Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information the Department holds on the number of children assessed as being at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation in the latest year for which information is available.

It is difficult to measure the number of children at risk of child sexual exploitation with confidence because methodologies vary and because most child sexual abuse remains unreported.

In its report, Measuring the Scale and Changing Nature of Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexual Exploitation, published in August 2018, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse refers to several studies which have sought to assess the number of children at risk of sexual exploitation in England using different methodologies and data sources. These include a survey of 100 local authorities in 2016 which identified 13,466 children at risk, and a study by the Office of the Children's Commissioner in 2012 which estimated 16,500 children to be at risk.

The Department for Education published statistics on “Characteristics of children in need: 2017/18: England” on 25 October 2018. These show nearly 20,000 assessments carried out by children’s services where child sexual exploitation was identified as being a factor that contributed to the child being in need. However, these figures count numbers of assessments, not number of children, so if a child has more than one assessment where child sexual exploitation is identified as a factor then they will be counted more than once in these figures.