Child Exploitation Concerns

Reference: 25-26065

Date response sent: 04/06/2025

Details of enquiry

1. The number of referrals made by your NHS Trust to other authorities – such as the police or social services – when there was a suspicion that a child is a victim of exploitation (sexual, criminal, gang-based grooming) for the years 2010 (or earliest available year of data) – 2024 inclusive.
2. The number of risks assessments conducted on children where there was concern that they had been the victim of child sexual exploitation (using the same timeframe as above).
3. Details of your NHS Trusts’ CSE safeguarding arrangements, including work in multi-agency partnerships.
4. The number of staff employed by your NHS Trust who have received training on CSE.

Response sent

1. The number of referrals made by your NHS Trust to other authorities – such as the police or social services – when there was a suspicion that a child is a victim of exploitation (sexual, criminal, gang-based grooming) for the years 2010 (or earliest available year of data) – 2024 inclusive.
2. The number of risks assessments conducted on children where there was concern that they had been the victim of child sexual exploitation (using the same timeframe as above).

The data you have requested for the period, 2015 to 2024 is presented in the table above, where, for the years 2015 and 2016), we have masked low numbers, which are equal to 5 or less than 5, with the symbol ‘≤5’.

The Trust follows the NHS England standard, established to not provide exact data where the numbers are smaller than 6 as this may lead to identification of individuals.

The Trust has engaged exemption from releasing exact low numbers in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Section 40(2) Information which constitutes the personal data of any person other than the applicant, where disclosure would not be permitted under GDPR, thereby breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.

As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when engaging this exemption

The Trust recognises a high level of interest from public in how the public purse has been spent on services, and must balance this against disclosure of any small numbers and the years in which these instances occurred, which – whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, as follows:

a. Although the year alone is not personal data, we have also to consider whether other information that is already available, or may become available, to any member of the public, could be combined with the data requested so as to enable identification of the individual(s) concerned.

b. There is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals/patients by fellow patients/colleagues and/or others from the low numbers.

c. Self-identification – when someone sees themselves reported by a single or very low number at a troubled time in their past.

d. This masking of low numbers is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used by general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain now or in the future, and/or gained from other sources.

7. Details of your NHS Trusts’ CSE safeguarding arrangements, including work in multi-agency partnerships.

a. We have a safeguarding children policy which references expected responses when Child Exploitation is identified which is publicly available on our website, and may be reached via this link:  Safeguarding Children Policy, Tavistock and Portman NHS FT

b. CSE Safeguarding is referenced within our Safeguarding Training Programme with scenarios for discussion during group work

c. CSE Safeguarding exploration is undertaken during safeguarding supervision when there are presentations that feature indicators of CSE within a case being discussed ie. going missing, not in school, changes in friendship groups/behaviours

d. The Trust has appointed safeguarding champions, and more recently newly trained safeguarding supervisors, who have a special interest in safeguarding children. Where needed they are offered additional training to underpin their existing knowledge and skills to advise/support colleagues in their safeguarding work – this includes CSE

The Trust’s Safeguarding team attend multi-agency safeguarding partnership meetings primarily with the Camden Safeguarding Children Partnership where strategies for tackling challenges including CSE are discussed.  Priorities being taken forward come from the learning from child safeguarding practice reviews and include:

e. Appropriate multi-agency responses being developed for children at risk of violence and exploitation,

f. Reviewing and developing CSE tools to support the analysis of vulnerability and risk

g. Audit with practitioner feedback on a joint working protocol

• Promotion of multi-agency contributions to prevent risk and ensure safety of CYP vulnerable to exploitation and serious youth violence

8. The number of staff employed by your NHS Trust who have received training on CSE.

The Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation do not run standalone CSE training, but it is incorporated in the Level 1&2 online programme and the Level 3 face-to-face programme for all staff working with CYP and their parents/carers.

The Trust’s training compliance for Safeguarding Children is shown below.

Any external training offered by local safeguarding partnership and others outside of Camden are circulated to staff by the safeguarding team