Children’s Commissioner calls for improved safeguarding of children in gangs
Study published on children in England who are gang members
Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner for England, has published an in-depth study looking at children in England who are members of gangs.
The report was published to coincide with a summit bringing together Police and Crime Commissioners, senior police officers and chairs of local safeguarding boards, to hold these agencies to account and ask how they plan to keep children involved in gangs safe.
The report, Keeping kids safe: Improving safeguarding responses to gang violence and criminal exploitation, estimates there are 27,000 children in England who identify as a gang member, only a fraction of whom are known to children's services. Some of these children may only identify loosely with a gang and may not be involved in crime or serious violence: more concerning is the estimated 34,000 children who know gang members who have experienced serious violence in the last year.
The research looks into the characteristics of children involved in gangs. Compared to other children known to social services or other child offenders, those with gang associations are:
- 95 per cent more likely to have social, emotional and mental health issues and more than twice as likely to be self-harming
- 41 per cent more likely to have a parent or carer misusing substances and eight times more likely to be misusing substances themselves
- 37 per cent more likely to have witnessed domestic violence
- 37 per cent more likely to be missing/absent from school.
The report also shows how a number of early warning signs of gang-based violence have been on the rise in recent years:
- Referrals to children's services where gangs were identified as an issue rose by 26% between 2015/16 and 2016/17
- Permanent exclusions rose by 67 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17
- Hospital admissions for children who have been assaulted with a sharp object rose 20% between 2015/16 and 2016/17
- The number of children cautioned/convicted for possession of weapons offences rose 12% between 2016 and 2017.
As part of the research, twenty-five Local Safeguarding Children Boards in 'high-risk' areas were asked about their response to gang violence and criminal exploitation, including their estimates of the numbers of children in gangs or at risk of being drawn into gangs. The responses showed many areas had no information on the levels of gang activity and risk among children in their area, and that it was often the areas with the highest levels of gang violence that had the least information. Most areas had identified only a handful of children whom they believed to be in gangs or at risks of gangs, and only one had an estimate of the actual scale of child gang membership.
The report also suggests safeguarding boards are frequently failing to investigate properly child deaths where gang violence was a factor. As a result, there is little evidence that they can ensure lessons are learnt in terms of protecting other children.
While there are now many government initiatives to tackle serious violence, there is still too much fragmentation across Whitehall. The Children's Commissioner makes a number of recommendations in today's report:
- The government needs to make child criminal exploitation a national priority, and lay out clear expectations about the role of all organisations working with children – including the police, schools, children's services and NHS bodies.
- Joint inspections between Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and the police and probation inspectorates should be rolled out across England, starting with the areas with high gang violence who were unable to respond to the information request for this report.
- There should be more emphasis on the early years within the Serious Violence Strategy, with the Department for Education setting a clear target and plan for reducing the number of children beginning school with very low levels of development, along with a national plan for improving special educational needs identification in the early years.
- The NHS needs more support, including better mental health support for children at risk of gang membership and exclusion.
- There needs to be an urgent commitment to what will replace the soon-to-expire Troubled Families programme, alongside a long-term family-based approach to supporting children at risk of gang involvement.
- Councils must have enough resources to provide the youth and early help services required to meet the needs of children at risk.
To read the report, click here. For the response of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, click here.
3/3/19