ECPAT UK's latest report exposes a fundamental failure in how we identify, protect and respond to children experiencing trafficking and exploitation.
More than 7,000 children were referred as potential victims of trafficking and modern slavery in the UK during 2025. That is a 17% increase in just one year. More than six in ten of those children were British.
These are not simply statistics. They represent children whose lives have been shaped by coercion, exploitation, fear and the failures of adults and institutions to protect them.
The latest report from ECPAT UK and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Child Trafficking in the UK: A Snapshot 2026, paints a deeply troubling picture. More children are being identified as potential victims, yet serious gaps remain in protection, support and access to justice. Convictions for child trafficking remain persistently low, and significant disparities continue to affect decisions about who is recognised as a victim.
At Ending Coercive Offending (ECO), these findings reinforce the reason we exist.
We have built systems capable of identifying exploited children while continuing to punish them for what exploitation has made them do.
Recognition is not the same as protection
One of the most concerning findings relates to the use of public-order disqualification, which can prevent victims of modern slavery from accessing certain protections.
ECPAT UK reports that 19 children were considered for disqualification and 17 were disqualified. Sixteen had already received positive Reasonable Grounds decisions identifying them as potential victims of trafficking or modern slavery. Thirteen were flagged for county lines exploitation.
Consider what that means.
A child can be recognised as a potential victim of exploitation and still be excluded from protection because of concerns about their involvement in offending or public-order risk.
The very activities that may have resulted from their exploitation can become part of the justification for withholding protection.
This is not simply a contradiction in policy. It exposes a fundamental problem in how institutions understand children who are coerced into offending.
We continue to separate the child's behaviour from the conditions in which it occurred. We examine the offence, assess the risk and consider the criminal justice response, while the coercion, threats, dependency and survival strategies that shaped the child's actions can become secondary.
The child is recognised as exploited, but the system still responds to them as an offender.
That should concern every safeguarding leader, police force, local authority and criminal justice agency in the country.
The problem is bigger than identification
For years, the response to child exploitation has focused on improving identification, awareness and professional training. Of course, identification matters Children cannot access appropriate support if their exploitation is not recognised. But recognition alone is not enough. What happens after identification is equally important.
Does recognition change the decisions being made about the child? Does it affect whether they are arrested, charged or prosecuted? Does it ensure access to meaningful protection? Does it prevent criminal justice responses from compounding the harm already experienced? Or does the child simply acquire another label in a system that continues to process them in much the same way?
At ECO, we believe we must stop judging safeguarding success solely by whether exploitation has been identified. We must also examine whether that identification has materially changed what happens to the child.
A positive identification decision means little if the child's subsequent experience is dominated by exclusion, prosecution, uncertainty and punishment.
When systems create further harm
Children experiencing exploitation often live with a complex set of pressures. Coercion does not always take the form of an explicit threat or a single controlling individual. It can operate through fear, debt, loyalty, belonging, dependency, shame and the perceived consequences of refusing to comply. Children may appear to make choices while experiencing circumstances in which safe alternatives are extraordinarily difficult to access.
When institutions respond to those children primarily through criminal justice processes, they risk reinforcing the conditions that make exploitation difficult to escape. A criminal record can restrict education, employment and future opportunity. Criminalisation may damage relationships with professionals, undermine trust and reinforce exclusion. For children with insecure immigration status, the consequences can be particularly serious and enduring. These are not separate from safeguarding. They are part of the child's experience of harm. And when those outcomes result from the decisions of agencies that already know a child has been exploited, we must be prepared to examine the role of the system itself.
At ECO, we have consistently argued that criminalisation of exploited children can become an additional form of institutional harm.
That is not an argument for ignoring serious offending or dismissing the impact on victims of crime. It is an argument for understanding children's involvement in offending within the circumstances of coercion, exploitation and diminished freedom in which it occurred. Accountability and safeguarding do not have to be competing objectives. But safeguarding cannot remain subordinate to punishment.
What is Government going to do differently?
ECPAT UK and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner have made five priority recommendations, including a cross-government Child Exploitation Strategy, stronger prevention, investigation of disparities in trafficking decisions, effective protection regardless of nationality or immigration status, and improvements in the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators.
These recommendations matter.
But strategies, guidance and commitments will only make a difference if they change decisions at the points where children encounter statutory systems.
For ECO, that means asking some uncomfortable questions.
Who is challenging a prosecution when there is evidence of exploitation?
Who is reviewing whether a child recognised as a victim has nevertheless been criminalised?
Who is examining the impact of criminal records on children who have experienced coercion?
Where is the accountability when agencies identify exploitation but fail to ensure protection follows?
And how are leaders demonstrating that safeguarding duties genuinely influence criminal justice decision-making?
These questions cannot be left to individual practitioners to resolve through goodwill or professional persistence. They require leadership, clear expectations, transparent data and the willingness to challenge established institutional practice.
We need more than another strategy
The publication of this report should not simply generate another round of professional discussions about the complexity of child exploitation. We know exploitation is complex. We know that children may be frightened, coerced, threatened or manipulated. We know that the distinction between victimhood and offending can become blurred when children are forced or pressured into criminal activity. The challenge is whether our institutions are prepared to act on that knowledge.
At ECO, we believe change must be visible in the decisions that shape children's lives: at arrest, at charging, during prosecution, in safeguarding assessments, in access to support and in the treatment of children whose exploitation has already been recognised.
We need to move beyond asking whether a child has been identified as exploited. We must ask whether the system has stopped treating that child as responsible for the harm done to them.
A child should not have to demonstrate that they are a perfect victim before they become entitled to protection.
And no child should carry a lifetime of criminal justice consequences because the adults and institutions responsible for safeguarding them failed to recognise what coercion meant in practice. The ECPAT UK report provides further evidence of the gap between our commitments to protecting children and the outcomes our systems continue to produce.
At ECO, we are determined to challenge that gap. Because safeguarding cannot mean recognising exploitation on one hand and criminalising its consequences on the other.
Children who have been coerced and exploited deserve protection, not punishment.
Written by: Sherry Peck
Source: ECPAT UK and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (2026), Child Trafficking in the UK: A Snapshot 2026.
https://www.ecpat.org.uk/child-trafficking-in-the-uk-a-snapshot-2026