Councils and their partners must do more to tackle child sexual exploitation, senior police sources today warned, following fresh evidence that many youngsters vulnerable to abuse are in the care of local authorities.

New figures on the extent of child sexual exploitation in the UK were released by the Child Enforcement and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre this morning.

CEOP's annual Threat Assessment suggests that one in every fifty-eight children will suffer contact sexual abuse by a non-related adult before turning 18 – a total of 190,000 children nationally.

CEOP's figures do not include familial child sexual abuse, which is more common.

CEOP's researchers estimates that around 10,000 new children become victims of contact, or physical, sexual abuse every year, and warn that the threat posed by online sexual exploitation – such as the exploitation of children through webcams - is also intensifying.

The Threat Assessment also details CEOP's latest research on the emerging patterns of offence, offenders and victims linked to victims of contact, or physical, child sexual abuse.

Research into the profile of victims suggests that the vast majority have at least one ‘identifiable vulnerability'.

‘These included the consumption of alcohol and drugs, mental health issues, regular missing episodes, living in local authority care or being known to the police and social services.'

The CEOP research states that ‘over half of the victims reported [in a sample] were in local authority care'. But it suggests that may be because care homes are better equipped to identify offending following scandals such as the street-level grooming rin in Rochdale, which targeted girls in care.

A senior police source told The MJ: ‘All public bodies – including the police, local authority social services departments and their partners – must continue to progress their work in tackling child sexual exploitation.

‘The CEOP figures are a wake-up call. We now understand the extent of the problem. Police, councils and other bodies such as charities have already initiated some excellent work in producing a co-ordinated response to the threat of child sexual abuse. But we all need to continue that improvement.'