Rightwing groups including Ukip are attempting to “infiltrate” child protection charities to further an anti-Islam agenda, officials from the government’s counter-extremism programme believe.

Officers from Prevent said far-right figures were using voluntary groups to stir up tension in towns with historical problems of child sexual exploitation.

In Rochdale, a community group for child sexual abuse survivors, Shatter Boys, said it had been approached repeatedly by senior Ukip figures including Lord Pearson, who offered to introduce them to millionaire donors and fund an open-top bus to raise the alarm about grooming gangs.

Daniel Wolstencroft, the founder of Shatter Boys, said: “What they’re doing basically is grooming survivor groups and survivors of abuse. I think their fight is about Islam.”

Wolstencroft, who is an adviser to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said Ukip in particular had attempted to “jump on the child abuse bandwagon” to further its own anti-Islam agenda.

Pearson’s offer of funding, made during a private lunch at the House of Lords, followed months of courting by the Ukip families spokesman, Alan Craig, who last year said Muslim grooming gangs had committed a “Holocaust of our children”.

Craig, who said paedophilia could be traced back “to Muhammad himself”, approached the Rochdale-based group on social media before attending one of its street patrols with a leading member of the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA).

The Ukip leader, Gerard Batten, spoke at a rally in Rochdale organised by the DFLA last April. The DFLA has described the Greater Manchester town as being on its “hit list” for anti-grooming demonstrations.

The issue of child sexual exploitation by men of Pakistani heritage has become a key focus of Ukip under the leadership of Batten, who triggered a wave of senior resignations when he appointed the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser on grooming gangs.

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Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service’s former lead on child sexual abuse, said established charities were being “infiltrated by the far right who wish them to pursue a different agenda”.

Figures linked to the far right have also launched or promoted their own anti-grooming campaign groups in the past year, the Guardian has learned.

One of Robinson’s allies, Shazia Hobbs, launched an anti-grooming helpline at an event hosted by Pearson in parliament in December, which was attended by the For Britain leader, Anne Marie Waters.

Pearson was quoted after the event as saying: “If you touch this case, you immediately become an Islamophobe. Islam lies at the heart of this problem and most of this is a problem within Islam. We need to start talking about this openly.” Pearson and Ukip have not responded to requests for comment.

Another group, the National Anti Grooming Alliance & Helpline (NAGAH), was jointly set up by a member of the DFLA, John Clynch, last year after reports of a mass grooming gang in Telford, Shropshire.

Afzal, who prosecuted grooming gangs in Rochdale in 2012, described the NAGAH as “an alleged far-right front” that had been “created by the extreme right to further their own agenda”.

The NAGAH has attracted moral and financial support from Daniel Thomas, a close ally of Robinson, who is trying to raise £150,000 for the group with a charity boxing event.

The NAGAH’s co-founder Anthony Wood has described “Pakistani rape gangs” as “probably the biggest crime in this country’s history”.

Contacted by the Guardian, Wood said Clynch no longer worked for the NAGAH and that he had left the DFLA. Clynch has not returned a request for comment.

Wood said: “We are not far right at all, we are a community group … We have helped historic survivors, online cases, male survivors. It does not just focus on one area and we have stated this since day one.”

Thomas, who organises Robinson’s rallies, said there was “not a racist bone in the bodies” of those involved in the NAGAH and accused the media of “attempting to destroy a working class charity”.

Frontline Prevent workers said the issue of far-right groups infiltrating charities was “increasingly a concern” that had been raised with intervention providers across England.

Abdul Ahad, a Prevent officer in north-east England, said rightwing groups were using the grooming gangs issue to “appeal to people’s emotions”.

“It is a tactic they are trying to pursue. They can build up the relationship and trust and slowly but surely sink their claws in and then they’ve got them hook, line and sinker,” he said. “They then start spewing their [far-right] narrative before you know it. I know some charities have refused to have anything to do with the far right but it will be done very covertly and subtly.”