EXCLUSIVE: Fears social workers have 'dropped ball' on child grooming gangs - victims identified hits record low as reported crimes rockets

Social workers are identifying and reporting fewer victims of grooming gangs despite police recording record numbers of child sex abuse offences, it has emerged from Baroness Casey's damning review.

Buried in her near 200 page report were startling details about a drop in children being pinpointed and protected from such abuse when levels are rising.

The Government has said it will urgently review why social care departments are identifying less children at risk from predatory grooming gangs at the same time as record levels of offences are being reported to police.

It follows the damning review by Baroness Casey, which raised serious concerns about the low number of children being placed under plans to protect them from sexual abuse which has fallen to a 30-year low.

She also pointed to a "concerning" drop in the number of children at risk of sexual exploitation being identified by social workers.

Local authority children's services are also failing, in some cases, to report to a national safeguarding body, as required, the most serious cases of vulnerable children being victims of sexual exploitation, her review warned.

Last Monday the report was published, following her five-month review of the scale of the organised grooming of girls by mainly men of Pakistani heritage.

It caused Prime Minister Keir Starmer to perform an embarrassing U-turn and finally order the statutory inquiry that he had claimed for months was unnecessary.

The Casey review also suggests social care could still be a weak link in identifying and reporting grooming gang victims.

In England, when a child dies or comes to serious harm, where abuse or neglect is known or suspected, a local authority must

inform The National Child Safeguarding Panel through a serious incident notification (SIN) to the Department for Education, and then carry out a "rapid review" of the circumstances.

This could lead to a full local child safeguarding practice review, formerly known as a serious case review, being carried out to learn any lessons.

Baroness Casey identified a worryingly low amount of SINs involving grooming gangs and saw cases she felt should have been reported, which were not, meaning they were not subject to "rapid reviews".

Her review examined such reviews from 160,158 serious incident notifications in 2023/4 and found that there were only four that involved child sexual exploitation.

The report said: "This audit has had sight of some recent, child sexual exploitation cases which, in our view, would meet the threshold for a rapid review but do not appear to have resulted in one.

"It is understood that local authorities do not always notify the department of all incidents that might meet the definition for a serious incident and, therefore, this might also under-estimate the number of serious incidents on the grounds of child sexual abuse."

Her review found that between 2010 and 2018, there were 15 reviews conducted following a police operation focused on grooming gangs, but added, it was "a cause of concern" that, since 2018, it only found one review which followed a police operation into child sexual exploitation.

The report said: "(This gives) cause for concern about whether child sexual exploitation is the subject of local attention.

"Protecting vulnerable children at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation has to be a priority throughout all that (social care) does."

Recorded child sexual abuse offences by police forces have increased to over 102,000 in 2024 with prosecutions also going up.

In 1993/4, there were equal numbers of children placed on child protection plans for neglect (6,400) and sexual abuse (6,400).

By 2023/24, the number of children on child protection plans for neglect had risen to 30,950 while those on child protection plans for sexual abuse has fallen to 2,160.

The report said: "Identification of child sexual abuse and exploitation is falling in children’s services. In 2023/24 there was a decline in the overall identification of child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation by children’s services in England.

"Although there was barely any drop during the year in the overall number of child in need (CIN) assessments, local authority children's services in England recorded the lowest number of child needs assessments related to any form of sexual abuse in nine years.

"In England, the number of assessments identifying child sexual exploitation has fallen every year since 2017/8 and is now over 30 percent lower than six years ago.

"Child protection plans on the grounds of sexual abuse, have fallen to their lowest level in 30 years.

"There has also been a decline in the number of serious case reviews about child sexual exploitation in recent years.

"The rate of child sexual abuse and exploitation identified by children’s services (per head of population) compared to the rates of police recorded crime for contact child sexual abuse (per head of population) shows that the rates identified and recorded by the police are much higher than those identified by children’s services."

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "Local Authorities have a statutory duty to notify of all incidents of death or serious harm to a child where abuse or neglect is known or suspected, and we are undertaking further analysis to better understand the reason for the fall in notifications.

"We are undertaking further analysis to better understand the reason for the fall in Serious Incident Notifications.

"As the Casey Review highlights, this government inherited a children's social care system failing to protect the country's most vulnerable children. We have accepted Baroness Casey's recommendation to urgently review child protection data, including examining the causes of the decline in child sexual abuse and exploitation representation."