Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to prevent children and young people in Birkenhead from being criminally exploited by organised crime networks.

The government is committed to taking action against all forms of child exploitation.

The department has commissioned the new ‘Tackling Child Exploitation’ support programme to provide dedicated expertise, advice and practical support to safeguarding partners in local areas to help them develop an effective multi-agency response to a range of child exploitation threats including child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation.

By June 2019 all local areas are required to publish new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements that will safeguard and promote the well-being of all children in their area. Under the new duty, the local authority, police and health must work together to put in place robust arrangements to respond to all safeguarding concerns that affect their area, including child criminal exploitation. They will report their actions and progress in their published annual reports.

To support local practitioners in preventing children and young people from being criminally exploited statutory safeguarding guidance documents ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ and ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ were revised last year to reflect extra familial threats to children. Exploitation threats to children were also reflected in our communications campaign ‘Together We Can Tackle Child Abuse’.

The Department for Education is making Relationships Education compulsory in all primary schools, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory in all secondary schools and Health Education compulsory in all state-funded schools, from September 2020. New content, that all children and young people will be taught, includes exploitation. In addition, the department is taking action to tackle persistent absence, reviewing exclusions practice, updating school security guidance and improving the quality of our schools and children’s social care services. We are also in discussion with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to identify best practice and how we can encourage police-school partnership working.