Warning signs for Youth Services

Youth Service practitioners need to be alert to the warning signs for child criminal exploitation.

There are a range of additional risk factors that youth workers, youth support workers and youth work volunteers should be alert to.

Behaviour changes

This may include:

• staying out late
• having numerous mobile phones
• changing peer groups
• displaying challenging behaviours at school
• having new belongings or money

They may also display challenging behaviours at school and the relatively recent adaptation where young people are encouraged to be well-behaved so as not to draw attention to themselves. Hence, youth workers should be alert to previously unsettled young people who become settled and model pupils. They should be curious about why these changes have occurred.

Transitions

Young people may be targeted when they move to a new school, college or university:

• primary to secondary school (10 or 11 years)
• secondary school to further education college (16 years)
• further education college to higher education (18 years)
• employment, or training

During these transitions, young people may feel lonely, isolated, or alienated. This makes it easier for exploiters to befriend them.

Young people are also at an increased risk when they move from child to adult services as the level of support they receive significantly reduces. The transition from child to adult services varies according to service:

• 16 years for health service
• 18 years for social services or the youth justice service.
• 25 years for many third sector organisations

Youth workers and youth support workers should adopt transitional safeguarding to safeguard young people into adulthood.

Damage to property

Youth workers, youth support workers and youth work volunteers may notice damage to the young person’s home. Exploiters may ‘kick the door down’ to threaten or intimidate the young person, their siblings or parents.

Youth workers and youth support workers should engage with younger siblings as they may be at a heightened risk of criminal exploitation. Young people with no family or links to the local community can be a sign that they have been trafficked to the area.

At the community level, youth workers, youth support workers and youth work volunteers are ideally placed to observe young people and their relationships with their peers. They should be alert to controlling relationships with older peers or adults or if a young person is afraid of individuals, groups or places. This includes being vigilant to unexplained physical injuries or young people who are vague about what happened.

They may avoid certain areas or not want to be seen talking to youth workers or youth support workers. Youth workers, youth support workers and youth work volunteers should also be alert to cannabis use as a hook into child criminal exploitation. While cannabis use is not an indicator of child criminal exploitation some young people may be given drugs ‘on tick’ to deceive them into debt bondage.