The Metropolitan Police Service has made progress in improving
some areas of child protection, but the pace of change has at
times been slow, a new report has found.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue
Services (HMICFRS) found that since its last review of the
Metropolitan Police’s child protection services in 2018, the
force had continued to make improvements.
These include increasing the number of staff managing registered
sex offenders, and better recognition of the needs of vulnerable
children coming into police custody.
However, HMICFRS said the Metropolitan Police’s progress had been
slow in some areas, and it still had acute concerns about how the
force investigates online abuse and the viewing and sharing of
indecent images of children.
For example, the inspectorate saw cases where police
investigators delayed alerting children’s social care to children
living in a house with someone who was uploading images of child
abuse, because they did not want to jeopardise the investigation
– potentially leaving children at risk.
The inspectorate said several areas still require improvement,
including:
- delays in uploading images to the national child abuse image
database, meaning that victims are not identified and safeguarded
as quickly as they should be;
- there are significant delays in the forensic examination of
electronic devices, which could result in missed opportunities to
identify abuse; and
- some officers and staff don’t have the right experience and
haven’t had specialist child abuse investigation training.
Matt Parr, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary
said:
“The Metropolitan Police Service has made some progress in how it
keeps children safe since our last review in 2018, and we
continue to see examples of good work by individual officers –
but the pace of change has at times been slow.
“There is still much more work to do to provide better outcomes
for vulnerable children in London – from more quickly identifying
and protecting any children at risk from offenders, to
undertaking a skills audit to identify what specialist training
officers need.
“We are assured that the Metropolitan Police has plans in place
to continue making improvements, and we will closely monitor
their performance. If we think it is needed, we will increase our
scrutiny of the force’s child protection services.”
