FOI request (FOIR-803337255)

This request relates to data held by the local authority concerning children known to children’s services who have been identified as victims of, or at risk of, criminal exploitation and/or sexual exploitation, including where exploitation is linked to organised criminal groups, county lines, or gangs, where recorded.

For the purposes of this request, please interpret “child” as anyone under the age of 18.

Requested Information

1)    Children identified as at risk of or victims of exploitation

For each of the following categories, please provide the number of individual children recorded in each financial year:

• Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE)
• Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)
• Both CCE and CSE

Please provide this data for each of the following financial years:

• 2019/20
• 2020/21
• 2021/22
• 2022/23
• 2023/24
• 2024/25
• 2025/26

If your authority uses a different reporting period (calendar year, quarterly etc.), please provide the closest equivalent.

2) Exploitation flags, categories, or indicators used

Please confirm whether your children’s services case management system contains any of the following structured fields/flags (tick yes/no and provide field names if possible):

• Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) flag/marker
• Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) flag/marker
• Modern slavery / trafficking flag
• County Lines flag
• Gang association flag
• Organised crime group (OCG) involvement flag
• Missing episodes linked to exploitation marker
• “Contextual safeguarding” indicator
• Exploitation risk assessment score/level (e.g. low/medium/high)

If yes, please provide the names of the relevant fields/categories as they appear in your system.

3) Gang / organised crime involvement

Where recorded, for each year listed above, please provide the number of children identified as:

• Exploited by or associated with a gang
• Exploited by or associated with an organised criminal group (OCG)
• Exploited through county lines activity

If you do not record this information in a structured way, please state this.

4) Location / context of exploitation

If your records contain structured data on the setting/context of exploitation, please provide the number of children (per year) where exploitation was recorded as occurring in any of the following contexts:

• Online exploitation
• Exploitation in public places (parks, streets, shopping areas etc.)
• Exploitation in private addresses (including “trap houses”)
• Hotel / temporary accommodation exploitation
• School-related exploitation / PRU
• Care placement-related exploitation (including residential care)

If your authority uses different categories, please provide your closest equivalents.

5) Gender breakdown (if available)

For each year above, please provide a breakdown (for CCE, CSE, and both) by:

• Sex or gender (as recorded)

6) Age breakdown (if available)

• Age group (e.g. under 10 / 10–12 / 13–15 / 16–17, or your nearest available)

If this would risk identifying individuals due to small numbers, please redact or suppress small number categories and provide the remaining totals.