How police can better protect children

Police officers routinely encounter children who are vulnerable, have been physically harmed or are being exploited. These interactions can be critical opportunities to identify safeguarding concerns and connect children with appropriate support to prevent further harm and violence.

Yet children do not always receive the safeguarding response they need. Practice can vary depending on a child’s circumstances and the officer, team or force responding – meaning risks can be missed and opportunities to intervene lost.

The new guidance published by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) sets out how police leaders can make these interactions count. It calls on forces across England and Wales to treat children as children, focus on what works and do diversion well. That means not only knowing what to do but being prepared to stop or deprioritise approaches where the evidence does not support their use.

Make every interaction with a child count

Research underpinning the guidance found that almost all police professionals (97 per cent) believe they have an important role to play in safeguarding children. But children can receive very different responses depending on their personal characteristics and which officer, team or force they encounter.

As one officer told researchers: “Where a case lands determines the lens. If it sits with CID, it becomes an investigation. If it sits with safeguarding, it becomes vulnerability. If it sits with neighbourhoods, it becomes risk and disruption. The same child can be seen three different ways depending on the unit.”

For children at risk of violence, this can mean important safeguarding needs are missed, or responses vary unnecessarily.

The stakes are particularly high for children who are criminally exploited and suspected of an offence. YEF’s Children, Violence and Vulnerability report found that among children who report being criminally exploited, 51 per cent also report perpetrating serious violence and 48 per cent report being a victim of it – highlighting the complexity of these cases and the need for safeguarding alongside any proportionate enforcement action.

Police leaders need to ensure every child receives a consistent safeguarding response, wherever they encounter policing. The YEF is calling for every police force to publish a force-wide safeguarding standard for children and set out how officers can identify and respond to children being exploited.

Forces also need to routinely scrutinise their safeguarding practice, including their use of custody for children, as well as how they use stop and search and out-of-court resolutions with children. Where this highlights areas for improvement or disparities, including racial disproportionality, forces need to take action to address them.

Treat children as children

A consistent safeguarding response starts with a simple principle: children should be treated as children.

Children’s age, vulnerability, circumstances and ethnic background can shape how they experience policing. Recognising this means ensuring children are treated fairly and consistently, while understanding and addressing disparities among different groups.

The YEF has worked with the University of Bedfordshire and University of Lancashire to develop eight principles of child-centred policing. These were designed with children and young people and tested with police to make sure they are operationally realistic. They cover areas including appropriate communication, keeping children informed, fair treatment, welfare-first responses and reliability and follow-through.

Dr Stevie-Jade Hardy, Assistant Director – Policing and Criminal Justice at YEF, said: “How police interact with children matters. It can make the difference between a child getting the right response to protect them and others from harm and violence, and their needs being missed and situations escalating.

“Police officers are often making difficult decisions in very challenging circumstances. But we also need to recognise that assumptions about a child’s age, vulnerability or behaviour can affect how they’re treated. That can mean children are treated as older than they are, and that some children – including black children and children from other minority ethnic backgrounds – don’t get the same care, understanding or protection they need.”

Focus resources on what works

Getting safeguarding right is only part of the challenge. Police forces also face difficult decisions about where to focus limited resources to prevent violence.

Nearly four in five police professionals surveyed (78 per cent) said limited resources were a barrier to using evidence-based practice. Yet only 44 per cent of senior police leaders believe decisions about violence prevention in their force are informed by the best available evidence.

The YEF is calling for a more targeted approach: understand the problem first, then choose a response based on what is known to work.

Problem-oriented policing (POP) does this by identifying the causes of a local violence problem and selecting a response that addresses those causes, rather than applying the same approach everywhere. Evidence reviewed by YEF shows that when done well, POP reduces violent crime by an average of 24 per cent. Forces can then draw on evidence-backed approaches that match the problem they are trying to solve. These include hot spots policing, which reduces violence by an average of 14 per cent; restorative justice, which reduces violence by 34 per cent; and focused deterrence, which reduces crime by 33 per cent.

But this also means being prepared to stop or deprioritise approaches that have not been robustly evaluated. These include popular approaches used by police to tackle violence, such as knife crime education programmes, knife surrender schemes, media campaigns and police in schools.

Dr Hardy said: “The police can’t do everything with limited resources. That means being prepared to stop doing things where the evidence isn’t there, and focus time and money on approaches where it is.”

Al Murray, chair of the Society of Evidence Based Policing and interim director of Police AI at the College of Policing, said: “All the evidence suggests that interacting well, including the right diversionary activity, can be crucial in creating turning points in children’s lives. Each interaction can make a difference, potentially for generations. Getting this right is therefore of the utmost importance. It affects not only that child’s future, but also the interactions that child will have with others. That is why we need to be evidence-based, with a robust understanding of what works and what does not. It’s why this guidance from the YEF is so important, and why the Society of Evidence Based Policing will be promoting it across policing.”

Better decisions, better responses

The YEF’s Policing, Children and Violence guidance report sets out six recommendations for senior police leaders across England and Wales, organised around three key themes:

Treat children as children

1. Translate child-centred policing into everyday practice.

2. Audit how you safeguard children to prevent violence.

Focus on what works

3. Take a problem-oriented policing approach.

4. Stop harmful approaches and deprioritise unevidenced approaches.

5. Improve the quality of stop and search.

Do diversion well

6. Build an effective and fair out-of-court resolution approach.

Together, the recommendations are designed to help forces make better use of every interaction with a child, while directing scarce resources towards approaches most likely to prevent violence.

Case study: Merseyside Police

“Problem-oriented policing has been central to our approach in tackling serious violence across Merseyside. The key to making it work is understanding that enforcement alone is not enough”, says Superintendent Phil Mullally at Merseyside Police.

At Merseyside Police, this means using data, local intelligence and insights from communities and partners to understand where violence is happening, why it is happening and who is affected. This has enabled them to develop targeted, tailored responses to the specific problems they are seeing in each area, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

Through this process, 29 small areas where serious violence and offending are most concentrated were identified. In these hotspots, officers and PCSOs

conduct high-visibility patrols at times when offending is most likely to occur.

Alongside patrols, the force works with local communities, businesses and partners to develop tailored responses to local problems. This includes creating diversionary activities for children and young people, from graffiti art and DJing to fitness and beauty sessions. “This isn’t the police saying, ‘Come in, do this’; it’s the community and partners who know the young people saying, ‘Work with us’,” says Supt Mullally.

In 2025/26, serious violence across the 29 hotspots was 20 per cent lower than the previous year. “Community involvement is absolutely essential. The most effective solutions come from working alongside the people who know these areas best,” adds Supt Mullally.