Shocking inspection shows Derbyshire Police failing to protect vulnerable children

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) gave shocking examples in which police investigations left young people exposed to further risk.

Its report - published this week following a May inspection - found cases of the police placing vulnerable children at too low a risk level, leading to poor information sharing with other agencies.

Inspectors spoke of a “confused” response to missing children - where in some cases those missing from care homes were not recorded, meaning they were not looked for.

The police were also found to have a “disjointed” approach to protecting vulnerable children at risk of being exploited by county lines gangs.

Inspectors assessed county lines operations as “confusing” - as the two county lines teams had different operations practices with different partnership arrangements.

There was evidence that police officers - particularly online crime investigators - failed to recognise their role in safeguarding children.

In one case the constabulary assessed three children between 10 and 16 living with a man downloading and offering to distribute online images of child sexual abuse as “medium risk”.

However 14 weeks after the beginning of an investigation - at the time of the inspection - nothing had been done to safeguard the children, leaving them at risk of “significant harm”.

In another shocking example a 14-year-old boy shared an “indecent” video of his girlfriend, aged 13, with friends after they had argued - however two months went by before police spoke to the boy.

Nor was any attempt made to seize the phone for forensics or to remove the video.

Addressing concerns over the force’s missing children procedures the report described how a 17-year-old girl with a “long history” of being sexually exploited went missing with a 33-year-old male known to the police for child abduction.

The girl - in the care of the local authority and missing from her supported accommodation - was located and the male was arrested.

However an investigation into the incident “stalled” and was closed - two weeks later she went missing again and was drugged and sexually-assaulted by the same offender.

Inspectors - expanding on key findings - said officers were not routinely using a specialist system deploying important information about vulnerable children who had gone missing.

While control room staff “routinely” passed responsibility for locating missing looked-after children back to care home staff.

When investigating domestic abuse incidents control room operators were often left with missing information - such as “vulnerability flags”.

As a result, responding officers were not always fully-aware of the risks to the child.

Speaking about domestic abuse incidents, inspectors wrote that risk assessments focused on adults rather than children, meaning their vulnerability - different to their parents’ - was not being considered.

The report also found Public Protection Notices - used to record concerns about vulnerable children - were not always being issued by custody suite staff for young offenders while in police custody.

Instead, they relied on investigating officers to make a referral to children’s social care - one example showed a child was detained for over 36 hours with recorded concerns about self-harm. But no one then referred the child to social care.

On Monday Derbyshire Police unveiled a raft of measures to tackle the issues raised by the report.

The force’s online investigations team had now been doubled in size - with a new remit to put child safeguarding ahead of criminal justice outcomes.

While its approach to missing young people - particularly those in care - was being changed, ensuring the right level of risk was assigned to vulnerable children.

Chief Constable Rachel Swann, speaking about the findings on Monday, said there were “vast improvements that need to be made” and she was “very concerned”.

She said: “There are children there that we need to protect, so it’s vitally important that we take it seriously and that we do something about it - which is what we are doing.

“We’ve immediately reacted to it and put a number of things in place – it’s a very critical report and at the heart of what we do in terms of protecting people.

“It’s a whole-force approach, this isn’t about specialist units - this is about everybody in the organisation recognising the importance of vulnerability and child protection.”

The report has recommended a number of improvements to be made “immediately” in the following areas:

- Leaders’ endorsement of the need for all departments to take responsibility for child safeguarding

- Missing children procedures

- Police systems used to inform officers responding to domestic abuse incidents

While the following improvements are expected in the next three months:

- Derbyshire Police must engage with partners, reviewing information-sharing practices to ensure vulnerable children are identified at the earliest possible stage

- A reviews of the forces’s policy and practice for responding to incidents where indecent images of children are present on digital devices

Speaking about the report Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Roy Wilsher said: “Derbyshire Constabulary is not effectively safeguarding children and it urgently needs to improve its child protection arrangements.

“The force’s new senior leadership team recognise that these changes are needed.

“There is much more work to do to provide better outcomes for vulnerable children in Derbyshire – from improving how the force protects children at risk of exploitation to recognising that children missing from care homes are particularly vulnerable.

“We have made several recommendations which will help improve outcomes for children if Derbyshire Constabulary acts on them.

“We will continue to work closely with the force to monitor its progress.”