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The children’s commissioner for England has warned of a group of children “intoxicated by extremism” who need help the UK government’s anti-terror programme cannot provide.
Referrals to Prevent – the programme designed to safeguard vulnerable people from being radicalised or drawn into extremism – involving children have risen in the past decade, from 2,918 in 2016-17 to 4,715 in 2024-25.
Axel Rudakubana, who when aged 17 killed three girls at a dance class and tried to murder eight other girls and two adults in the Southport attack in July 2024, had been referred to Prevent three times, but his case was closed over a lack of clear ideology.
The chair of the inquiry into that attack has previously said officers were “hampered” by a lack of clarity on whether they should take someone on who demonstrated signs of being fixated on violence but without adherence to a particular ideology.
In a new report, published on Tuesday, the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, said the current process “risks missing opportunities” and called for a “stronger safeguarding response particularly for children who are fixated with violence but have no identified extremist ideology”.
“It is clear that we have a cohort of children becoming intoxicated by extremism, radicalisation or a desire to harm others, who need interventions that Prevent is not able to provide,” she said in the report.
Her office’s analysis suggested seven in 10 (71%) of referrals to Prevent involved children who did not have a clear ideology, with many linked to exposure to harmful content online such as videos of violence, discussion of weapons and sharing of extreme pornography.
Of the total Prevent referrals for children between April 2024 and March 2025, 79% were closed without progressing through the programme.
In this time period, almost 60% of Prevent referrals came from education providers, while police accounted for 20% and local authorities 11%.
But the commissioner’s office found that at least 65% of referrals from education providers were referred back to them on closing, the vast majority of which (93%) had not progressed any further through the Prevent programme.
Her report said: “This highlights that there is a group of children which professionals are greatly concerned about, and seeking support for, but are finding closed doors and dead ends.”
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Among her report’s recommendations, de Souza has called for the Home Office and Department for Education to issue joint statutory guidance on children who pose a risk to others.
She said this should require all children deemed to be violence-fixated, or where there are concerns around being drawn into terrorism or other criminality, to be referred to local authority safeguarding teams alongside Prevent.
The assessment teams should “act as a ‘triage’ for all these children, including drawing on expertise from counter-terror police at the initial assessment stage when concerns about terrorism are identified, and then children should be allocated to the appropriate intervention from there”.
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring all children are safe from radicalisation and Prevent plays a crucial role in this, moving more than 6,000 people away from violent ideologies since 2015.
“Every Prevent referral is assessed thoroughly by experts. If it’s determined a person is not at risk of being drawn into terrorism, it is right they are supported by other, more appropriate services.
“We thank the children’s commissioner for her report. We are reviewing it alongside our work in response to the Southport inquiry, including developing further options to manage those fascinated with extreme violence.”
