Diagnostic Toolkit for Exploited Children
Why this toolkit exists
Despite growing recognition that children exploited into criminal activity are victims, not offenders, a significant number of these children continue to be criminalised in England. The gap between policy intent and frontline practice remains wide, and no published national data tracks how many children identified as potential victims of exploitation are subsequently charged or prosecuted.
This toolkit, developed for Ending Coercive Offending (ECO) CIC, provides a structured, evidence-informed approach for local areas to diagnose where their systems are failing exploited children, and to develop practical solutions grounded in children's rights, intersectional analysis, and multi-agency collaboration.
The critical gap
Fewer children are entering the criminal justice system overall, and more are being recognised as potential victims of trafficking and exploitation through the National Referral Mechanism. Yet the system lacks transparency on what happens when these two realities collide. Between 2022 and 2024, criminal exploitation accounted for roughly half of all child NRM referrals, with county lines activity as the principal driver. But the UK does not publish linked data showing how many of these referred children are subsequently prosecuted.
This is the accountability gap that ECO CIC was established to address: ensuring exploited children are protected and never criminalised as a consequence of their own exploitation.
Sources: Home Office, NRM End of Year Summary 2024; ECO CIC, 'A Critical Gap' (2025)
Who is this toolkit for?
This toolkit is designed for professionals and partnerships working within or across the following systems in England:
Policing and the criminal justice system
Officers, prosecutors, youth offending teams, and magistrates responsible for decisions affecting exploited children
Children's social care
Social workers, safeguarding leads, independent reviewing officers, and multi-agency safeguarding partners
Education and inclusion
Schools, pupil referral units, virtual school heads, and SEND coordinators
Strategic partnerships
Safeguarding children partnerships, community safety partnerships, violence reduction units, and health and wellbeing boards
The scale of child criminal exploitation in England
Child criminal exploitation (CCE) occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate, or deceive a child into criminal activity. Despite increasing policy recognition of children as victims, England still lacks a statutory definition of CCE, and there is no national strategy to tackle it.
Referral trends
NRM referrals for child criminal exploitation grew sharply between 2020 and 2022, driven substantially by county lines identification. In 2024, criminal exploitation remained the most common exploitation type for children referred to the NRM, accounting for 48% of all child referrals (2,891 children). Of those referred for criminal exploitation, 93% were male and 7% female. County lines referrals, while declining from their 2022 peak (averaging over 580 per quarter), continued to represent a significant subset.
The prosecution gap
The NRM provides a framework for identification and support, and the section 45 defence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 can offer a statutory defence where children have committed offences under duress. However, research consistently demonstrates that the victim status of criminally exploited children remains uncertain in frontline practice. Police discretion in NRM referrals is highly variable, with individual officers' interpretations of exploitation and vulnerability leading to inconsistent outcomes for children in substantially similar circumstances.
Youth justice context
| Indicator | Trend | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Children entering the criminal justice system | Long-term decline to record lows; modest increase 2022-23 | Youth Justice Board |
| Child NRM referrals for criminal exploitation | Grew sharply 2020-22; stabilised at high levels | Home Office, NRM statistics 2024 |
| Children in custody from minority ethnic backgrounds | 59% of under-18s in custody from minority ethnic groups (June 2025) | MOJ, Ethnicity and the CJS 2024 |
| Black children: risk assessment inflation | Practitioner reoffending assessments inflated by 37.2 percentage points for Black children | Youth Justice Board, Dec 2025 |
| Published data linking NRM referral to prosecution | None available at national level | ECO CIC analysis |
How children are drawn into criminal exploitation
The divergence between these two pathways depends on professional recognition, referral consistency, and the quality of multi-agency safeguarding responses. Research shows this divergence is shaped by the child's ethnicity, gender, disability, and socioeconomic background.
The legal framework
Why an intersectional analysis matters
The risk of criminalisation for exploited children is not distributed evenly. Multiple intersecting dimensions of identity and circumstance determine which children are recognised as victims and which are prosecuted. An effective local response requires honest assessment of how race, poverty, gender, disability, care status, and geography shape both vulnerability to exploitation and the likelihood of a protective (rather than punitive) response.
Race and ethnicity
Black children account for 26% of the custodial population despite comprising around 6% of the child population. Risk assessments inflate perceived reoffending likelihood for Black children by 37.2 percentage points. Adultification bias means Black children are treated as older, less innocent, and less vulnerable than white peers, directly reducing the likelihood of a safeguarding response and increasing criminalisation. Black Caribbean boys are significantly more over-represented in arrests than Black African boys, indicating that broad ethnic categories mask critical variation.
Sources: YJB ethnic disproportionality response (Dec 2025); YEF Racial Disproportionality report (2025); MOJ Ethnicity and the CJS 2024
Poverty and deprivation
Children growing up in persistent poverty are disproportionately represented at every stage of the justice system. In 2022, 21% of Black children and 32% of Asian children lived in persistently low-income households compared with 17% of white children. Poverty intersects with exploitation risk: areas of concentrated deprivation produce both higher exposure to recruitment by organised networks and weaker access to protective services. When poverty overlaps with race, the cumulative disadvantage deepens substantially.
Sources: YJB ethnic disproportionality analysis; HMIP multi-agency inspection (Nov 2024)
Gender
Boys comprise 78% of child NRM referrals and 93% of those referred specifically for criminal exploitation. However, the exploitation of girls is often rendered invisible because their contact with services is more likely to be categorised under other safeguarding concerns rather than CCE. Research indicates that girls may be identified for sexual exploitation while simultaneously experiencing criminal exploitation that goes unrecorded. The gendered framing of exploitation shapes which children receive protection and which receive prosecution.
Sources: Home Office NRM statistics 2024; ICTG statistics (year ending March 2024)
Disability and neurodiversity
Children with special educational needs, learning disabilities, communication difficulties, and neurodevelopmental conditions (including traumatic brain injury, ADHD, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and autism) are disproportionately vulnerable to exploitation. These conditions impair a child's capacity to resist coercion, understand consequences, and disclose exploitation. Joint inspectorate findings in 2024 described a case where a highly vulnerable child with SEND was criminalised as a direct result of professionals' failure to assess his developmental needs, instead attributing adult-level understanding to him.
Sources: HMIP et al., multi-agency inspection on serious youth violence (Nov 2024)
Care experience
Children in local authority care are significantly over-represented among those who are criminally exploited and those who are criminalised. The Howard League's work demonstrated that targeted multi-agency intervention could halve the rate of criminalisation of children in residential care (from 15% to 7% between 2014 and 2019). Placement instability, distance from home area, missing episodes, and inadequate supervision all compound exploitation risk. The intersection of care status with race and deprivation produces compounding disadvantage.
Sources: Howard League for Penal Reform; Parliamentary evidence on disproportionality (2020)
School exclusion and education
Exclusion from mainstream education, particularly attending pupil referral units, is a recognised risk factor for criminal exploitation. Black Caribbean and Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller children experience disproportionately high rates of exclusion. Children excluded from school lose the protective factor of routine adult oversight and become more visible to recruiters. The intersection of exclusion with other vulnerabilities (poverty, SEND, care experience) creates concentrated risk that is seldom addressed through coordinated multi-agency action.
Sources: YEF report on racial disproportionality; Working Together 2023
How these dimensions interact
Intersectional analysis is not about listing separate disadvantages; it is about understanding how they amplify one another. A Black boy from a deprived area, in local authority care, with undiagnosed SEND, who has been excluded from school, faces not one vulnerability but a constellation of factors that both increase his exposure to exploitation and reduce the likelihood that professionals will recognise him as a victim. Adultification bias means he is more likely to be seen as an active participant than a coerced child. This intersectional reality must inform every element of local strategy.
Local area diagnostic
This diagnostic is designed for safeguarding partnerships, youth offending teams, police forces, and other local agencies to assess the strength of their systems for protecting exploited children from criminalisation. Answer each question honestly using available local data and professional judgement. Where you do not have the data, select "not known" as this itself is a finding.
The diagnostic covers six domains. Your results will generate a risk profile and tailored recommendations.
Solutions framework
This framework organises evidence-informed solutions across the six diagnostic domains. Each solution includes a rationale, evidence base, and implementation guidance. The framework is designed to be used alongside the diagnostic results, prioritising interventions that address identified weaknesses.
Action planning template
Use the results of your diagnostic assessment to populate this action plan. Focus on the domains where your area scored lowest. For each action, identify a responsible lead, a timescale, and how you will know when the action has been completed.
Priority actions from your diagnostic
Complete the diagnostic tool first to generate priority actions here.
Implementation checklist
- Completed the local area diagnostic with multi-agency partners
- Reviewed diagnostic results and identified priority domains
- Assessed current data collection on NRM referrals and prosecution outcomes for children
- Reviewed local NRM referral consistency across agencies and individual professionals
- Analysed ethnicity data for children who are criminalised following exploitation identification
- Audited pre-sentence reports and assessments for adultification bias
- Reviewed section 45 defence usage for children in the local area
- Assessed the availability and quality of contextual safeguarding practice
- Reviewed multi-agency training on child criminal exploitation and modern slavery
- Established routine reporting to the safeguarding children partnership on exploitation and prosecution outcomes
- Developed a local action plan with named leads, timescales, and measurable outcomes
- Engaged children and young people with lived experience in the review process
- Identified and addressed gaps in SEND identification and support for exploited children
- Assessed the intersection of race, poverty, care status, and school exclusion in local exploitation data
Stakeholder identification and mapping
Ending the criminalisation of exploited children requires coordinated action across multiple agencies, sectors, and levels of governance. This tool helps you identify the stakeholders relevant to your local area, assess their current position and influence, and plan engagement strategies that build the coalition needed for change.
Use the interactive matrix below to map your stakeholders, then generate an engagement plan tailored to your local context.
Key stakeholder groups
The following categories reflect the principal actors whose decisions, resources, or practice directly affect whether exploited children are protected or criminalised. Within each category, identify the specific individuals or bodies in your area.
Criminal justice
Police: Chief Constable/Commissioner; exploitation and safeguarding leads; custody sergeants; neighbourhood teams; Modern Slavery coordinators
Crown Prosecution Service: Area lead; specialist prosecutors handling youth and modern slavery cases
Youth Offending Team: YOT manager; case workers; seconded officers; health practitioners within the YOT
Judiciary: Youth court magistrates; district judges sitting in youth courts
Defence solicitors: Youth justice legal practitioners; duty solicitor schemes
Safeguarding and social care
Local authority: Director of Children's Services; assistant directors; principal social workers; exploitation teams; MASH/front door managers
Safeguarding partnership: Independent scrutineer; safeguarding partners (LA, police, health); business manager; child death review panel
Independent reviewing officers and children's guardians
MACE/CCE panels: Multi-agency child exploitation meeting chairs and members
Education and health
Education: Virtual school head (for looked-after children); headteachers and designated safeguarding leads; pupil referral unit leads; SEND coordinators; education welfare officers
Health: Designated doctor/nurse for safeguarding; CAMHS leads; school nurses; liaison and diversion practitioners; speech and language therapists; paediatricians assessing neurodevelopmental needs
Strategic and commissioning
Elected members: Lead member for children's services; police and crime commissioner (PCC); portfolio holders for community safety
Partnerships: Community safety partnership; health and wellbeing board; violence reduction unit/partnership
Commissioners: Those commissioning exploitation support services, substance misuse services, and advocacy provision (including ICTG)
Voluntary, community, and lived experience
Specialist organisations: County lines and exploitation charities (e.g. Catch22, St Giles Trust, Children's Society, Barnardo's ICTG service); modern slavery partnerships
Community organisations: Faith groups, youth clubs, sports organisations, and culturally specific services working in communities affected by exploitation
Lived experience: Young people with direct experience of exploitation; parent and carer networks; peer mentors and advocates
National and inspectorate
Government: Home Office (modern slavery, county lines policy); Department for Education (safeguarding); Ministry of Justice (youth justice, CPS oversight)
Arm's length bodies: Youth Justice Board; National Crime Agency; Single Competent Authority (NRM decisions)
Inspectorates: Ofsted; HMICFRS; CQC; HMI Probation (and joint inspection programmes)
Advocacy: Children's Commissioner; Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner; ECO CIC
Influence and interest matrix
Map your identified stakeholders onto this matrix to determine engagement priorities. Drag and drop stakeholder names into the appropriate quadrant, or use the form below to add and position them.
Stakeholder engagement planning
For each quadrant, the table below suggests engagement approaches calibrated to the stakeholder's influence and interest. Use this to structure your local engagement strategy.
| Quadrant | Engagement approach | Frequency | Key messages |
|---|---|---|---|
| High influence, high interest | Co-production; shared governance; joint data analysis; regular strategic meetings | Monthly or more frequent | We share accountability for outcomes. The data shows where the system is failing children. Joint action produces measurable change. |
| High influence, low interest | Targeted briefings; exception reporting; alignment with their existing priorities | Quarterly, or when action is needed | This issue connects to your existing obligations (safeguarding, inspection readiness, CRC compliance). We need your authority to unlock change. |
| Low influence, high interest | Information sharing; consultation; drawing on expertise; building capacity to influence | Regular updates; involve in evidence gathering | Your knowledge and commitment are essential. We will amplify your voice in strategic forums and share evidence of what works. |
| Low influence, low interest | General communications; monitoring for changes in position or relevance | Periodic (e.g. newsletter, annual briefing) | Awareness-level messaging about the scale of the problem and the case for change. |
Identifying potential resistance and allies
Change of this nature can provoke resistance as well as support. Mapping where resistance may come from, and understanding its sources, is as important as identifying allies.
Likely allies
Children's rights organisations with a stake in reducing criminalisation
Youth offending teams where Child First principles are embedded
Safeguarding leads who see exploitation as a child protection issue
Health professionals working in liaison and diversion, CAMHS, and neurodevelopmental assessment
Lived experience voices whose testimony carries authority that data alone cannot
Academic researchers with evidence on exploitation, adultification, and disproportionality
Potential sources of resistance
Operational policing cultures where children in drug supply are framed as offenders first; where NRM referral is seen as bureaucratic
Political pressures around being seen as "soft on crime" or county lines, particularly in areas with high public concern about drug markets
Resource constraints that lead agencies to default to prosecution (a relatively quick process) rather than sustained safeguarding (a resource-intensive one)
Data reluctance where agencies resist transparency because published figures may expose poor practice
Professional discomfort with intersectional and anti-racist analysis where it challenges established norms
Moveable middle
Many stakeholders sit between ally and resistant. These include:
Senior police officers who understand the policy position but face operational pressures from below
Local authority leaders who are sympathetic but managing competing budget priorities
CPS decision-makers who may not have considered exploitation as a systematic factor in their charging decisions
The engagement strategy for this group should focus on evidence, feasibility, and alignment with existing obligations (including inspection frameworks and the CRC).
Engagement record
Use this table to track your stakeholder engagement over time. Click "Add entry" to log a new engagement.
| Date | Stakeholder | Engagement type | Outcome / next step | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No entries yet | ||||
Mapping your local system
Stakeholder identification tells you who the actors are. System mapping tells you how they connect, where information flows or stalls, where authority sits, and where children fall through structural gaps. This section provides a set of tools for mapping the architecture of the local system as it actually operates for a child who is being exploited, not as it appears on paper.
Complete each component with your multi-agency partners. Differences in how agencies describe the system are themselves findings.
Mapping the child's journey through the system
A child who is being criminally exploited will typically come into contact with multiple agencies across multiple settings. The critical question is: at which points does the system recognise the child as a victim, and at which points does it treat them as an offender? Map your local system by tracing a child's likely journey from first contact to outcome.
Typical contact points
For each contact point, assess whether your local system is more likely to produce a protective or a punitive response. Select the option that most accurately describes current practice.
Critical decision points
At each stage where a child's trajectory can shift between protection and prosecution, someone makes a decision. Mapping these decision points exposes where discretion operates, who holds authority, what information informs the decision, and whether there is any oversight or review.
| Decision point | Who decides? | What information do they have? | What information are they missing? | Is there oversight? | What typically happens? |
|---|
Pre-populated decision points to consider
Click any row below to add it to your mapping table with the decision point pre-filled.
Information flows and blockages
Children are criminalised in part because the professionals making decisions about them do not have access to the full picture. A child may be known to social care as exploited, but the arresting officer may have no access to that information. Mapping where information flows freely and where it is blocked or delayed reveals the structural conditions that allow criminalisation to occur.
Agency-to-agency information flow
For each pair of agencies, assess how effectively information about a child's exploitation status is shared. Consider both formal systems (databases, referral forms) and informal channels (phone calls, relationships).
| From ↓ / To → | Police | Social care | YOT | Education | Health | CPS | VCS |
|---|
Common information blockages to investigate
NRM status not visible to arresting officers
Does the Police National Computer flag a child's NRM referral or positive grounds decision? Can officers on the street access this in real time? If not, a child with a recognised victim status may be arrested and charged by officers who have no knowledge of it.
Social care assessments not reaching CPS
When the CPS makes a charging decision, do they routinely receive the child's social care assessment, including any exploitation risk assessment? Or do they decide on the basis of the police file alone?
Education exclusion data not shared with safeguarding
When a child is excluded from school, is the safeguarding partnership notified? Is exclusion treated as a risk indicator for exploitation? Or does the child disappear from professional sight?
Health assessments not informing justice decisions
Where liaison and diversion or CAMHS have assessed a child's neurodevelopmental needs, does this information reach the YOT, the CPS, and the court? Or are justice decisions made without knowledge of the child's developmental capacity?
Cross-boundary information loss
County lines by definition involves movement between areas. When an exploited child is found in a different local authority or police force area, is information about their exploitation status transferred? Or does the child present as an unknown offender?
Voluntary sector intelligence not reaching statutory agencies
Specialist exploitation charities and youth workers often have the most granular understanding of which children are being exploited and by whom. Are there formal mechanisms for this intelligence to reach statutory decision-makers?
Structural gaps and failure points
Beyond information flows, there are structural features of local systems that create conditions for the criminalisation of exploited children. These are not about individual professional failings; they are features of how the system is designed, resourced, and governed.
Gap analysis
For each potential gap, assess whether it is present in your local system. Where a gap exists, note what would be needed to close it.
Local assets and resources
System mapping should not only expose weaknesses. Identifying what already exists locally, what is working, and where there is capacity to build on provides the foundation for a realistic improvement plan.
Asset register
Record the services, programmes, expertise, and relationships that already exist in your area and could contribute to ending the criminalisation of exploited children.
| Asset / resource | Category | Current function | Potential contribution | Strength | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No assets recorded yet | |||||
Prompts: assets you may already have
Specialist exploitation services
County lines / CCE support workers (e.g. Catch22, St Giles, local VCS); ICTG provision (Barnardo's); modern slavery first responder capacity; specialist exploitation social workers
Multi-agency structures
MACE or CCE panels; MASH/front door; contextual safeguarding hub; violence reduction unit/partnership; community safety partnership; CHANNEL panel
Data and intelligence
Police problem profiles on exploitation; local NRM tracking; social care exploitation flags; education inclusion data; health liaison and diversion assessments
Lived experience and community
Young people's advisory panels; peer mentor programmes; parent/carer support networks; community organisations with reach into affected populations; faith-based youth provision
Workforce capability
Professionals with CCE expertise; speech and language therapy capacity; neurodevelopmental assessment provision; trauma-informed practitioners; anti-racism / anti-adultification training
Diversion and alternatives
Out-of-court disposal programmes; Outcome 22 usage; restorative approaches; youth diversion schemes; mentoring programmes; sports and arts provision
System health check
Drawing together the components above, this summary assessment provides an overall picture of your local system's capacity to protect exploited children from criminalisation. Complete this after working through the preceding tabs.
Key resources and references
Policy and guidance
- Home Office (2023), Criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults: county lines
- Department for Education (2023), Working Together to Safeguard Children
- Modern Slavery Act 2015, Section 45 defence
- Home Office (2025), Modern Slavery: NRM and Duty to Notify Statistics, End of Year Summary 2024
- Baroness Casey (2025), National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Research and analysis
- Youth Justice Board (Dec 2025), The evolving response to ethnic disproportionality in youth justice
- Youth Endowment Fund (2025), Racial Disproportionality in Violence Affecting Children and Young People
- Ministry of Justice (Nov 2025), Statistics on Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System, 2024
- HMIP et al. (Nov 2024), Multi-agency responses to serious youth violence
- Shaw, J. (2024), 'Won the Battle but Lost the War? County Lines and the Quest for Victim Status', Youth Justice
- Davis, J. and Marsh, N. (2020), Adultification bias within child protection and safeguarding
- Catch22 (2024), What do we mean by "child criminal exploitation"? The need for a clear rights-based legal definition
Children's rights instruments
- UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
- Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (2000)
- Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005)
About ECO CIC
Ending Coercive Offending is a children's rights organisation (Community Interest Company no. 16599879) established to ensure exploited children are protected and never criminalised. For more information, visit www.ecocic.com or contact [email protected].