Investigating the scale of the problem of children in residential care in the UK being exploited by external agents for sexual purposes

This research is an exploratory study of the potential problem of children and young people in residential care being groomed and sexually exploited and abused by people from outside care without the involvement of care staff. A postal questionnaire was sent to all Chairs of English Local Safeguarding Children‟s Boards (LSCBs). 38 responses were received, covering a range of types of local areas. 40% of respondents reported cases of this problem, 9.4% in relation to asylum seeking children. 17.1% recorded more than 15 cases in the previous 2 years. Respondents were split almost equally with regard to whether the current law was adequate to deal with this problem or not. Only 3% of LSCB areas felt this was a declining problem. LSCBs felt that the most available existing resource to deal with the problem was professional knowledge, and the least was available physical resources. Given the size of the sample caution needs to be exercised in generalising from these results, but it seems that further investigation of this area would be helpful to aid the development and improvement of child protection services.