Author Steve Baguley NWG Network

When I started at the NWG I visited a number of areas from across England, talking to partner agencies about their responses to exploitation. The transition from year 11 and the 16 to 18 age group were continually raised as a concern. This age group had been impacted by significant cuts to youth service and connexions.

What was the problem? We identified a number of key themes around this issue. This included culture, how this age group are viewed, use of language, consent, and even though this was early days in terms of looking at young people through a trauma lens it was recognised the importance of understanding how that would benefit this cohort of young people.

During these conversations, the whole issues of the legal transition in adulthood at 18 and the drop off of children’s services was of huge concern for practitioners.

Through discussion, the NWG felt we could not leave members with these sorts of problems without exploring how we could help our network and so work started on the in house benchmarking tool.

Common themes coming forward were considered and specific areas of concern were incorporated into the initial benchmarking tool. The tool included links to supportive resources. The feedback from the 16 to 18 benchmarking tool was very positive with many areas using the tool and concentrating on specific issues that were relevant to them. In response to member requests, the NWG also developed training on 16 to 18 and the transition into adulthood.

This work took me into the specific area of concern around the transition into adulthood and adult services. This area has been problematic for so long in the world of child sexual exploitation and beyond. Exploitation and the harm that it causes do not stop at 18 even though many services sadly do. Even now we hear of young people being referred into a sex workers project, therefore moving from being a victim one day to a person deemed to be making an informed choice the next!

As these issues continually kept being raised I undertook to explore them in more detail and scope out potential solutions to expand our internal knowledge and share that with our network.

My background is in children’s services and I had to learn about adult services legislation and how adult partnerships operated. Those early days proved a difficult journey but then I was fortunate to meet some adult service leads from across the country who were so helpful and supportive and whose advice and guidance has been invaluable throughout my journey in exploitation and transition into adulthood. A special mention must be given to Samantha Keith in Newcastle who was always willing to meet with me and many others to share the learning and practice that they had developed in response to Operation Sanctuary.

The NWG then held its first workshop on exploitation and transition into adulthood. This was quickly fully booked with areas from all across the country attending. There were presentations from the NWG, Newcastle and the Directions Panel amongst others. There was clearly an appetite to improve practice in this area.

Another key workshop that we held was on Merseyside focusing on exploitation and transition into adulthood. This event was aimed at the Merseyside areas but word quickly got out and the event was fully booked without any advertising. It again highlighted the interest in this area and the need for improved support and safeguarding. At this workshop, Dez Holmes from Research in Practice had kindly offered to present the need for transitional safeguarding. Wow, what a game-changer that was and her ongoing work in this area has been an inspiration to me and many others.

My continued interaction with the adult services networks helped me to grow my understanding of some of the barriers and stumbling blocks that affect young people moving from one service to the other in regard to exploitation.

As an outcome of this work there was the publication of the NWG Network report ‘It Doesn’t Stop when you are 18’, which was positively received and highlighted issues and solutions to support areas with their response to exploitation and transition into adulthood.

As is the way of the network, problems that practitioners faced came forward and others shared solutions they were working with. Many areas began exploring how they could develop a better service response between children and adult services to ensure they bridged the gap effectively.

I have been to over 125 areas examining responses to exploitation and the transition into adulthood. There have been meetings, training, workshops and reviews. From experience, these always work better when both children’s and adult services are together. The sharing of learning across children’s and adult services is pivotal to developing transitional safeguarding.

There was clearly a need to share learning, practice, research and resources to support local responses to this issue. The electronic NWG Transition Network was developed and currently has 198 members from across the country.

Another key development was meeting Fran Leddra who is now the Chief Social Worker for Adults and in this role has prioritised the need for improved transitional safeguarding between children’s and adult services. Fran invited me to deliver two workshops at the national Principal Adult Social Workers Conference in London on Exploitation and the Transition Into Adulthood and it was a pleasure to work with people who were so open to challenge and learning.

In September 2020 along with Fran, the NWG hosted an invite-only workshop to examine the issues around exploitation and the transition into adulthood. After this workshop, Fran pulled together a small project team to develop what became “Bridging The Gap: Transitional Safeguarding and the Role of Adult Social Workers with Adults. “. This has now been published by the Government and there will be a formal launch on June 29th. I have been proud to be on this project team and work with some amazing people.

A key part of the Knowledge Briefings is the case studies. As I had built strong networks and relationships across the country around this area of work, I was asked to collate a range of case studies that covered how areas were developing their responses to the transition process of young people through the journey into adult services and the variety of ways each area addressed the problems and created solutions. The main aim of the case studies is to share practice and learning to help local areas to develop their responses to transitional safeguarding. Thank you to all those people who kindly submitted the case studies.

The NWG new knowledge hub being launched early summer will have a specific adolescence section, including Adolescence into Adulthood training.

The journey that I have been on these past few years has involved me working across children’s and adult services right across the country. It has been a significant learning journey for me and been informed by so many wonderful people. To summarise all the thank yous I would like to make would be a document in its own right, but special mentions must go to Samantha Keith, Fran Leddra and of course Dez Holmes. I appreciate the NWG supporting me and giving me the flexibility to develop this area of work. There is still so much work to do to implement transitional safeguarding but doing nothing about this issue would no longer appear to be an option.

In response

The Missing Benchmarking Tool

In response to the issues of transition, the issues associated with children and young people who go missing kept also coming to the fore which led to the work we developed The Children’s Society (TCS).

TCS had strong links with the issues missing and through collaboration, we began to develop work around missing and through a scoping exercise to explore what it looked like.

The idea to further develop the initial benchmarking tool to become an electronic and interactive resource that generated across agency discussion on their own responses to missing episodes.

Working through scoping the benchmarking tool some of the issues based on reviews that both NWG and TCS had understood to be of concern started to develop the questions that needed to be asked and through lots of robust discussions, the framework began to form.

From those meetings the conversation about how the tool might work, who would host it, and who would develop it took place and TCS agreed to ensure the interactive nature of the tool was built.

To test the resource pilot areas were approached using different authorities, unitary areas with the same police force, single force and unitary, county council areas, we also included wales. Each approached based strength of the relationship and the various stages of responding to missing episodes at the time the tool was at a draft stage to pilot,

The initial feedback was very positive, and as critical friends to the NWG and TCS came back with constructive reviews for amendments that could strengthen the further development of the tool.

One of the key points of the fed back from pilot areas was the vital discussion it generated and how it acted as a critical friend to the discussion. Often TCS and the NWG attended the pilot meeting to act as an independent observers which some areas found really helpful to tease out issues, responses and promote further discussions.

Incorporating the feedback from the pilot areas, the amendments were made and a launch took place in January 2021, with more than 300 delegates joining a virtual presentation of the resources.

Post-launch, everyone who attended the event was given the opportunity to access support should they begin to work with it. We have been surprised at how many areas have been using the tool and the overall observation is the tool is relatively easy to use generates discussion and enables a stronger joined-up response to those going missing.

We have had a pilot area came back to ask how we could further support the development and they have also initiated training across the partnership in response to missing episodes.

The NWG’s new knowledge hub is being launched mid-summer and will have a specific missing section, including Return Home Interviews training.

Make sure you join our mailing list for more information on the new knowledge hub and transitions work.