Disrupting exploitation
The exploitation of children and young people is a complex and ever-evolving form of abuse.
For professionals looking to safeguard young people from exploitation, a two-pronged approach is needed: on one hand, focusing on the interventions needed to safeguard each individual victim; and on the other, taking action to stop the perpetrator from harming both the individual victim and others, also known as disruption.
It is imperative that we consider and address both safeguarding and disruption in tandem in order to successfully protect all young people from exploitation.
Exploitation
Background
Over the past three years, The Children’s Society’s national Prevention Programme, commissioned by the Home Office, has been working to understand the current multi-agency approach to disruption and develop tools to assist multi-agency partnerships to improve their practice.
We had recognised that a gap existed in effective support for partnerships to reflect on and assess their collective approach to disrupting exploitation, alongside limited guidance on what effective practice looked like.
Tools to support effective disruption
In collaboration with national law enforcement experts and multi-agency strategic partners, we have developed a reflective assessment for multi-agency partners to assess their practice, in addition to national best practice guidance to provide a benchmark for assessment and a standard to strive for.
Setting a benchmark for good practice
Setting a benchmark for good practice
Safeguarding children and young adults from exploitation requires more than actions to protect individual victims – it demands a coordinated, proactive effort to identify and disrupt perpetrators, harmful environments, and the wider systems that enable exploitation to occur.
Effective disruption is only possible when all professionals across the partnership understand their role, share information openly, and embed child-centred, non-victim-blaming practice.
Training
A strong foundation of training, accessible expertise, and robust multi-agency structures is essential. Disruption tactics must be informed by high-quality, multi-agency evidence and regularly reviewed to ensure continued relevance and proportionality.
Recording, monitoring, and evaluating disruption activity enables partnerships to understand what works, adapt to emerging risks, and maintain accountability.
By working collaboratively, sharing responsibility, and continuously improving practice, partnerships can build a resilient system capable of preventing exploitation, protecting young people, and disrupting those who seek to harm them.
Resources
The Children’s Society’s national Prevention Programme was commissioned by the Home Office to develop a self-assessment and national best practice guidance for multi-agency partnerships focused on their collective practice to disrupt child exploitation.
Partnership reflective assessment - This assessment can be completed by any multi-agency partnership to assess how well they are disrupting exploitation together. Please see further instructions on the link.
National best practice guidance - This guidance sets a benchmark of good practice and provides examples of how partnerships might embed this.
Introduction to disrupting exploitation - This document sets the scene for what disruption means.
exploitation risk
We talk about exploitation risk being fluid, but we should adapt disruption tactics to reflect this
— Pilot participant
Safeguarding
I don't think we have ever sat down as a regional safeguarding board or local authority with our partners to understand all of these powers. How do we know if any of them are even being effective when they’re being used? And have we got examples of when they are effective?
— Pilot participant