Child Exploitation and County Lines: What a Foster Carer Can Actually Do

A teenager comes in at two in the morning in trainers you did not buy, with a phone you have never seen, and says nothing. Exploitation is what most foster carers quietly dread, because it feels like something beyond your reach. What actually protects a child is more ordinary than you would expect, and most of it is yours to give.

Please note: General information for foster carers, not legal advice, correct as at 20 September 2026. The definitions here come from Keeping Children Safe in Education, and the rules on going missing from the DfE’s statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care. Follow your agency’s own safeguarding procedures.

Two words for the same thing happening to a child

Child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation sound like separate problems. They are the same mechanism pointed in different directions. Keeping Children Safe in Education defines both as abuse where someone uses an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child into sexual or criminal activity. County lines is the best known version: drugs moved out of London into smaller towns, carried by children because children draw less police attention. There is usually an exchange, rarely cash at first. Food, a bed for the night, trainers, the feeling of being somebody.

Children in care are targeted deliberately, which is a fact about how exploiters choose, not about you or your home. The Home Office identified roughly 15,500 children as at risk of or involved in criminal exploitation in the year to March 2025, and says the true number is likely far higher.

The grooming stage looks like kindness

Our own training material describes it in four steps, and the first is the one nobody recognises. Someone befriends the child and gives them things. Then a small favour: hold this bag, take it to that address. Then control, through a debt. A package goes missing, real or staged, and a fourteen-year-old owes three hundred pounds to people who know where they live. By step four they are not being persuaded. They feel owned.

The factsheet explains why that stage works: the grooming creates a sense of belonging and achievement, very attractive to a child who has had little of either. Much of the recruiting happens online now, dressed up as a job advert for quick money, which is why our guide to online safety for a foster child matters here.

What you would actually notice

None of this is a diagnosis. It is a list of things worth writing down and passing on, even when you feel silly.

• Going missing, or coming home much later than agreed
• Unexplained money, new trainers or a second phone
• Late-night calls, with new secrecy about the phone
• New older friends, and old friends dropped
• Turning up in a town they have no reason to be in, or picked up by unfamiliar cars
• Unexplained injuries, or drugs, drug kit or a knife in the house
• A sharp drop in school attendance
• A boyfriend or girlfriend who is never available to meet you

One hard rule sits inside that list. If you find drugs, do not flush them or throw them away. Ring your supervising social worker or the out-of-hours number and say what you found. Getting rid of them creates a new debt, and the debt is what holds the child. Nor should you confront whoever is behind it: that is police work.

Write down what happened, not what you think the child is. A dated line saying he came home at 2.15am with two hundred pounds and new trainers is useful to a social worker, a police officer and later a court. “I think he is in a gang” helps nobody, and if you are wrong it follows him for years.

Going missing is the moment that matters

Statutory guidance, published in January 2014 and never replaced, separates a child who is genuinely missing, meaning you do not know where they are, from one whose whereabouts you know but who is not where they should be. Both get recorded; only one is a police report. If you cannot find a child: try to locate them, ring your supervising social worker or the out-of-hours number, report them missing, and complete the incident record.

Now the part most carers have never had explained. When a child comes back, statutory guidance says they should be offered an independent return home interview within 72 hours, by someone trained to do it who is not involved in caring for them. Not you. A child will sometimes tell a stranger about a drug house in Margate when they would never tell the person who waited up. There is an exception where a child would rather talk to a carer they trust. That interview is easy to lose in the paperwork. Ask for it.

The child is a victim, even when they are arrested

A criminally exploited child can still end up in a police station at four in the morning, which is where carers panic. Keeping Children Safe in Education is unambiguous that these children should have their vulnerability recognised and be treated as victims, and notes some do not realise they are being exploited at all. Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 gives a defence to a person who offended as a consequence of being a victim of exploitation, and for anyone under 18 there is no need to show they were forced. Adults must prove compulsion. A child does not.

There is also the National Referral Mechanism, the route by which someone is formally identified as a potential victim of modern slavery. The local authority normally makes that referral. Ask whether it has been made.

Parliament has gone further. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 got Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and creates a specific offence of child criminal exploitation, plus offences covering the takeover of a vulnerable person’s home and forced internal concealment of drugs. None of it is in force yet; the commencement regulations made so far do not switch the offence on. Passed is not the same as in force. When it commences it will put in law what the guidance already says: the child carrying the drugs is the one being harmed. If a young person in your home is facing court, our guide to remand fostering explains it.

What lowers the risk is duller than you would like

What protects a child is a set of unglamorous household habits, and they are the carer’s to give.

• Coming home is always safe. Nothing that happens after a missing night should make walking back through the door worse than staying out. A child who expects a row stays out another night.
• Telling you something must never cost them more than staying quiet. Stay calm, say you believe them, never promise secrecy, say what happens next.
• Know what is happening on the phone without covert monitoring. A secret search buys one afternoon of information and costs every future disclosure.
• School attendance is safeguarding, not admin. A child out of school is available all day to anyone who wants them.
• Give them a legitimate source of what the grooming offers: belonging, status, being good at something, money they earned. A Saturday job in a cafe, a boxing gym, a job at home only they do.
• Keep family time going where the plan allows. Our piece on what actually gets through when you talk to a foster child is about how the big conversations happen sideways, in cars and at sinks.

That fifth point is worth defending hardest. Warning a child about county lines does not meet the need county lines is meeting. If someone offers a fourteen-year-old their first taste of belonging, a leaflet about knife crime is no competition. A team that expects them on Tuesday is.

Two numbers are worth having on the fridge. Childline, 0800 1111, is safe for a child of any age. Fearless, run by Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, lets a young person report a crime without giving their name.

You won’t have to do this alone

Nobody at GLF expects you to handle exploitation alone, or to spot it single-handed. You have a supervising social worker who knows your household, an out-of-hours number a real person answers, a safeguarding lead who does this daily, and other carers who have sat through the same 2am calls. When something goes wrong the response is a team meeting, not a raised eyebrow.

GLF pays 479.50 pounds a week for a child under 11 and 507.50 pounds a week from 11, per child while they live with you, with an enhanced fee of roughly 100 to 200 pounds a week more where needs are higher. Ofsted inspected us in July 2025 and rated us Outstanding in all three judgements. The agencies that get this right are the ones where a carer can ring in the night and say something is wrong without knowing what.

Frequently asked questions

Will my foster child be treated as a criminal if they are arrested?

They should not be. Keeping Children Safe in Education says criminally exploited children should be treated as victims, and section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 gives a child a defence without requiring proof that they were forced. It still goes wrong. If it does, ask for a National Referral Mechanism referral, ask the local authority for a solicitor experienced in exploitation cases, and hand over your dated recordings. They are often the clearest account of what was happening.

Should I go through their phone?

Not secretly. Know who they talk to, agree where the phone charges overnight, and look at it together when there is a reason to. Covert searching almost always comes out, and then you have swapped a child who might have told you something for one who knows you go behind their back. Filters buy time. Disclosure keeps them safe.

Could I foster a young person who has already been exploited?

Yes, and more people need to. You do not need a background in social work or policing. You need to be reliable, hard to shock, and willing to keep the front door open on the nights it would be easier not to. Training comes with the role and you would be matched carefully, not handed a crisis. If the idea frightens you slightly, that is reasonable, not a disqualification. Our guide to what to do when a young person’s behaviour is hard to handle shows what the day-to-day involves.