard vulnerable children, and target those responsible.
- Strengthened resource in criminal and sexual exploitation investigation teams with 36 recent officers already in post and one other 36 more due to initiate in April 2024.
- Seen a 50% magnify in child exploitation concerns being acknowledged by officers the put children are being compelled into illegal activity corresponding to robbery or drug dealing, which methodology officers were faster to recognise the put vulnerable children would maybe well even be being exploited. These cases are straight away flagged and escalated to specialist teams to totally compare, while safeguarding those at possibility and guaranteeing their welfare is save first.
- Nearly doubled the selection of missing children being graded as ‘excessive possibility’, which ensures they’re straight away save to the top of officers’ precedence list and ensures senior officers are more involved from the initiate to secure children dwelling safely and shield them from harm.
- Improved investigations and affords a rob to for missing children graded as ‘medium possibility’ who would maybe well also incessantly traipse missing from properties the put they don’t appear to be being cared for properly, acknowledging these children require a more bespoke response and support from skilled partners corresponding to children’s services and products.
- Labored to preserve skilled crew in specialist missing folks roles to make sure consistency across decision making and affords a rob to for working towards recent crew to provide an even bigger carrier to children and younger folks.
- Piloted a ‘Central Vulnerability Hub’ which is a group of specialist officers and crew which will seemingly be devoted to changing how the Met responds to vulnerability and harm, finding and safeguarding missing children and folks as quick and safely as likely.
- Launched ‘Stunning Care Stunning Person’ to support liberate more resource to larger compare missing children and suspected exploitation, getting the correct companies working with police and children from the beginning.
Within the report printed today, HMICFRS highlighted concern across the use of victim blaming language in some cases fascinating children. The Met is already implementing working towards to at once take care of this and driving culture replace so officers and crew characterize more compassion and realize the complexities of child exploitation from the outset of cases.
Officers will additionally delivery the Met’s first Children and Younger Person’s strategy later this 12 months, that can give a rob to officers to survey children as children first and well-known and recognise their particular person needs. The values embedded in this strategy and wider cultural reform will mean officers larger realize why vulnerable children are more prone to being coerced into criminal behaviour or prone to being sexually abused and exploited.
Within the response to the publication of the report today, the Met location out additional plans for enchancment as they ship replace and reform below A Unusual Met for London.
This opinion commits to £38 million to develop into how the Met protects the final public from harm, including bolstering teams who survey after considerations fancy missing folks and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Background
- Between August – September 2023 202 missing children were graded as ‘excessive possibility’. Between December and January 2024, 398 missing children were graded as ‘excessive possibility’.
