Officials have said that a “worryingly low” number of vulnerable children have been allocated somewhere to go during the week.
In some parts of the country, only a quarter of the “at-risk” children who are meant to be in school are actually there; below 10% in some areas of the UK.
Norfolk’s Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection, said: “Is it possible that we will see a coronavirus impact upon child sexual abuse?
“Yes I think it’s possible, in exactly the same way as I’ve got to work on the premise that we will also see more children groomed and abused online.”
He said that in his constituency only around 13% of children who should be attending school are.
“It is a worryingly low statistic at the moment. When a child is in school, in the vast majority of cases they are safe, they are protected,” he said.
“Of course there will be any number of reasons why those children are not there. Some might have underlying health issues and their parents are being completely responsible by not putting them into school.
“But I think there are a number of risks and I fear that children are being exposed to the potential for familial abuse within the household, being exposed to domestic abuse again in the household and we have seen a significant increase in reports of domestic abuse nationally.”B
Schools are constantly updating and submitting their figures for how many of these children are in schools, and everyone thanks teachers and other essential workers for their efforts. As mentioned before, it’s important to get vulnerable children to an appropriate environment, and remove risks that this lockdown might pose to them.
