A report published by the UK's Department for Education in March 2026 details findings from interviews with practitioners in six local authorities about how child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) is identified, understood and recorded in children’s social care. The report was commissioned after it was recognised there may be potential under-identification, variation in local authority recording practices and the adequacy of current statutory data systems. 

The report is structured across five chapters:

Chapter 1

It was recognised that significant CSAE-related work can remain poorly visible within national datasets. This was caused by a combination of factors such as the risk often being fluid and relational, often shifting day-to-day without clear or immediate disclosures. Further, CSAE frequently co-occurs with multiple, overlapping risks, including neglect, domestic abuse, poverty and peer or online influences. The complexity can make single category recording challenging and CSAE not being explicitly named in statutory records. As a result, CSAE is often absorbed into broader child protection plan categories such a neglect or emotional abuse. 

Chapter 2

Important distinctions were highlighted between how practitioners understood how harm presents and how safeguarding responses operate between CSA (child sexual abuse) and CSE (child sexual exploitation). Both can co-occur but can present differently in practice. Practitioners described CSA, particularly inter-familial abuse, as more readily recognised with existing frameworks whilst CSE frequently involves extra-familial harm arising in peer, community and online contexts. CSE risk was described as emerging gradually over time making CSE harder to evidence, threshold and record within the statutory safeguarding processes. 

Chapter 3

Practitioners described innovative tools to manage CSAE risk but these sit largely outside children in need (CIN) systems, contributing to variation and limiting a consistent national picture. CIN census returns are structured around incidents and single categories rather than patterns or context meaning CSE incidents are frequently recorded outside statutory datasets. 

Chapter 4

Although serious incident notification (SIN) thresholds were generally well understood, applying them to CSAE cases is more complex due to delayed disclosure, cumulative forms of harm and the challenges of evidencing psychological or long-term impact. 

Chapter 5

The three factors shaping the visibility of CSAE within statutory data is practitioner confidence, system design and national leadership. Ongoing training and clear tools and pathways are necessary as are systems that support rational thinking and track children’s journeys over time. Consistency and adequate resourcing were also considered key. 

Conclusions

The findings suggest that under-recording of CSAE may be shaped by a range of system-level factors rather than indicating reduced prevalence or issues with frontline practice. Improving CSAE visibility therefore requires recording frameworks that capture journeys rather than endpoint, allowing co-occurring harms to remain visible. These findings are an opportunity to address long-standing fragmentation across safeguarding data systems, strengthen national expectations for CSAE recording and serious incident reporting and to ensure that learning from exploitation, serious harm and local information is translated into system improvement.