What if the person recruiting a child into exploitation is another child?

When we talk to young people about exploitation, grooming and unsafe situations, we often focus on the danger posed by adults. But recruitment can also happen through peers, classmates, friends, older teenagers or other young people they already know and trust.

That matters because a child may not recognise what is happening as exploitation.

Being asked to introduce a friend to someone, carry or hold something, make money, keep a secret, move a conversation onto another platform or take part in something that initially appears exciting or harmless may not look like the warnings they have been taught to recognise.

And the young person doing the recruiting may also be experiencing exploitation or coercion themselves.

That is why I am calling for schools to include age-appropriate education on peer recruitment into exploitation within existing safeguarding and prevention education.

Young people should be taught how to recognise warning signs, understand that recruitment and exploitation do not always come from an adult stranger, identify when a friend may be at risk, and know where and how to ask for help without fear of being blamed or punished.

This is not about frightening children or teaching them to distrust their friends.

It is about giving them a more realistic understanding of how exploitation can happen, and the language and confidence to recognise when something does not feel right.

We cannot keep giving young people half the warning and then expect them to recognise the danger in time.

Schools have an opportunity to close that gap.

Please sign this petition to support age-appropriate education in schools that teaches young people to recognise peer recruitment into exploitation, and share it so more parents, professionals and young people understand that exploitation does not always look the way we expect it to.