Child Criminal Exploitation
In our July 2024 Academic Insights paper, Nina Maxwell examines service responses to child criminal exploitation. While this form of exploitation can affect any young person, there are heightened risks for specific groups and at critical transitional points. The barriers and facilitators to an effective approach are considered, with the former including the difficulties of identification, service thresholds, binary victim/perpetrator definitions, and stereotypical notions of victimhood.
“[they] use language like ‘putting themselves at risk’ and like, ‘making choices’, and the ‘choices they make’ and ‘their behaviours’ and I feel like I'm the one that's always saying, ‘yeah, but they’ve been exploited’… ‘They don't have a choice in that, they're doing that out of fear’, ... so continually hammering that home, please think about the language that you're using and please think about the young people as well” (professional cited in Maxwell et al., 2023:21)
As child criminal exploitation is a complex, cross-cutting issue, agencies must work together through a shared language, an understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities, and systems that enable collaborative working. Practitioners need access to specialised training and a range of safeguarding tools, and they need to exercise professional curiosity, looking beyond the visible evidence and questioning why a young person is behaving in concerning ways.
Adopting a strengths-based, child-centred, child rights approach is particularly important given that exploitation removes the young person’s control over their own life. As is further highlighted, this places the onus on professionals to work with young people to establish trust and to create safe spaces for them to share their experiences.
The Academic Insights paper can be accessed here:
Author of ENSLAVED | Independent Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Lived Experience Consultant | Co Founder & LEAP member at Human Trafficking Foundation | Policy & Research | SafeStep Trustee | Causeway Ambassador
4 个月It’s also important to use the term modern slavery and human trafficking when speaking about criminally exploited children as they’re often used as slaves/ and being trafficked. Many don’t realise what the terms actually mean.