Did Covid crackdowns mean 50,000 at-risk youngsters fell off the radar?

NEARLY 50,000 vulnerable children may have ‘dropped off the radar’ of social services during the pandemic.

The number of new cases referred to children’s services departments fell by 45,220 – or 7 per cent – from 2019-20 to 2020-21. The total dropped to 597,7 0 for the year to March 2021, the lowest figure since records began in 2013. By contrast, the total for 2018-19, before the pandemic, was 50,930.

The Department for Education said the sharp reduction was driven by a fall in referrals from schools, which were closed for most pupils during lockdown.

Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, said the pandemic had put vulnerable children such as Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at greater risk.

‘There was an increase in child abuse because of course they were off the radar,’ he told the Daily Telegraph. A former children’s commissioner also suggested the lockdown helped Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes carry out their reign of terror largely unchecked.

Anne Longfield joined the detective who led the investigation into Arthur’s murder in pointing to the Government’s strict order for people to stay at home in March 2020 as a contributory factor.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘The children, and this child in particular, Arthur, wasn’t in school. It’s much easier for families who want to evade view to do that when they haven’t got someone in the room.’

She said in such circumstances ‘there are children who are going to slip from view’ and stressed the importance of face-to-face contact. Speaking after Tustin, 32, and Hughes, 29, were convicted, Detective Inspector Laura Harrison suggested it was likely Arthur would still be alive if it was not for lockdown.

Hughes and Arthur had been staying in an annexe at his parents’ home in Solihull until they moved in with Tustin just before lockdown – three months before Arthur’s death in June 2020.

Det Insp Harrison, of West Midlands Police, said: ‘The lockdown meant professionals didn’t have the opportunity to monitor him in the same way they would do with children normally. I do think that lockdown contributed.’

Nikki Holmes, a former West Midlands Police officer and founder of the Safer Together child protection consultancy, said the case showed how lockdown ‘ramped up the risk in some families’.