Children from London are being left at risk of exploitation and trafficking by “county lines” crime gangs because of flaws in child protection systems, an official report has warned ministers.
The report by Dame Glenys Stacey, Chief Inspector of Probation, says that local staff face “substantial difficulties” in keeping children safe from gangs seeking to use them to ferry and sell drugs around the country because most measures they can take apply only in their own areas.
They are “limited in the action they can take” if a child needs to be protected by a different police force or children’s social care department in another borough.
Dame Glenys warns that efforts to keep children safe are “inadequate in many cases” as a result, and blames a lack of national “support, advice or direction” for the problems.
Her findings come in a report on the youth offending service in Barking and Dagenham. They will heighten concerns about the impact of the “county lines” drug trade blamed by the Met for driving a rise in youth violence, including a wave of fatal stabbings.
The National Crime Agency warned in November that at least 283 “county lines” networks were operating in London, and that children as young as 12 were being used nationwide to ferry drugs and money around the country.
It said gangs used “knives, corrosives and firearms” to “intimidate and control members of the group and associated victims”. Teenagers were being lured into gangs by older criminals, with some suffering sexual and other violence from those controlling them.
Met Commissioner Cressida Dick has said middle-class cocaine users who provide a market for drugs are responsible for causing “misery throughout the supply chain” and exposing children to the consequences of the drug trade.
Dame Glenys said in her report that the task of managing young people involved in gangs and “trafficked into criminal activity” was being “hampered by little oversight, co-ordination or support at national level”.
She added that Barking and Dagenham’s youth offending service “faces substantial difficulties” in protecting children from involvement in “serious organised crime gangs, commonly known as county lines” — even though it is doing “everything within its control” to identify those at risk.
Her report states: “Planning to keep these children safe was inadequate in many cases as it was based on action that could only be taken if the child was in the local area.
“The youth offending service is limited in the action that it can take when the child is out of the area … The traditional area-based child protection system does not cope with the unique and complex difficulties when children are trafficked or exploited through county lines activity.”
Dame Glenys also warns that “too many” young people dealt with by the youth offending service “do not receive the education they are entitled to”.
