• The NSPCC have reported that in April, May and June they received more than 22,000 calls to their adult’s helpline 
• This is an increase of 32%, with the main concerns reported as parental behaviour, physical and emotional abuse, and neglect 
• Around 40% of calls were referred on to local authorities and police

• The U.S State Department’s latest ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’ has emphasised the risk to children globally from sexual exploitation online and via the tourism industry
• In the UK, 10,627 potential trafficking victims were referred for care in 2019, an increase of 52% on the previous year 
• 4,550 were children, the vast majority of cases were concerned with labour trafficking and ‘county lines’
• It cites concerns from local authorities that high numbers of children were missing from care or foster homes and were particularly vulnerable to trafficking from gangs

• Kent council officials have issued a warning about the impact of school closures on pupils
• Five children with special educational needs have died by suicide in the past 5 months 
• Sarah Hammond, Director of Children’s Services said ‘ordinarily two or three children might be expected to take their lives over 12 months’
• Research from the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) revealed there were 25 likely child suicides in the first 56 days of lockdown in England
• Ellen Townsend, a professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham and an expert in self-harm and suicide prevention, warned there could be “a tsunami of mental health issues” on the horizon

• A woman has been sentenced to nine months in prison after police seized 80,000 child sexual abuse images 
• The 54-year-old admitted downloading images and three counts of making indecent images of children 
• She used a hospital’s public Wi-Fi to look at some of the 80,000 abuse images as she recovered from a heart attack in 2017
• 667 images were of the most serious nature, category A. She also downloaded 465 category B images and 79,958 category images

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