Family and community risk factors

Child criminal exploitation is a form of extra-familial harm.

This means that most children are exploited by people away from the family environment.

Community risk factors

Exploitation usually happens outside the home. Young people are groomed in the local community through friendship, peer pressure or where an older peer gives them money, takes them out for food or for days out.

It may be in parks or at school by people they know, in the street by strangers or on social media.

Family relationships

While research has shown that supportive families are a protective factor for young people, any child regardless of their family background can be criminally exploited. Child criminal exploitation goes beyond what a family can support themselves; parents often become secondary victims.

Professionals must:

• be professionally curious about all young people
• alert to the risk signs of criminal exploitation.
• aware of incorrect media stereotypes, e.g. boys, gangs, poverty, ethnic minorities.

Professionals must listen to parents and perceive them to be part of the multi-agency response.

Risk to the family

Parents are often secondary victims due to the nature and impact of child criminal exploitation. Exploiters may intimidate and threaten parents in their homes or workplaces, especially where young people have been removed from the area as a protective measure. Hence, voluntary accommodation placed family members at risk of violence.

Parents may be reluctant to tell services what is happening or report their child missing in case this results in:

• their child being harmed by the people exploiting them.
• their child being arrested
• child protection responses.

This puts parents in a difficult position of wanting to protect their child but not knowing how to do this safely.

Family-level risk factors

Exploiters target young people when they are most vulnerable, this includes when they are having problems at home, such as parent separation or when parents are having issues that affect their ability to parent effectively, such as:

• mental health issues
• substance misuse issues
• domestic abuse.

Young people may be groomed by older relatives such as siblings or cousins. Young siblings may be threatened as a way of controlling the exploited young person, or younger brothers and sisters may inherit their debt to the exploiter.

Exploiters may also manipulate parents to befriend or use existing friendships to target their children. This can make it difficult for parents to know who to trust.