Housing

All practitioners who play a role in housing associations and supported housing should be trained in safeguarding.

This should include knowledge and understanding of grooming, child criminal exploitation and cuckooing. This includes plumbers, electricians, handymen and other professionals who visit homes to carry out work.

Housing practitioners must employ a range of safeguarding tools and strategies such as ensuring young people who are care experienced and young people who have recently left prison are not accommodated in close proximity to each other.

Vulnerability to child criminal exploitation is increased when young people live independently as this can heighten existing risk factors. Housing difficulties may be the result of family or foster care breakdown or due to a young person’s status, such as unaccompanied asylum seekers or those who are, or who have, experienced homelessness.

Guidance for housing practitioners

For further guidance for housing practitioners, including warning signs for child criminal exploitation, see pages 52-56 of the Practitioner Toolkit.