Understanding of child exploitation and the scale of the problem is still limited. What we do know is that there is a need for agencies to work together to understand the bigger picture, using tools such as contextual safeguarding alongside an understanding of the different ways in which children may be exploited.
This is emphasised in a Joint Targeted Area Inspection report (JTAI) in November 2018, which stated:
As we reported in 2016, understanding exploitation of children ‘is not simply about identifying the characteristics of children who are vulnerable to abuse… it requires a wider perspective and understanding of the contexts, situations and relationships in which exploitation [of children] is likely to manifest’.