The Tomorrow Question: What Support for Young Women Could Look Like

Today is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, a day that can too easily become a day of statistics and sombre reflection. This year, I'd like to spend it differently: looking at what's working, and asking what more we could build. 

A key area of support for under‑18s affected by exploitation is the Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs), professionals who advise and support children who have been, or are suspected of being, trafficked. In March 2025, guardians supported 2,730 potential child victims of modern slavery, up 10% on the year before, and most of them victims of criminal exploitation such as county lines. It's a service that is clearly needed, and one that works. 

Yet gender shapes the picture, too: girls made up just 7% of children referred to ICTGs for criminal exploitation last year, against 85% for sexual exploitation. Girls' criminal exploitation is much less often recognised for what it is, a pattern that only gets harder to see once they turn 18 and the guardian support disappears. 

Recently, it was announced that the Home Office is investing £25 million to roll the ICTG service out to every local authority in England, building on coverage that already exists across Wales. The service is delivered by Barnardo's, whose guardians have been doing this work since 2017 and have just been appointed to continue it for the next four years. It's taken over a decade to get here, but it means that, for the first time, every child in England and Wales who needs a guardian will have access to one. It's a genuine example of a funded, working solution reaching full national coverage, and it deserves to be celebrated as exactly that. This is a vital step forward, but it also highlights a painful gap in support for young adults, including young women aged 18 and above, who face the same harms with far fewer protections.

In our work, we regularly meet young women who lose trusted professionals and services overnight when they turn 18, at the exact moment they’re navigating court processes, housing instability, or ongoing exploitation.

Often, young women are immediately seen as adults when they turn 18 — responsibilised and blamed for situations, rather than receiving a welfare‑oriented, strengths‑based response. Sometimes they receive no support at all.

At Abianda, we work with young women and girls up to age 25 because we recognise that harm does not stop at 18. A key approach we use is Solution‑Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT); a future‑focused, strengths‑based model that positions young women as the experts in their own lives. SFBT involves both a stance and methods in its application and one of the methods I’d like to use here is the ‘Tomorrow Question’.

So, I want to invite practitioners, policy makers, young women and anyone invested in supporting young women aged 18 and above affected by criminal exploitation and associated violence to pause and reflect on the following SFBT tomorrow question: 

“If you woke up tomorrow morning and young women and girls aged 18 and above affected by criminal exploitation and associated violence were receiving the best services and support possible, what would you notice?”

Let’s be bold and build it together!

Alex Mckell

 Training and Development Lead, Abianda