In this issue:  

• Exploitation and Transition 
• Sports and Activities 
• Prevention and Disruption 
• Families and Communities 

• Training 
• Network Activity 
• CEO 
• COO 

Exploitation and Transition – Steve Baguley 

The NWG workaround exploitation and the transition into adulthood continues. On the 29th September along with Fran Leddra the national Chief Social Worker for Adults (England), we hosted a small invite-only workshop examining challenges, potential solutions and next steps around exploitation and transition into adulthood. There were inputs from Fran, Steve Baguley (NWG) and an excellent presentation from Dez Holmes (RIP) on transitional safeguarding. After the presentations, some excellent discussions took place. A summary report will be written and shared by the end of the month. It was encouraging to hear Fran highlight that this issue is now a priority area and the aim is to produce national guidance for Adult Social Care and Adult Safeguarding Boards. 

 We are also continuing to support local areas to further develop their responses around transition into adulthood. We were recently invited to present at an Exploitation and Transition into Adulthood virtual workshop organised by the Merseyside Adult Safeguarding Boards. Over 170 attended and the feedback was very positive. We look forward to working with them on the identified next steps. 

The transition into adulthood electronic network continues to grow and continues to share practice learning and research in this area. Thank you to Barnsley for sharing their work on their Directions Panel and to the Magdalene group for sharing their work on the transition service that they have developed.  

We are continuing to meet up with exploitation leads from the across the country hearing about local developments and sharing what is happening in other areas. The main aim of these meetings is to share research, resources, learning and practice. It is encouraging that these meetings are being so helpful.  

“Thank you so much for providing us with some of your time and expertise yesterday, it’s greatly appreciated. We will look over these resources you have sent through we will be in touch with regards to arranging a follow-up meeting”. 

The Missing benchmarking tool pilots have progressed well, and all have completed the stage one questions. We will now be focusing on the themed areas that have been identified for stage 2. One of the first themed areas concentrated on the collation and use of missing children data. The feedback so far on the tool has been overwhelmingly positive and thank you to all those who are participating. The constructive feedback that has been given will certainly help to improve the tool.  

“I have found this tool a really reflective experience and it has asked us questions that I have not previously considered, and this will enable us to have a better insight and provide better services for missing children in our area”.        

 Sports and Activities – Kevin Murphy 

During this period, we have successfully chaired a webinar featuring Dr Rachel Fenton from Exeter University, Dr Fenton shared her work on the Bystander Initiative which is looking at early intervention regarding violence against women and girls as well as a reduction on Domestic Abuse, there has been interest within the sports community to look at delivering this initiative to several community trusts as well as discussing this proposal with our Safe to Play partners.  

We delivered a joint presentation in partnership with the Ann Craft Trust and the CPSU that featured as part of a national CPSU online conference, we delivered two workshops looking at safeguarding during Covid and how to return to sport safely. A future podcast is also in the planning stage.   

We have designed new resources for our public-facing Stop-CSE website to include the sport of Athletics Badminton, Boxing and Rugby, the new resources are currently being reviewed before being launched on the website

Prevention and Disruption – Kay Wallace 

During this period, I have continued to work with Trilateral research and Lincolnshire police in the development of the CESIUM project assessment tool. The CESIUM product uses cutting edge machine learning to identify children & locations most at risk of criminal exploitation, as well as those most likely to perpetrate criminal exploitation, both now and in the future. The product is about to go live in ‘the cloud’ for Lincolnshire police to trial in November. It is also anticipated that Lincolnshire County Council will also become partners in the CESIUM project, this will enhance the amount of data which the CESIUM product will be able to utilise.

We have delivered two ‘Bite-Sized’ disruption multi-agency training events which were well attended. 

We continue to share information with the Police exploitation leads group which has 440 members and three blogs from the information shared by the group.  

We continue to engage with police and Local Authority safeguarding leads across the country, gaining useful documents, which have been shared with the NWG network. 

Steve Baguley and Kay Wallace were invited to be part of the Stoke area Violence Reduction Unit development, the event took place in September and there has been a follow-up event in October. 

We have presented the disruption toolkit in two areas, with a view to them holding full day disruption events in the future.  

Families and Communities – Maria Cassidy 

 

September saw the first Embedding the Voice of Parents Forum take place which brought together strategic leads and practitioners together to share practice around their work with families.  A further meeting is planned for November to explore including families in strategy meetings and support Local Authorities in this area of work. We ran our regular Coordinators forum (online) and some useful and thoughtful discussions took place – this was written up and shared with the network through our website.  

Sarah Brown and Maria Cassidy delivered the Experts by Experience, Working Alongside Families training There was positive feedback from delegates about not just regarding the course content but also the video with parents that we created. This has prompted us to relaunch the video in November with all the other parent resources that have been developed.  

NWG was really pleased with the (Marie Collins Foundation) MCF resources that we collaborated on, seeing an idea develop into much-needed resources for professionals and for parents – “How can I help my child”. 

The NWG ‘Parents as Safeguarding Partners Benchmarking Tool’ has been updated and is currently at the designers. We plan to relaunch it along with a video in November. 

 Training –Sarah Brown 

 During September the following online events happened. 

• Zoe Lodrick seminar – Unveiling Sexual Exploitation 
• Child Sexual Exploitation Advanced Training 
• Working Alongside Families Training

• Reach Every Generation, Gavin McKenna webinar 

Future courses are being scheduled for two 3-hour sessions over two mornings which may prevent delegate fatigue with the events being online.  

Network Activity – Cheryl Stevens / Sophie May 

Working in partnership with  Marie Collins Foundation we successfully launched two new resources at the end of September: Online Sexual Harm Reduction Guide for professionals and  Sexual Abuse Online – How Can I Help my Child? The leaflets were produced as a partnership between MCF and NWG. In the first month of the launch, the resources were downloaded over 240 times from the NWG website 

We continue to run virtual events, in total 12 during July, August and September. 

•  ‘No Wrong Door’ with North Yorkshire Local Authority 
• Dr Sophie Hallett ‘Minimising Risks, Young People Perception of Risk’.  
• Plymouth’s Trauma-Informed Practice model 
• Dr Rachel Fenton – Bystander Initiative 

• A parent speaking on Indirect Victims of Sexual Offending – the impact on the offender’s family 
• Hosting a discussion on Transition into Adulthood following work developed by Steve exploring further developments. 

We manage to attract approximately 100 bookings for each event, with a very long waiting list too. Most events have been recorded and are on our website for our member to share with their colleagues. 

We are very grateful to everyone for sparing the time to share their knowledge and practice with so many people, the Microsoft Chat facility demonstrated people attending found it very useful and informative. 

 

 

We were invited to join Mr Simon Bailey, NPCC Introductory meeting of organisations providing CSE/A services and support group, a most useful meeting that allowed us to inform other organisations of our Work with Marie Collins Foundation, Stop it Now and two Mothers on Indirect Victims of Child Sexual Offending.  

This work is a jointly chaired By Tink Palmer (CEO MCF) and me to develop an advisory and working group to tackle some of the issues impacting on the lives of children and families when a partner is arrested and/or convicted of child abuse. 

Supporting this work is the work being done by Kay on the resources for police and families affected. 

Work with Sajid Javid and the Centre for Social Justice work began on their inquiry into child exploitation. 

IICSA inquiry continues to engage with practitioners and academics and I gave evidence to the panel covering a range of issues including risk assessments and special educational needs. 

 

 

 

Event	Attendees
Southend on Sea model	17
Adolescent Safety Framework	41
Thinking About Risk	45
Maximising Learning from Covid	45
Indirect Victims of Sexual Violence (included in regions but not professions as police only event)	55
No Wrong Door	108
Thinking About Risk	100
Embedding the Voice of Parents Workshop	31
Bystander Initiative	115
Transitions into Adulthood Workshop	25
Keeping Safe	186
Trauma Informed Service	98
Transition into Adulthood	97
Total booked on (some non–attendances at each event)	963

 

COO – Jon Dawson 

 

 Financial the organisation continues to be successful this year in delivering a break-even budget with long-term sustainability in mind as set out by the trustees at the start of the year. This success has been due to extra Covid related funding, a reduction in expenses and the furlough payments drawn down over the previous 5 months. 

Operationally the organisation has been trialling a free membership model for those wishing to access the gold (restricted) membership offer, bite size webinars alongside training course online and demand remains high for these. The team continue to deliver surgeries for our members, undertake reviews, deliver bespoke forums and deliver against our contractual obligations (all outlined in their sections). 

 In order to further sure up our governance of NWG the Trustees developed a series of committees in support of the charity. These have now met and are the finance, communication and governance committees which report directly to the quarterly sitting board.  

Collaboration continues to be an important part of our business and we continue to look for opportunities to work with other organisation from both the public, private and charity sectors.