Child prostitution: Developing effective protocols

Abstract

There was no formal structure for the management of young people involved in prostitution until December 1998 when draft guidance was issued jointly by the Home Office and the Department of Health. This guidance was a central response to a considerable amount of work undertaken by voluntary agencies such as Barnardo's (1998, 2000), and the Children's Society (Barrett, 1997; Melrose et al, 1999), and there was a requirement that each Area Child Protection Committee (ACPC) develop some procedures locally, regardless of how much of a problem they perceived there to be at that time. The guidance recognised that there are many children and young people involved in prostitution in many parts of Britain and they wanted to raise the public and professional awareness of the problem, ensuring that the key response agencies adopted consistent policies to treat children and young people (under 18 years) primarily as victims. This stance is built on the premise that all children and young people have the right to be safe and protected from harm. Agencies must thus work together to safeguard these vulnerable children and young people from continuing harm, aiming to provide exit strategies, whilst investigating and prosecuting adults involved in such exploitation. Children and young people involved in prostitution should be regarded as children in need who may be suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. The guidance does not decriminalise child prostitution, and the police do retain the right to use the criminal law against children and young people in certain exceptional circumstances, such as persistent return to prostitution. This guidance remained in draft form for two years when the final guidance (DOH, Home Office, Department for Education and Employment, National Assembly for Wales, 2000) was issued as a supplement to ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ (DOH et al, 1999). The purpose of this paper is to explore the content of the guidance and locate it in a much broader framework developed by Calder (1999) for guiding local responses. I also attempt to explore some of the lessons learned in recent times about introducing ‘new’ types of abuse into the child protection system at a time when there is a central expectation of refocusing wherever possible cases away from the formal child protection system, based both on the client's experience of the service (see Calder et al, 2001) and the significant resource constraints facing mainstream social services (see Calder, 2000 and forthcoming).