Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) today, Friday, 6 October, published their early findings following an inspection of the Met’s handling of child exploitation.
HMICFRS has identified two accelerated causes of concern which relate to how the Met responds to missing children reports and how the force investigates child sexual and criminal exploitation.
Commander Kevin Southworth, Lead for Public Protection at the Metropolitan Police, said: “Children are among the most vulnerable in our society and I am deeply concerned by the HMICFRS’ findings that show that too often we are letting them down.
“Our officers want to keep children and young people safe – but we recognise they have not had the right support to do this every time. Officers need the time and resource to listen to children and investigate the bigger picture around the circumstances they have come into contact with the police to then identify abuse and exploitation.
“We’re already radically transforming the Met. Our Children and Young People’s strategy will support officers to see children as children first and foremost and recognise their individual needs. We’re also providing more resource for our emergency response officers and investigative teams, as well as better training, and we’re determined to work more closely with expert partners.”
These early findings from HMICFRS reinforce the Met’s plans to make changes to help officers and staff provide a better service to London’s children. These plans are already under way and the organisation is building A New Met for London, where it reprioritises how officers and staff protect children from harm and serious violence.
Through A New Met for London, the Met will:
– Boost resource so there are more people dedicated to better protecting children and vulnerable people. 72 new officers and staff will be joining specialist child exploitation teams, with hundreds more set to join the Met’s public protection teams.
– Develop and deliver a new Children and Young People’s strategy which will reset how officers keep children and young people safe by seeing them as children first.
– Create a Central Vulnerability Hub which will change how the Met responds to vulnerability and harm, bringing together specialist officers and staff to locate and safeguard missing children and people.
– Continue to provide additional specialist child protection training for the teams involved in child exploitation investigations and give enhanced training to officers who deal with missing children.
– Launch Right Care Right Person to help free up more resource to better investigate missing children and suspected exploitation. This will ensure the right agencies deal with health-related calls, instead of the police being the default first responder.
– Bring expert partners together who have first-hand experience of working with children and young people to give them a range of support.
