Record £100 million to fight child sex offences and protect victims

As someone who worked for a national children’s charity prior to entering Parliament, I am glad to see the Government this week announce a record £100 million to fight child sex offences and protect victims.

This landmark funding includes:

• £38 million for the National Crime Agency and partners to reopen and investigate child abuse cases (as part of Operation Beaconport)

• £11.7 million for the Undercover Child Abuse Online Network to target predators online. The work of this Network led to almost 1,800 arrests last year.

• £9.3 million for the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme to utilise the power of technology to analyse large datasets, translate foreign language material, and identify patterns and relationships between suspects

• £8.9 million for the National Crime Agency’s work investigating the highest-risk offenders

• £3.2 million to support adult survivors who, as children, experienced sexual abuse

The funding announced this week sits alongside the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs which is currently underway, and which will explicitly examine the role of ethnicity, religion, and culture of both perpetrators and victims and assess whether these factors drove offending and how they shaped institutional responses.

In December, the Government also committed £50 million to roll-out what are called ‘Child Houses’ across the country. These ‘Child Houses’ are child-friendly environments in which professionals from across physical health, mental health, advocacy, and criminal justice come together to deliver trauma-informed care for child victims of sexual abuse.