March 2025

Welcome to your March DSL Planner Page!

This month our Planner focus is on Child Exploitation.

“The exploitation of children can take a number of different forms and perpetrators may subject children and young people to multiple forms of abuse at the same time, such as criminal exploitation (including county lines) and sexual exploitation.” Home Office

Understanding of child exploitation and the scale of the problem is still limited, perhaps because of the variable ways this kind of abuse is identified and is recorded. What we do know that this form of abuse impacts children across a broad age range and demographics and that we can never make assumptions about certain groups of children being safe from this form of abuse.

One of the key messages from those working with children involved in the different aspects of child exploitation is to not give up trying to work with the children and young people, even if they do not know they are being exploited and appear to be unwilling to participate in support.

How confident are you and your staff in identifying and responding to different forms of exploitation?

Join Safeguarding Network and let us help you develop a structured and comprehensive approach that builds a strong and sustainable safeguarding culture.