Today I spent the day at Heathrow Terminal 5 shadowing a Children and Young Persons Officer from The UK Border Agency (UKBA). As ECPAT UK Training Manager I often train UKBA staff and I decided that spending a day with one of their team could improve my understanding about how UKBA deal with child protection concerns, in particular dealing cases of child trafficking at one of the UK’s busiest ports.

As I was briefed on the UKBA policies and procedures and day to day practice, I learnt many new things about how the system works. For example, I learnt that when a suspicion of child trafficking is raised and the child is travelling with someone other than the parent/guardian, the UKBA officer may contact the person back in the source country who is listed as the parent/guardian. When the UKBA officers speak to them they ask questions to gather information to try to form an opinion about whether the relationship between the child and the adult they are travelling with is genuine. 

I was surprised to learn that so many people travel on identity cards in Europe, and I wondered if these identity cards are easier to falsify than passports. Plus, unlike a passport, they do not record a person’s history of travel so it may be that traffickers do use them... People, including traffickers, use documentation from countries other than their own, if their country needs a visa, but the other country does not. UKBA staff are trained to look out for this as well. I imagine for child traffickers, the quicker they get through with the least paperwork, the more chance they can successfully trafficked the child. Also I learnt that non-EU national children over 5 years old get photographed and fingerprinted upon arrival in the UK, which I was not aware of previously. 

And finally, I was glad to see the UKBA offices had ECPAT UK guidance and materials available to staff, as well as the government guidance. ECPAT UK has previously made criticisms of how UKBA safeguard children in their care, but spending this day with the Children and Young Persons Officer made me gain a better understanding of their job and the limitations and timescales they must work to. This sort of work shadowing can only improve multi-agency working. All in all, a day well spent.

Karen Sizeland
ECPAT UK Training Manager