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This is a free telephone line, on 0800 107 7057, for people working with children and young people. It aims to help callers who have concerns that a child may have been trafficked and to provide guidance on how best to protect trafficked children. The line will also shed light on the nature and scale of child trafficking in the UK.
The line is primarily aimed at immigration officers, the police, social workers, teachers, and health workers. The NSPCC is also keen to hear from people working or volunteering with community or faith groups, especially within ethnic minorities.
The line has been set up with funding from the Home Office and Comic Relief. It will run in partnership with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT UK).
Child trafficking involves the transportation of children by adults, between countries or within a country, against their will. Adult traffickers will use threats, coercion, or deceit to ensure that the child remains with them and to prevent the child seeking help from the authorities.
Children are usually trafficked for financial gain and are trafficked to the UK for sexual exploitation, forced labour, drugs transport, benefit fraud, and other crimes.
The NSPCC recognises the widely used definition of child trafficking from the United Nations Protocol - also known as the Palermo Protocol. In brief summary this defines trafficking as 'the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation'.
There is currently no comprehensive data on the numbers of trafficked children in the UK, although a number of studies have begun to uncover the scale of the problem. For example, in 2007 the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (CEOP) identified 330 child victims of trafficking in the UK over an 18-month period.1
Child Trafficking is a covert activity that relies on children not being aware of what has happened to them or being too scared to ask for help. There is also a lack of awareness and understanding of the problem among people working with children that can result in trafficked children not being given the appropriate protection and support.
By helping people working with children to identify cases of child trafficking, and share information with partner agencies, the NSPCC's Child Trafficking Advice and Information Line aims to improve official reporting and understanding of the scale of child trafficking in the UK.
Trafficked children can arrive in the UK with an adult, who may claim to be a family member, or on their own. Some accompanied children may apply for asylum, after being assured by their trafficker that this will mean they have permission to reside in the UK and be entitled to claim welfare benefits.
Any UK "ports of entry" might be used by child traffickers. Children may have been moved through several other countries between leaving their homeland and arriving in the UK. Traffickers do this to avoid detection and create confusion among immigration and law enforcement services.
Trafficked children can also be transported out of the UK and moved around within the country. All of this makes it harder for the authorities to keep track of them.
What are the signs that can indicate that a child has been trafficked?
While every case of trafficking is unique to that child there are some common indications that people working with children should be alert to. For example:
Some children are abducted by traffickers. However, the majority of trafficked children are trapped in subversive ways, such as being promised education or what is regarded as respectable work, in restaurants or as domestic servants.
Traffickers may exert control over trafficked children by retaining their passports and convincing them that should they escape, they will be jailed or deported by the authorities. The creation of a false identity for a child can give a trafficker direct control over every aspect of a child's life, for example by claiming to be their parent or guardian.
Some groups of children, such as street children and children living in institutions, are particularly vulnerable to organised trafficking through lack of opportunities, education, or official protection and support in their country of origin.
Being trafficked is very traumatising for children. They can suffer demanding and dangerous journeys from their home country to their destination. They often do not realise what is happening to them until it is too late to escape, and have suffered an immense betrayal of trust. This can lead to reluctance to ask adults for help once they arrive in the UK.
Even before they travel children may be subjected to various forms of abuse and exploitation to ensure that the trafficker's control over them continues after the child is transferred to someone else's care. This could include threats of or actual violence toward the child or their family, keeping them isolated or imprisoned, taking away money or documents.
Once in the UK trafficked children are often forced to live in poor accommodation, and are frequently physically neglected and shown no love or care. They are often denied access to healthcare, education, and actively hidden from social services. They are an especially vulnerable group of young people and need intensive support to help them escape from and overcome the abuse they have suffered.
Much of the NSPCC's knowledge of trafficking comes from its London based Street Matters/Bfree support group, which works with sexually exploited children and young people. Although the group was not set up to help trafficked children, in recent years social services have asked the charity to help provide therapy and advocacy to girls who have been trafficked to the UK. These girls had been trafficked from various African countries including Angola, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Eritrea, as well as China and Eastern European countries.
1. A Scoping Project On Child Trafficking In The UK (CEOP, June 2007).
Copyright © 2006 NSPCC - All rights reserved. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Weston House, 42
Curtain Road, London EC2A 3NH. Incorporated by Royal Charter. Registered charity number 216401. NSPCC, charity registered in Scotland, charity number SC037717.