©️ By Sophie Lewis | The Grooming Files | @sophielewiseditorial
And nobody dares call it what it is…
They call it “safeguarding.”
They call it “protection.”
They call it “in the child’s best interest.”
But when thousands of children are forcibly removed from their families, cycled through care homes, silenced by the courts, and profited from by private contractors, that is not child protection.
That is trafficking. State-sanctioned. Data-driven. Profit-motivated.
Forced Adoption: The Legal Disguise
The UK is one of the only countries in Europe that allows non-consensual adoption, permanently removing children from parents without their agreement, often based on predictions rather than proven harm.
According to the Department for Education, more than 2,700 children were adopted in England in 2023. Many of these were removed from birth parents through secretive family court processes where parents are legally gagged from speaking out.
Social services routinely cite emotional harm, potential neglect, or future risk as grounds. In practice, this means parents can lose their children for poverty, neurodivergence, or failing to meet arbitrary expectations.
These children are then adopted by strangers, often never to see their birth family again.
Profit From Pain: The Business of Protection
Care in the UK is increasingly run by private companies, many backed by hedge funds and investors. Foster care, children’s homes, adoption agencies, all now carry price tags.
In 2022, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised concerns about excessive profits made by providers of children’s social care. Some homes charge local councils over £7,000 per week per child.
Incentives are backwards:
- Reunification = lost revenue.
- Permanent removal = long-term placement fees.
Children become units. Cases become income streams. Families become expendable.
Children Go Missing. No One is Accountable.
Over 12,000 children went missing from care in England and Wales in 2022 alone, many multiple times.
Where do they go? Who finds them? How many are trafficked, abused, or criminally exploited?
We don’t know. Because the system doesn’t track the answers.
The government and media use phrases like “absconding” or “runaway.” But when vulnerable children are taken from their homes, placed with strangers, then disappear under state watch, that is institutional failure. At scale.
Groomed by the State
Children in care are some of the most groomed, most abused, and least believed.
Carers change weekly. Trust breaks down. Allegations go uninvestigated. Children are labelled as “troubled” or “attention-seeking” for disclosing abuse.
Meanwhile, they’re taught to obey authority without question, even when that authority is failing or harming them.
Predictive Policing, AI, and Pre-Crime Parenting
Modern social care now uses predictive analytics, using data to identify which families might pose a future risk.
This includes:
- Monitoring housing and benefit claims
- Social media behaviour
- Police contacts (even without charges)
- Parental mental health or neurodivergence
Risk scores are calculated without lived context. Families are flagged, assessed, removed.
We are entering an era of pre-crime parenting, where intervention is not about harm done, but the potential to disrupt systems.
This Is Not Broken. It’s Designed
When a system removes children based on risk, places them in profit-run homes, silences their families, fails to protect them from abuse, and loses them entirely, that’s not a failed system.
That’s a designed pipeline.
The UK doesn’t have a safeguarding crisis. It has a state trafficking economy.
And we need to start calling it what it is.
SOURCES:
- Department for Education Adoption Statistics (2023)
- Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Children’s Social Care Report (2022)
- Missing People Charity / Children’s Commissioner (2022)
- Family Rights Group / Social Work Action Network reports
- Transparency Project / Ministry of Justice Data
The Grooming Files 
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