Over the past few years the issue of child criminal exploitation (CCE) has been consistently highlighted to CYCJ by many professionals. However, issues, definitions and practices appear to vary by sector and geographical location. Since COVID-19, the issue of CCE has intensified and the number of children being exploited in this way anecdotally appears to have increased. This research project is designed to identify the evidence base and professional perspectives that currently exist in relation to CCE in Scotland by conducting a scoping review to inform potential future research and service/policy development. This research has been commissioned by CYCJ, Action for Children and the Scottish Government.

There are four main stages to this scoping review:
1) A literature review to gain an understanding of what is currently known about CCE in Scotland and the UK.
2) Collation of existing multi-agency data in relation to CCE across Scotland to assess the nature, scale and extent of the issue and to identify evidence and knowledge gaps.
3) Interviews with professionals in Scotland who have a role in policy or practice in relation to CCE, or who work with children and young people who may be at risk of CCE, to explore how CCE is understood, including the definitions used, attitudes, professional perspectives and practice concerns.
4) A survey of residential care staff, an additional component of this scoping review, which is linked to The Promise and their aim of preventing the criminalisation of looked after children. Research suggests that children in residential care can be at increased risk of criminal exploitation and residential care workers are key to providing an insight into this. The interview stage was therefore converted into a survey for residential care staff to maximise responses from this sector.

P.5 The imbalance of power plays a key role in these exploitative relationships and can extend to age, gender, cognitive ability, physical strength, status and economic resources. Exploiters frequently identify material and non-material goods that children need or want (e.g. clothes, money, gifts, drugs, alcohol, food, accommodation, affection, status, protection, friendship, 6 sense of belonging, etc.) and use these to entice them into performing criminal tasks in exchange...