What are we protecting our children and young people from, and where does the true risk lie? Whilst our child protection system was historically built around the family home, a significant proportion of the risk faced by young people today is extra-familial. Why are children experiencing exploitation, grooming, or coercive control so often misunderstood by safeguarding systems, particularly when harm occurs outside the domestic environment?
Decades of state inquiry, review, and precedent indicate that part of the answer lies in a persistent lack of granular data regarding the extent of extra-familial risks, which in turn limits our capacity to disrupt them effectively. Furthermore, our legal and regulatory tools to disrupt such harm remain blunt instruments, often available only in the most severe cases.
IICSA’s 2022 investigation into organised networks—in which I acted as lead counsel for LBTH—found that missed opportunities were frequently rooted in an erroneous perception of children possessing genuine choice and agency. A key recommendation focused on the language employed by professionals. The report identified victim-blaming terminology that placed responsibility, shame, or blame onto children for their own exploitation, noting that practitioners routinely referred to severe abuse as "risky behaviour" or "risky choices."
A child cannot lawfully consent to her own exploitation; what appears to be consent is almost invariably the product of sophisticated grooming. While Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 formally adopted the term "extra-familial harm" and required it to be weighed in every children’s social care assessment, a framework designed to manage intra-familial risk still struggles to protect a teenager harmed outside the home, whether by adults or peer networks.
When extra-familial harm reaches a courtroom, the system’s natural gravity pulls towards the parent who is present rather than the elusive network that is not. Yet the scale of extra-familial risk is immense. Professor Jay’s 2014 report identified at least 1,400 children exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Baroness Casey’s 2025 audit found data management so deficient that perpetrator ethnicity went unrecorded in roughly two-thirds of cases, and children were still routinely disbelieved. The statutory national inquiry convened following that audit faces the critical task of explaining why fifteen years of institutional findings have yielded so little systemic change.
Public authorities and the state are attempting to adapt. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduces a specific offence of child criminal exploitation (s.48), makes grooming an explicit aggravating factor in sentencing (s.83), and criminalises the obstruction of a report (s.92). Additionally, the 2026 Act creates targeted offences addressing AI-generated abuse material and the online facilitation of exploitation (ss.72–77), building upon the Online Safety Act’s illegal-content duties in force since March 2025.
However, significant gaps remain. The new mandatory duty to report covers child sexual abuse exclusively—omitting criminal exploitation, radicalisation, and other forms of extra-familial harm. Even within the scope of sexual abuse, the duty is triggered only by a formal disclosure or the direct sighting of an image (ss.85, 87), rather than by the behavioural indicators that most frequently signal ongoing harm.
A recurring theme across these inquiries is cultural as much as institutional. In relation to Prevent, the 2023 Shawcross review identified a "culture of timidity" in confronting Islamist ideology, warning of the dangerous blind spots it creates. In group-based exploitation, Casey’s 2025 audit noted that perpetrator ethnicity had been "shied away from," alongside the widespread "adultification" of adolescent girls who were judged as adults rather than safeguarded as children.
Similarly, IICSA highlighted how concerns were routinely contained within institutional walls rather than escalated to actionable authorities—the primary impetus behind the new duty to report. A systemic reluctance remains across agencies to look squarely at extra-familial threats and capture critical data. The overarching framework remains far better equipped to examine a parent than to investigate a criminal network, a peer group, or a digital space.
Our legal mechanisms for disruption remain problematic. Where a child must be contained for their own protection, courts frequently rely on deprivation of liberty orders under the inherent jurisdiction. As a result, the survivor loses their liberty while the perpetrator remains at large.
Furthermore, following the Supreme Court’s decision in [2026] UKSC 16 overruling Cheshire West, whether a compliant or content child is legally "confined" has once again become a live debate. The immediate risk is that the legal gateway bringing these vulnerable children before a judge may fall away for those least equipped to object.
A coherent, state-led strategy to close these identifiable safeguarding gaps is now urgently required.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Solicitors Journal
What are we protecting our children and young people from, and where does the true risk lie? Whilst our child protection system was historically built around the family home, a significant proportion of the risk faced by young people today is extra-familial. Why are children experiencing exploitation, grooming, or coercive control so often misunderstood by safeguarding systems, particularly when harm occurs outside the domestic environment?
Decades of state inquiry, review, and precedent indicate that part of the answer lies in a persistent lack of granular data regarding the extent of extra-familial risks, which in turn limits our capacity to disrupt them effectively. Furthermore, our legal and regulatory tools to disrupt such harm remain blunt instruments, often available only in the most severe cases.
Here, I examine key national inquiries and statutory reviews to explore why extra-familial harm continues to be missed or misunderstood, and how much of this risk now concentrates online.
Misunderstanding Agency
IICSA’s 2022 investigation into organised networks—in which I acted as lead counsel for LBTH—found that missed opportunities were frequently rooted in an erroneous perception of children possessing genuine choice and agency. A key recommendation focused on the language employed by professionals. The report identified victim-blaming terminology that placed responsibility, shame, or blame onto children for their own exploitation, noting that practitioners routinely referred to severe abuse as "risky behaviour" or "risky choices."
A child cannot lawfully consent to her own exploitation; what appears to be consent is almost invariably the product of sophisticated grooming. While Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 formally adopted the term "extra-familial harm" and required it to be weighed in every children’s social care assessment, a framework designed to manage intra-familial risk still struggles to protect a teenager harmed outside the home, whether by adults or peer networks.
When extra-familial harm reaches a courtroom, the system’s natural gravity pulls towards the parent who is present rather than the elusive network that is not. Yet the scale of extra-familial risk is immense. Professor Jay’s 2014 report identified at least 1,400 children exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Baroness Casey’s 2025 audit found data management so deficient that perpetrator ethnicity went unrecorded in roughly two-thirds of cases, and children were still routinely disbelieved. The statutory national inquiry convened following that audit faces the critical task of explaining why fifteen years of institutional findings have yielded so little systemic change.
Legislative Responses and Statutory Gaps
Public authorities and the state are attempting to adapt. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduces a specific offence of child criminal exploitation (s.48), makes grooming an explicit aggravating factor in sentencing (s.83), and criminalises the obstruction of a report (s.92). Additionally, the 2026 Act creates targeted offences addressing AI-generated abuse material and the online facilitation of exploitation (ss.72–77), building upon the Online Safety Act’s illegal-content duties in force since March 2025.
However, significant gaps remain. The new mandatory duty to report covers child sexual abuse exclusively—omitting criminal exploitation, radicalisation, and other forms of extra-familial harm. Even within the scope of sexual abuse, the duty is triggered only by a formal disclosure or the direct sighting of an image (ss.85, 87), rather than by the behavioural indicators that most frequently signal ongoing harm.
A Culture of Timidity
A recurring theme across these inquiries is cultural as much as institutional. In relation to Prevent, the 2023 Shawcross review identified a "culture of timidity" in confronting Islamist ideology, warning of the dangerous blind spots it creates. In group-based exploitation, Casey’s 2025 audit noted that perpetrator ethnicity had been "shied away from," alongside the widespread "adultification" of adolescent girls who were judged as adults rather than safeguarded as children.
Similarly, IICSA highlighted how concerns were routinely contained within institutional walls rather than escalated to actionable authorities—the primary impetus behind the new duty to report. A systemic reluctance remains across agencies to look squarely at extra-familial threats and capture critical data. The overarching framework remains far better equipped to examine a parent than to investigate a criminal network, a peer group, or a digital space.
Blunt Legal Instruments
Our legal mechanisms for disruption remain problematic. Where a child must be contained for their own protection, courts frequently rely on deprivation of liberty orders under the inherent jurisdiction. As a result, the survivor loses their liberty while the perpetrator remains at large.
Furthermore, following the Supreme Court’s decision in [2026] UKSC 16 overruling Cheshire West, whether a compliant or content child is legally "confined" has once again become a live debate. The immediate risk is that the legal gateway bringing these vulnerable children before a judge may fall away for those least equipped to object.
A coherent, state-led strategy to close these identifiable safeguarding gaps is now urgently required.
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