AQW 15193/22-27

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 17/09/2024
Answered On Date: 26/09/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Justice to detail the specific interventions in place to protect children who are vulnerable to coercion or recruitment by paramilitary groups through their relationships with affected women.

Answer:

There are a number of initiatives that aim to support and protect children who are vulnerable to paramilitary influence, including in cases where women are victims/survivors of coercion and there are children who need to be protected from the harms in their environment. This has, for example, been a focus for the Executive’s Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime (EPPOC), for which I am lead Minister. The Programme includes a significant number of initiatives aimed specifically at supporting and increasing the resilience of, and protective factors around, young people who are most at risk of being coerced into becoming involved in paramilitary or criminal activity.

Recognising that this is a clear case of child criminal exploitation (CCE), in 2022 EPPOC commissioned Queen’s University Belfast to detail children and young people’s experiences of CCE; this has informed my Department’s response to this issue. For example, the work plan of the Child Protection Senior Officials Group (CPSOG), led by DOJ and DOH, includes both Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) and Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). CPSOG provides direction on existing or emerging child protection issues requiring cross-departmental consideration and co-ordination, including those relating to paramilitary coercion.

Work is ongoing on the implementation of the recommendations of a CCE Task & Finish Group which reported to CPSOG in February 2023. The majority of this is being led by the Safeguarding Board for NI (SBNI), and SBNI has reconfigured its CSE subgroup to form a Child Exploitation Committee to further strengthen and co-ordinate the multi-agency system response to all forms of child exploitation.

This multi-agency SBNI subgroup is chaired by PSNI and includes Health Trusts, the Education Authority and the Youth Justice Agency among others.

In addition, my Department has developed a three-year Strategy (published in July) in relation to Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation. This includes a range of commitments and actions around improving operational responses and ensuring appropriate support is available to victims.