Met improves its handling of child exploitation, but failing some missing children

A new report from police watchdog, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), said that through a renewed focus on child exploitation, its links to missing children and the language officers and staff use, the Metropolitan Police Service has made improvements.

The report is a follow-up to a previous inspection of the Met's handling of child exploitation which identified causes of concern in 2023.

Inspectors found improvements in how it assesses and investigates the risk to missing children and crimes involving exploited children; as well as improvements in its supervision of cases.

The report also found better processes identifying victim-blaming language and increased activity to help eradicate it.

However, HMICFRS said that the service still has more work to do to improve further in these areas and to provide a consistently good service.

For example, inspectors described several examples where cases of missing children were graded incorrectly. In some cases, the service didn’t do enough, or act quickly enough, to find children. The inspectorate also said that there were too many missed opportunities to follow lines of enquiry to trace offenders.

HMICFRS found that the service still has problems in complying with the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime and rarely carries out initial victim needs assessments. This can have a negative effect on the service a victim receives throughout the criminal justice system.

“Children who go missing from home, or are at risk of exploitation, are some of the most vulnerable in society,” His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Lee Freeman said. “Public services including the police have a shared responsibility to look for the warning signs, be alert to the risks and act quickly to protect children.”

“But when we inspected the Metropolitan Police Service in 2023, it wasn’t doing enough when children were suffering from, or at risk of, exploitation. We issued three causes of concern.

“I am therefore pleased to report that the senior leadership response to the issues we raised has been positive, and we have closed the causes of concern. The decision by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, Sir Andy Cooke, to return the service to our default phase of monitoring, was supported by these closures.

“The service’s children’s strategy now sets out the commissioner’s ambition to adopt a ‘child first’ approach. This aims to make sure officers and staff recognise that children are different to adults and should be treated differently because they have different needs and vulnerabilities.

“However, the service still has more work to do to improve further and to provide a consistently good service. We will continue to closely monitor its progress.”