Only 18 of the new specialist protection orders designed to safeguard young girls at risk of female genital mutilation have been issued in the three months since they were introduced, according to official figures. The revelation prompted calls from the head of the new National FGM Centre for teachers, social workers and health professionals to be “braver” when identifying girls at risk and alerting the authorities.

The few orders so far contrast with estimates of the scale of FGM which, though illegal in the UK, persists in some communities. A report by academics at City University, based on 2011 census data and Office for National Statistics birth figures, suggested that 63,000 girls were at risk of FGM, and 170,000 women aged 15 and over living in England and Wales today had undergone it. The government introduced initiatives this year centred on the introduction of FGM protection orders which allow concerned third parties, such as social workers, to apply for girls to be made subject to protection orders issued by family courts. Breach of an order is a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of five years’ jail.

However, government figures show that from July to September, the first three months the orders were in operation, only 28 applications were made, of which 18 were approved.

In her first interview, Celia Jeffreys, head of the National FGM Centre, a partnership project between Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association, funded by the Department for Education’s Innovation Fund, called on professionals in contact with girls at risk to use the orders. “We need to be a bit braver as professionals and a bit clearer about how we can protect our girls,” Jeffreys said. “We’re just starting to get to grips with how we use the orders and how useful they can be. Professionals need more support to enable them to do this and it’s something the centre is working on. But I would say be brave, use them.”

FGM protection orders can involve revocation of a child’s passport and imposition of travel restrictions. A child’s access to certain family members can also be blocked.

Jeffreys, a midwife with 15 years’ experience of tackling FGM, said imposition of an order should be seen as something in the child’s and her family’s best interests.

“When you consider the alternative might be to remove that child from their family, it can be a supporting factor for the family to have an FGM protection order put in place,” she said. “It’s maybe the case that the child comes from a loving family who think they are doing the right thing by ‘preserving her’ and make her ‘marriable’. But keeping her in that family could be in the interests of everyone … It could be that mum or dad doesn’t want it done, but the pressure is from the external family – the gran or an elder.”

Over the last four months the National FGM Centre has been running pilot projects in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk to tackle the problem. “We’ve had a good number of referrals coming through,” Jeffreys said. “We are finding more [cases] than we suspected. And we’re finding clusters – some areas where we have seen some transient movement between London and places where people have been rehoused.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Now that the government has introduced these orders … we want all agencies – including local authorities, social workers, police forces and schools – to make use of them. We will publish statutory guidance on FGM protection orders next year which will provide additional advice and guidance for frontline professionals.”