Stemming the tide – Child Exploitation

 

In my second blog I am focusing on how we can best collaborate to combat the insidious exploitation of children and young people – by gangs, by organised crime groups, by casual crime groups and by dangerous lone wolves.  This is where top skills in community safety practice, childcare, policing, social work with adolescents, education outreach and child and adolescent mental health services are needed just to get through to and stay in touch with a vulnerable young person. It is far easier for a young person to be recruited than it is to leave. Recruiters (to exploitation) are expert at what they do: expert at drawing you in before you have time to think: making their offer sound dynamic and worth having: and expert at coercively controlling you so that even if you know you should not be getting in deeper, you feel you have no choice.

I first realised this when looking at the recruitment of potential terrorists by a terrorist cell. Recruiters had a network of spotters – individuals who looked out for vulnerable young people in order to befriend them. The next step was to offer a solution to misery. This was typically money, accommodation and clothes, all available within 24 hours through meeting at a pre-arranged destination to start a new life. Public services like youth work could not begin to match that timescale and had to learn how to raise their game. Contemporary recruiters and groomers offer a similar package, varied to suit the needs of the individual – a menu of options if you like.

What must we do as a safeguarding community to stem the tide?

For safeguarding professionals, volunteers and community groups and activists, it is vital to look out for signs of recruitment and grooming. This means keeping a relentless focus on the prevention, response to and disruption of child exploitation in all its forms, such as county lines, online exploitation and child sexual exploitation.

Prevention has to combine public health messaging, direct warnings to potential victims and teaching safety planning to young people. One of my daughters told me recently that from the age of 12 onwards, she pushed her keys between her fingers and held her fist tight as a makeshift weapon in case of attack when she walked home from school. Now the threat is as much on social media as it is out on the street. E safety plans should be routinely taught to children growing up by those looking after them at home and in school.

Schools have a crucial role to play in prevention and response. Children not in school are prime targets for exploitation. We have a compelling evidence base to show the correlation between being out of school and vulnerability, including to gang membership and a criminal lifestyle. It is important for al school leaders to understand the inherent danger of excluding a student. Schools need to adapt their offer of education to put a customised programme together for a vulnerable individual student which prevents him or her drifting away. This is of course far from easy to do in practice and it is where multi-agency working has to be triggered to wrap a team around the child and the school, just as speedily as recruiters are making their counter-offer to the same child. Statutory agencies could consider extending Personal Education Plans (PEPs) to this cohort of children, and not just for looked after children.

For everyone working in this field, including all community safety professionals, one of the key concepts in prevention, response and disruption, is the concept of the ‘reachable moment. ’This is the moment at which you have an opportunity to help a child or young person leave a gang or criminal lifestyle. When I did some work on this on Merseyside, we found that family members, especially brothers and sisters, were as likely to be able to do this as professionals. We realised the assumption that families were always part of the problem turned out to be false. Firstly, family was still likely to be the most important source of support and security for young people at risk and secondly, family members could create ‘reachable moments’ for young people whereas professionals were more likely to have to be opportunistic when circumstances created such a ‘reachable moment’. We also found that not all young people on the edge of exploitation were vulnerable at home. Some had no welfare issues at all. The explanation was far more situational than deeply embedded. This is why contextual safeguarding services like those being established in BCP and Dorset Councils are so important. They recognise that the skills to work with children and young people at risk are not so much social work assessment skills as the relationship-based skills of many front-line professionals regardless of their agency. The point here is that to get through to a child or young person, they have to allow you to go there to them and with them. They will make a choice about that which is more likely to be a response to a professional as a person than for their role.

We need your help…

I have tried in this blog to set out how urgent it is to keep a focus on exploitation in all of its modern forms and to do all we can strategically and operationally to reduce its adverse impact. There is not a moment to lose.

Anthony Douglas CBE

 

To join Anthony and fellow safeguarding colleagues at an Open Forum discussion on theme of child exploitation please register with:

pandorsetsafeguardingchildrenpartnership@bcpcouncil.gov.uk

 Dates available:

• Tuesday 28^th July, 10-11

• Thursday 30^th July, 10-11

• Friday 31^st July, 10-11

 

Relevant Reading:

Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel – Safeguarding Children at Risk from Criminal Exploitation Review

Waltham Forest – Serious Case Review – Child C