Children in Care: Offences against Children
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate has been made of the number of reports of child (a) sexual (b) criminal exploitation safeguarding failings at (1) private (2) local authority children’s homes in England since 2015.
Answered by Josh MacAlister
All registered children’s homes, whether privately run or local authority-operated, must notify Ofsted, the regulator for children’s social care, about certain serious incidents that happen to children in their care living with them and what they have done in response. The published data, available from April 2023, includes a category of ‘sexual exploitation’, which shows:
- 01 Apr 2024 – 31 Mar 2025: 42,500 notifications of which 560 (1.3%) related to sexual exploitation.
- 01 Apr 2023 – 31 Mar 2024: 34,481 notifications of which 535 (1.5%) related to sexual exploitation.
This data does not distinguish between private or local authority run homes and does not specify data on criminal exploitation.
Ofsted review the notifications received to ensure homes have acted to protect the child from immediate harm, and the information contained in the notifications informs their risk assessment and inspection scheduling.
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