Multi-agency Child Exploitation group (MACE) | Children's Policy & Practice Hub

Child exploitation describes a situation where an exploiter (who could be an adult or a peer) takes advantage of the child for their own personal or financial gain or gratification. It is based on a power imbalance in the relationship between the child and their exploiter and enables the exploiter to control the movement and behaviour of the child.

Very often there is an interface between harm, exploitation and going missing, and for this reason CSSW has a designated officer, the Missing and Child Exploitation Co-ordinator, who is responsible for oversight of missing episodes and exploitation of children in Camden.

The MACE group is a tactical group with responsibility for planning and implementing actions across the community in response to all forms of child exploitation, including sexual exploitation, county lines, modern slavery and trafficking.

Camden’s Vulnerable Adolescents strategy aims to disrupt exploitation and target exploiters and as part of this, the Multi-agency Child Exploitation group (MACE) will have an overview of exploitation cases in order to share information. To find out about referring cases to the group please see the MACE terms of reference.