What to do if you are worried about a child

Child Trafficking

What is child trafficking?

Trafficking is where children and young people tricked, forced or persuaded to leave their homes and are moved or transported and then exploited, forced to work or sold. Children are trafficked for:

  • sexual exploitation
  • benefit fraud
  • forced marriage
  • domestic slavery like cleaning, cooking and childcare
  • forced labour in factories or agriculture
  • committing crimes, like begging, theft, working on cannabis farms or moving drugs.

Trafficked children experience many types of abuse and neglect. Traffickers use physical, sexual and emotional abuse as a form of control. Children and young people are also likely to be physically and emotionally neglected and may be sexually exploited.

For more information, please click here to be directed to the NSPCC website.

At the end of this page there are multiple resources about raising awareness among practitioners to enhance the intelligence picture and increase the identification of potential child victims These include the following:

  • NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice Centre leaflets for carers, education, health workers, social workers etc.
  • Non law enforcement briefing on Modern Slavery operations May 2019 – this shows that of the 1412 live Modern Slavery operations cross the UK, 487 involve those under 18.
  • TVPs Modern Slavery infographics for April 2019. As always, these documents are marked as Official Sensitive with the handling instructions that they can be shared with partner agencies who would benefit from a local understanding of Modern Slavery, but that they are not for public dissemination.

In addition, there are two films on child trafficking produced by ECPAT that may be of interest. One aimed at practitioners to raise awareness of the issues faced by Vietnamese children forced into cannabis cultivation and the other about identifying migrant children who may be being criminally exploited - https://www.ecpat.org.uk/films-for-practitioners.

For any colleagues working with children who are from First Responder organisations, please use these contact details for the Single Competent Authority -  (nationalreferralsmechanism@homeoffice.gov.uk) or 020 7035 5689.

Resources:

Modern Slavery Infographic April 2019 - Local Policing Areas

Modern Slavery Infographic April 2019 - Thames Valley

National Police Insight Team - Non-LEA May 2019

NRM-child-england-wales April 2019

NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice for Carers

NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice for Education Workers

NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice for Frontline Health Professionals

NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice for Social Workers

NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice for Youth Justice Practitioners

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