Protecting minority ethnic children

Why they need our support

Minority ethnic children are disproportionately represented in child welfare services in England, and have been for more than a decade. Studies suggest a range of issues that contribute to their increased vulnerability. These include:

racial discrimination
language barriers
poor assessments and intervention
inadequate or inappropriate service provision.

What we know

Black children are four times more likely to be 'in need' than white children in the same local authority.
Children of mixed ethnicity are subject to a child protection plan at more than twice the rate (8 per cent) of their numbers in the population (3.5 per cent).
60 per cent of Asian children were subject to an emergency protection order prior to care proceedings, compared to 19 per cent of white children.

What we are doing

The NSPCC's work will focus on delivering services and gaining greater understanding of the issues affecting the increased vulnerability of minority ethnic children.

Our research will help to ensure that all our services better protect minority ethnic children, more adequately meet their needs, and address any cultural barriers. We will share our learning with other agencies.

Our services

We are developing preventative and protective services for those children at risk of sexual exploitation.
We are designing a tailored family group conferencing service to specifically meet the needs of black and mixed heritage children, who are over-represented in care and child protection plans.
A home-based family protection service will provide protective and supportive input, primarily for Asian children, creating a bridge between statutory services and families where there are child protection concerns.

Our research and development

We are undertaking a systematic and comprehensive analysis of serious case reviews involving minority ethnic children, to help us identify ways of improving policy, research and practice.
We are designing and developing an NSPCC Good Practice Guide to complement the assessment framework. This will provide practitioners with information about innovative practice with minority ethnic children and their families throughout the UK, and assist them in their work.
We will create NSPCC accredited child protection interpreters, trained to meet the needs of child protection services. The current lack of high quality interpreters raises serious questions about access to justice for parents whose first language is not English.