What steps she is taking to help protect young people in care from (a) grooming gangs, (b) exploitation and (c) other forms of criminal activity.
The Government is committed to protecting children and young people from all forms of abuse and exploitation, including child sexual exploitation and ‘grooming gangs’, alongside other forms of exploitation and criminal activity.In June 2025, the Government accepted all the recommendations made in Baroness Louise Casey’s Independent National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. I refer the Rt Hon Member to the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girl’s statement made to the House on 2 September, which sets out an update on the Government’s work to establish a new national inquiry and national police operation to strengthen understanding and responses to group-based offending, including grooming gangs.Since 2019, the Home Office has funded The Children’s Society to deliver the nationwide Prevention Programme that works to raise awareness of child exploitation to professionals working within the private, statutory and third sectors, as well as the public. The programme upskills staff, including within social care, to better respond to, disrupt and prevent all forms of child exploitation.We are committed to tackling child criminal exploitation and have introduced a new offence of child criminal exploitation in the Crime and Policing Bill and developed new civil preventative orders to disrupt and prevent child criminal exploitation and pursue the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime. These will, alongside other additions in the bill, work to tackle the interconnected and exploitative practices often used by criminal gangs, especially in county lines.An important protective factor for children living in residential children’s homes is ensuring that staff are trained, have the right skills, are supported to provide good quality care and can be challenged where they are not doing so. The Government has committed to improve qualifications, standards, and access to training for staff working in residential children’s homes to ensure they are able to safeguard and protect the children in their care.Furthermore, the Government is going further to better protect children, including children in care or leaving care, including through the introduction of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is establishing multi-agency child protection teams and improving information sharing, including through a single unique identifier.