Child trafficking and exploitation: Social work practice and children’s rights

Child trafficking and exploitation is a growing societal concern facing children and young people in modern society. Hearing from children and young people is paramount to understand the challenges they face, to improve social work practice, and to develop effective interventions and frameworks. Despite this, very little research addresses the direct experiences of young people with lived experiences of trafficking. This chapter contributes to this gap by reporting findings from a unique qualitative study conducted in England with trafficked young people, focusing on young people’s interactions with social workers when seeking help. The findings reveal significant barriers in young people accessing child welfare services, being listened to, and believed. Young people experienced practitioners not acting on child protection concerns when disclosing explicit accounts of abuse, undermining young people’s rights to protection and support. Young people perceived an overfocus in social work practice on additional material evidence required to prove their testimonies, overshadowing child protection needs. Compounding these experiences, young people reported overt discrimination and xenophobia from state actors, negligent in their duty of safeguarding young people against further abuse and non-discriminatory practice. The implications for young people of practice driven by neo-moralism and victim-blaming are raised as significant, causing further harm, and warranting urgent attention. The wider concern of ‘responsibilising’ 1 young people in various trafficking and exploitation situations (past and present) bring into sharp focus how social work needs to urgently address older children’s protection needs. An argument is made that social work needs to refocus rights-based practice towards young people’s rights to equal access to protection. This chapter concludes with young people’s advice to social workers on skills required, practical steps, and a different, more reasoned approach in responding to child trafficking abuse and exploitation.