News

Unicef's new report, Stop the Traffic, makes chilling reading: "There may well be literally hundreds, if not thousands, of children in the UK who have been brought here for exploitation," it says. Children are brought here for prostitution, drug smuggling, domestic slavery and even, as may have been the case with the Nigerian boy "Adam" whose torso was found in the River Thames, for ritual killing. As the extent of child trafficking emerges from the swamp of once hidden practices, there are important implications not just for the judicial system, but for social care too.


The only legal barrier to child trafficking at present is where the object is commercial sexual exploitation. Yet there are powerful arguments for outlawing child trafficking whatever despicable motives the adults who exploit them may have. Even where children are brought into the country ostensibly for harmless reasons, such as private fostering, the ulterior motive may be to embroil them in one form of abuse or another.

Here is where social care has such a prominent part to play. Victoria Climbie was just one of between 8,000 and 10,000 children, mainly from west Africa, who are privately fostered in the UK and the case for some official oversight of these informal placements is overwhelming. But the involvement of social care ought to go much further.


Unicef rightly asserts that social services should work closely with the immigration service to provide training and help with the identification of victims at ports of entry. And there should be a network of safe houses across the country, each with ready access to social, health and legal support.

The appointment of a children's minister should be an opportunity to open a new front in the battle against child abuse.