stop child exploitation survey 2019

Overview

This survey will find out about Southwark residents' awareness of how children and young people can be groomed, tricked, coerced and physically forced into sexual activities they do not want, or forced into doing criminal activities such as carrying drugs for somebody else. The term for all of these things is “child exploitation”. This is a problem in all parts of the country; and most likely everywhere in the world.

There are many laws being broken when children are exploited; some of which can carry long prison sentences. The problem with enforcing the law is that the children being exploited are too scared to ask for help.

There is information at the end of the survey which has information on who to contact if you have concerns about children’s safety.

Why your views matter

You can help us improve our work by doing this survey.

We did a similar survey in 2017. Back then we found that everyone we asked was concerned about children being safe and were all very willing to help. However, not many people knew how to recognise the signs of a child who is too scared to ask for help. Or was confident that they knew who to tell if they did have worries about children’s safety.

What happens next

We will analyse the results and look at how we can improve the work we do to raise awareness of the exploitation risks for children. We want to prevent child exploitation happening in the first place.