CSE figures: gaps between children’s social care and police data

On Monday 16th June 2025, Baroness Casey of Blackstock DBE CB published her ‘National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’. The report had been commissioned by the Government to review the national datasets relating to alleged CSE that had been collected by various agencies including the police, health services, and local authority children’s social care departments.

One of the principal findings of the report was that there was a clear discrepancy between the figures produced by two agencies, police and local authority children’s social care. Some examples to illustrate the point, relating to the period from March 2023-March 2024:

NB:

The numbers in this table represent the number of cases, for the police forces, and child in need assessments, for local authorities, per 1,000 children. Police forces are not able to differentiate between CSA and CSE due to the nature of their data recording.

The police data also only represents ‘contact’ CSA offences, meaning the perpetrator has physical contact with the child – the offence is not perpetrated solely online.

What trends can be identified?

· The audit offers some explanation for some of this – a proportion of offences involving the making and sharing of indecent images between adolescents would not require either a children’s services or a criminal justice response. But this is a significant mismatch to be explained away by just one offence, and whilst the causes of it are unclear, there is an inconsistency in reporting, which is ironically, consistent across the entire country.

·  In 2023/2024 there was no drop in the number of ‘children in need’ assessments. However, those figures included the lowest number of assessments relating to CSA (which includes CSE) in 9 years (our emphasis). A total of 2,160 children were placed on child protection plans under the category of CSA (including CSE). That figure equated to only 3.5% of all new child protection plans.

·  The number of assessments identifying CSA has fallen every year since 2017/2018. That number is now over 30% lower than six years ago. However, the audit discovered that in cases where a CSA offence was recorded by the police and the victim is also the subject of a child protection plan, there is a significant mismatch. For those children who had one or more crimes recorded in the police dataset, only 20% had child protection plans recorded under the CSA category – 32% were recorded under neglect, 29% under emotional abuse, 5% under physical abuse, and 14% under multiple forms of abuse.

·  The audit also identified that whilst children named under any category of abuse receive some protection from the state, unfortunately if they are not recorded under the CSA category then they may not be receiving the correct kind of protection. For example, a child who is initially neglected or suffers emotional abuse at home may then be (more) vulnerable to CSA and CSE from external perpetrators. If they were then identified and targeted by perpetrators of CSE, and their child protection plan was not updated to reflect this fact, they may not receive the protection that they require to keep them safe.

One of the forces visited during the audit used data about children who had come to their attention, using known risk factors such as missing persons data, to assess their vulnerability to CSA and CSE. That force was already engaging proactively with its local authority colleagues to identify and implement improvements. It is implicit in this comment, however, that no other audited force was doing this.

The audit recommends that this needs to be the case across the board, and suggests that questions need to be asked, nationally, about how well-coordinated the system is across social care departments and then police.

It is the recommendation of the results of the audit that there is a need for ‘joining up the dots’, linking information from various sources and safeguarding partners, cross-referencing and integrating those sources, which will help to raise the visibility of victims and those at risk, which would produce a clearer picture of the scope and scale of group-based CSE and, more significantly in individual cases, ensure that a child is protected before suffering any, or any further, abuse and exploitation.

Forbes comment

The mismatch of data identified in the audit makes it very difficult to understand the scale and scope of group-based CSE in the UK. Inconsistent data gathering also makes it difficult to identify which children are coming to the attention of the local authority and/or the police.

Baroness Casey’s recommendation is that the reasons for this discrepancy are addressed as swiftly as possible to ensure that, as far as possible, no child slips through the net.

The current situation may be improved by the implementation of the provisions in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024, through which a unique identifier would be allocated to every single child. In theory the use of a unique identifier through which agencies can upload and download all relevant, recorded, information, from whatever source, has merit. That system would surely reduce the chances of red or amber flags being missed. One of the suggestions for that identifier is one’s NHS number, which is allocated at birth. However, finding a practical, affordable solution will be fraught with logistical and financial challenges.