Records & plans
What is child exploitation?
Child exploitation is where a child is coerced or manipulated into activity — sexual, criminal or both — in exchange for something, or through threat. Looked-after children are at heightened risk.
It rarely presents as a single incident. It presents as a pattern: unexplained absences, new possessions, older associates, a change in behaviour, going missing to the same place.
That pattern is only visible if the individual observations were recorded. A concern that seemed minor on its own is the reason contemporaneous recording matters so much in this setting.
Children being exploited frequently do not see themselves as victims, which is why the response cannot depend on disclosure and why the observations of the people around them carry so much weight.
What goes wrong in practice
- Individually minor observations not recorded, so no pattern ever appears.
- Response dependent on the child disclosing.
- Missing episodes treated as behaviour rather than as a potential indicator.