Youth workers look for new ways to fight child grooming by criminal gangs

With children as young as six now being groomed and trafficked into criminality by drug gangs, new tools to combat this are needed, says Belinda Nugent, of the Inner City Organisations Network (ICON).

“It is getting younger, but there is also a lot of work being done on the ground,” said Nugent, ICON’s Community Development Programme project leader. 

Nugent and her team have been working with youth organisations around the city, like Swan Youth Service, Belvedere Youth Club and Bradóg Youth Service, to address what they consider to be a deepening crisis of child exploitation.

“The dialog that's going on at the moment around the table is everybody's just feeling powerless and under-resourced,” she says.

Now they are working together on a new training manual that can be used by schools, youth services, and families to help educate youngsters of the warning signs of grooming, she says.

“A teacher, a youth worker, a family support worker, an addiction recovery worker can open this manual and say, ‘Okay, let's try this,’” she says.

The manual will also complement ICON’s 2024 animated film set in Dublin, The Runners – a Trafficking Timeline.

The 20-minute film is narrated by the childhood friend of a young person named Reece, who struggles at school and then later gets exploited by a criminal gang.

Nugent wants to get into schools to show the film – broken down into short bits for younger kids. They will involve different playful aspects, she says.

Like a quiz, asking things like, “Can you name the two boys? One of them got into trouble, who was the one? What happened?” she says.

Younger and younger

Currently, under the Youth Work Act, 2001, youth work in Ireland only kicks in for kids once they reach the age of 10.

Youth diversion programmes (YDPs), which are a little different, can start working with kids slightly younger than that.

The Department of Justice has said the mandate for youth diversion programmes includes “early intervention” work with at-risk 8- to 11-year-olds.

Youth diversion applies to young people who have already come to the attention of An Garda Síochána and the justice system, aiming to prevent them from further engaging in criminality.

It looks at a young person’s risk factors, says Amanda Shaw, youth diversion project leader with Bradóg Youth Service.

“The trauma that impacts their offending behaviour, the diagnosis that might impact their offending behaviour in a much more individualised case management way, and meeting the needs of a young person in a wraparound support,” she says.

Youth work targets a bigger number of youngsters, she says.

Due to funding constraints, youth workers don’t have the capability to dedicate five hours a week to a child who is at a point of needing crisis intervention, she says.

“That's why the YDP is the best place for that type of work to be happening,” she says. “It's much more specialised.”

Also though, the primary youth work needs to be funded to reach kids from the age of 7 onwards now, to prevent them ever getting to the point of criminality in the first place, says Nugent.

Youth work is funded primarily by the Department of Education, while youth diversion work is funded by the Department of Justice.

It is a sad reality that these gangs are identifying vulnerable children and beginning to recruit them into drug dealing networks from that age, says Social Democrats TD for Dublin Central, Gary Gannon. “The logic is cruel and deeply disturbing.”

“The kids oftentimes are from very vulnerable families, they're from places where there might be addiction, trauma, and that concept of ‘one good adult’ doesn't exist for them,” he says.

According to the My World Survey, a cross-sectional study of youth mental health in Ireland carried out by UCD in 2021, support from just “one good adult” in their lives can have a profound impact on how a child copes with problems.

This is the role that youth workers can fill, says Gannon, but they need to be funded adequately.

Building awareness

Working with Nugent and ICON on the new manual are the team at Bradóg Youth Service, including Amanda Shaw.

“Community organisations are usually well ahead of government coming in and supporting us in any way,” she says.

Bradóg have been working on their new Grooming Awareness Programme (GAP), which will also be part of the new manual, says Shaw.

“What we are seeing is young people, as young as six, being groomed,” she says.

This can mean the young people are given gifts and payments for doing certain things, she says.

“When you offer a six-year-old something like going to the shop for sweets, when they come from poverty, they'll do what you ask of them,” she says.

Their new Grooming Awareness Programme involves a Monopoly-like game that shows the risk-taking behaviours and what they can lead to in real life scenarios, Shaw says.

“We've worked with the children's courts around this to really put the consequences of sentencing, like the real-life stuff that young people will face,” she says.

Reaching more young kids

The GAP is currently going through accreditation with Queen’s University Belfast, Shaw says.

It’s something that they hope could be rolled out nationally eventually by the Department of Justice as an evidence-based model, she says.

Although, a spokesperson from the Department of Justice said by email on Thursday that it did not foresee that at the moment. 

“The Department are aware of the Grooming Awareness Programme (GAP) in Bradóg Youth Service but have no current plans to introduce this Programme in further YDP locations,” the spokesperson said. 

“The programmes implemented by YDPs are highly dependent on the needs of the local community and the Department expects that YDPs identify interventions to effectively support the needs of children and young people in their communities,” she said. 

And a spokesperson for the Department of Education, asked if that department would support the GAP, and when it might be rolled out, also demurred. 

“The policy of the Department of Education and Youth is not to endorse publications, products or services from individual, commercial or other providers,” he said. Instead, it “allows schools and teachers to determine the most appropriate programmes for their pupils”.

Asked about measures taken by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to combat grooming of children as young as 6 or 7 years of age into drug dealing by criminal gangs, neither spokesperson named a programme that appears to include, or focus on kids that young.

Although they did point to a range of both educational resources, and youth diversion programmes, for kids that are a bit older. 

Such as the primary school wellbeing strand, and the junior cycle’s SPHE curriculum. Or the Greentown Programme, which includes parenting guidance, and provides kids with positive things to do.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.