NWG Network, a national charity based in Derby, East Midlands is celebrating today after being awarded £789,853 in funding over five years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

NWG Network will use their funding to sustain vital services to tackle child exploitation (CE) across England.

This new National Lottery funding will help the NWG to strengthen the capacity of the safeguarding workforce. By accessing shared learning events, CPD training, resources, and a multidisciplinary response unit, thousands of front-line workers will be supported to make better informed decisions to prevent and disrupt CE and be better equipped to respond to children who have been exploited.

The funding will also create a new post of Exploitation, Diversity, and Inclusion Lead to ensure that the NWG response team can offer specialist Diversity and Inclusion guidance and support so that local area responses reach all children and young people including those from marginalised communities.

Through this work local areas will be supported to achieve equity, respect diversity, and deliver true inclusion by focusing on meeting individual needs through a contextualised safeguarding lens. This funding will allow the NWG to have a dedicated resource to promote a needs-based approach to assessment and response which eradicates the concept of mainstream and periphery, but respects difference and promotes acceptance and inclusion.

In the last decade perpetrators have found more extreme and depraved ways to harm children and young people, and in recent times this has been further exacerbated by Covid-19 which has created a perfect storm. Child sexual exploitation is without doubt a global threat to security, is everyone’s problem and requires a collaborative approach. The NWG Network is the only membership organisation of this kind with over 12,800 individuals all working together to tackle all forms of child exploitation.

The NWG Network is working hard to match offenders drive and determination to harm with its own inventiveness and commitment to prevent and protect. The specialist resources and toolkits on offer help those on the frontline to tackle live operational cases of exploitation and abuse. The NWG is educating and upskilling the safeguarding workforce with each resource download, CPD training course and forum it provides.

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes a share of this to projects to support people and communities to prosper and thrive. 

Sheila Taylor MBE NWG Chief Executive said: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this grant means that we can continue to make a difference to the lives of children and young people, impacted by exploitation, who are at the very heart of everything we do. When I started this journey twenty years ago, I never imagined we would be where we are now and the horrors we have seen. Everyone here at the NWG is delighted that the National Lottery Community Fund has decided to support us over the next five years on our journey as we continue to be a lifeline for those on the frontline of child exploitation. It is challenging work but with this grant comes renewed hope that we can start to turn the tide on child exploitation”.

During the pandemic, in 2020 alone, The National Lottery Community Fund distributed almost £1 billion to charities and community organisations across the UK. To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk