Are we Safeguarding exploited children?
Safeguarding is meant to protect children from harm. It is meant to interrupt abuse, reduce risk, and restore safety. Yet for many children who are exploited, “safeguarding” has become something secondary. Across the UK, children experiencing exploitation are routinely described as “known to services” and “subject to safeguarding". Yet many of these same children continue to be the following:
Arrested and criminalised
Re-exposed to perpetrators
Excluded from education
Moved repeatedly between placements
Assessed and reassessed without intervention
Safeguarding exists on paper, but not in practice. Meetings happen. Plans are written. Risks are reviewed. Yet the child’s circumstances remain unchanged. When safeguarding becomes a tick-box exercise, the appearance of action replaces the reality of protection.
A critical factor in this drift is adultification—the process by which children, particularly those who are racialised, are perceived as more mature, more responsible, and less deserving of protection.
The work of Dr Jahnine Davis has consistently challenged how safeguarding systems adultify children by framing their experiences through the language of “choice”, "risk-taking", "non-engagement", and “criminality”, rather than recognising coercion, fear, and survival.
Dr Davis's work demonstrates how adultification allows systems to feel justified in doing less while believing they are doing enough. Her work shows that when children are seen as 'streetwise', 'manipulative', or 'complicit', safeguarding shifts from protection to management—and harm becomes normalised.
For all children, including those experiencing exploitation, tick-box safeguarding is not neutral—it is harmful. When a child discloses exploitation and sees no meaningful response, trust erodes. When safeguarding plans coexist with arrest, exclusion, or custody, children learn that protection is conditional. When they are treated as responsible for their exploitation, shame replaces safety. In these moments, safeguarding does more than just fail.
Safeguarding must return to its core purpose: protecting children from harm, regardless of how complex, challenging, or uncomfortable their circumstances may be.
That requires:
Challenging adultifying narratives wherever they appear
Refusing to equate exploitation with choice
Prioritising lived experience over professional comfort
Leadership willing to tolerate complexity rather than hide behind compliance
Securing welfare outcomes for children
If safeguarding is working, children should experience it—not just be recorded within it. They should feel safer, believed, protected, and less blamed. When safeguarding becomes a tick-box exercise, it may protect organisations. But it leaves children exposed.
Dr Davis's work challenges us all to ensure that safeguarding becomes something that we can evidence for every child, every time.
Written by: Sherry Peck