In this issue: 

• Exploitation and Transition
• Supporting Safeguarding 16 – 18-year olds, college perspective
• Safeguarding 
• Sports and Activities
• Prevention and Disruption
• Head of Operations.
• Training
• Network Activity

Exploitation and Transition – Steve Baguley

The NWG work regarding exploitation and transition into adulthood continues with invites coming from across the country to deliver presentations, workshops, facilitated learning sessions etc with children and adult service’s partnerships. It is so encouraging that exploitation and transition into adulthood is now being prioritised in so many areas. The Disruption Toolkit has been very well received by adult services.   Below is some feedback from workshops that the NWG have delivered:    

“The session was informative, practical and got everyone thinking about the role they needed to play in protecting people from exploitation and how transition is handled in our area. I know there was audience participation on the day Steve, and I thank you for pulling that out – I have since then, convened a group to specifically look at Transition in our area for both the Children’s Safeguarding Partnership and the Safeguarding Adults Board.  The request, as you know, was made at the end of your delivery, and I’m sure it has contributed to the fantastic response I’ve received from volunteers who want to be part of the group. 

 In addition, we have made Transition a priority for both Boards and today at the Health and Wellbeing Board I was specifically asked about child exploitation and the exploitation of young adults and how the Adults Board was going to respond. 

Feedback from individual organisations have included ‘inspiring’ and ‘I didn’t realise I needed to know about transition until they started to speak’. – SAFER CHILDRENS AND ADULTS PARTNERSHIP MANAGER.

‘You have certainly helped raised the profile of the challenges and need for effective safeguarding transitions. Your presentation was informative and has helped strategic leads think about the issue. We will look at the good practice examples to explore what we can take from them for our area. 

“I think you have set the foundation for the next step – mapping strengths and the gaps”- SAFER CHILDREN’S PARTNERSHIP MANAGER   

The Exploitation and Transition into Adulthood Electronic Network has recently launched and has over 90 members. The learning and practice from 9 regional areas that have been proactive on the issue of exploitation and transition into adulthood have been shared and well received. There have been requests for case studies of individual young people/young adults who have been supported and safeguarding from the transition from children to adult services and also for vulnerable young adults. Thank you to those who wrote case studies which are freely available on the NWG website.

If anyone is interested in the work that the NWG is undertaking around exploitation and transition or wants to join the electronic network, please contact Steve Baguley – [email protected]

Supporting Safeguarding 16 – 18-year olds, college perspective – Steve Baguley

The work that we are undertaking with Colleges around supporting and safeguarding 16 to 18-year olds continues. So far, we have had input from forty-five College Safeguarding Leads and another nine have agreed to participate in this work. These responses will be collated over the next few weeks as College’s have rightly focused on the COVID19 lockdown.  The work with colleges has so far been very rewarding and informative about how we support and safeguard 16 to 18-year olds. Thank you to all those who have already participated in this work.

The NWG were asked to deliver a workshop at the recent NAMMS (National Association of Managers of Student Services) Conference in Bristol on Adolescence Exploitation and the Transition into Adulthood. The workshop was well attended, and the verbal feedback was very positive. We also took part in the Safeguarding Panel for a Q&A session. It was a pleasure to meet and work with such a passionate and committed group of people and well done to NAMMS for delivering an excellent conference.

Safeguarding – Bina Parmar

Safeguarding in Sport review

In July 2018 the Government published the latest edition of Working Together to Safeguard Children (a guide to interagency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children). For the first time, sport was included in this statutory guidance. This review has been commissioned by Sport England to review, if and how a group of national governing bodies are supported to ensure their compliance with WT 2018 and how this support is delivered to Designated Safeguarding Officers from the National Governing Body involved in this review. The review has focussed on the work of an independent consultant and their role in implementing the WT guidance to ensure safeguarding of young people in the relevant NGBs.

Methodology 

NWG’s Safeguarding lead and Police and Justice lead undertook a virtual interview on 4th March 2020, which lasted approximately one hour.

We also spoke with the safeguarding lead at another NGB who has been in post for 18 months sitting on the Case Management Group alongside the independent consultant and another member of the Case Management Group who is a lawyer, sitting as the Head of Integrity.

We did plan on speaking with the National Child Safeguarding Manager for a different NGB, but this call has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Safeguarding in sport review

4 members of the NWG team undertook a review of the Strategic Response by A Safeguarding Children Partnership and other partners of Operation Sports Safe and its implementation across a local area. NWG’s Safeguarding lead has reviewed the draft report and offered some suggestions.

Child Sexual Abuse Risk Assessment Tools

Barnardo’s has been completing a full review of risk management approaches and tools across Child Sexual Abuse services. This has been prompted by an increased understanding of multiple and complex risks that current approaches don’t capture plus an absence of some of the most at risk and marginalised children in referrals and services. The CSA services Assistant Director has been leading this work over the last six months.

NWG’s Safeguarding lead was invited to learn of some of their findings along with other key organisations in the sector and was invited to attend a roundtable discussion meeting at their offices in Euston on 9th March. NWG have agreed to be involved in this work going forward in an advisory capacity.

Sports and Activities

NWG’s Safeguarding lead continues to work alongside the Safeguarding in Sports lead to seek opportunities to promote and disseminate the newly developed Sports resources.

Sports and Activities – Kevin Murphy

Work has continued to take place during the last month working on the Safe to Play campaign, we launched the project in Milton Keynes to a multi-agency audience at the National Badminton Centre. The lead for Child Exploitation in Milton Keynes will drive the campaign across all the sports and leisure centres in the area as well as linking up with local sports clubs to ensure we reach the widest possible audience in the region. Due to the current health crisis we had a less formal launch in Surrey,  postponing our original plans of the launch on national Child Exploitation day, however we did go for a softer option and launched the campaign using social media, Kev participated in a 2-hour webinar hosted by Surrey Police on their Facebook page, we live streamed a Q&A session and answered questions on a wide variety of topics, the website has over 7000 hits during this session,  wealso participated in another webinar hosted by Active Surrey solely on the Safe to Play campaign.  I had a meeting with a CSE team to explore launching the campaign across their area using Police cadets as “ambassadors”, again due to COVID19 this has been postponed. Once the health crisis has abated, we will formally launch the Safe to Play in our partner areas.

The Response Unit team carried out a review of a sports campaign and a designated safeguarding officer who supports three sport’s national governing body safeguarding teams. These reports are useful to spark ideas of how you might approach safeguarding in sport within your own areas and we will be able to share those with you in the near future.

Prevention and Disruption – Kay Wallace

Sarah Parker from Catch 22, Kay and Steve hosted a missing Return Home interview workshop at The NWG offices, attendees shared their experiences of the ‘Return Home Interview’ (RHI) processes and isolation many of the return home interviewers felt in developing and completing their role.

The four police forces in South Wales and Tarian Regional Organised Crime Unit have developed a ‘family pack’ for partners and most importantly children of offenders, who are arrested for indecent images of children (IIOC) offences. At present very little is put in place in terms of support and signposting the children and partners, who themselves are undergoing a life changing journey by losing a key member of their family. A parent started this work due to her own experiences, and she is now working alongside Kay Wallace to further develop this issue. Additionally, we have been working with Superintendent Jo Doyle (Staff officer to C.C. Simon Bailey) and Home Office Safeguarding and Partnerships Lead Jenny Shaw to enhance and develop the ‘family pack’ for use consistently and nationally by all police forces across the country. This work is ongoing, but will hopefully lead to other issues relating to children and partners of IIOC offenders being addressed- such as;

Giving them ‘victim’ status and as such bespoke support as other victims of crime are afforded.

Schools being informed of arrests to enable them to monitor the children for any signs of trauma they may exhibit after the arrest and into their future.  

When a Sexual Harm Prevention Order is put in place, specific and relevant restrictions are shared with the partner, to allow reporting of any breaches to be made.

Kay and Steve hav jointly completed several visits to adult services teams across the country, and also presented ‘disruption on perpetrators who are targeting adults’ opportunities. Adult Services are grateful for disruption support as this is a reasonably new area of work they are being expected to pick up. There is still a lot of interest in the disruption toolkit from Adult Services colleagues.

The Boys and Young Men forum was held at NWG on 3rd Feb 2020, Chilypep presented for the day around how they empower and improve the lives of all children and young people by increasing their self-esteem, confidence and opportunities. Their BRV Project (Belonging, Resilience, and Vocabulary) aims to improve emotional literacy within boys and young men and give them a better understanding of themselves. The day was extremely thought provoking and inspirational.

Steve Baguley and Kay attended the National Police Missing Compact conference, the day was extremely informative with a host of guest speakers who provided diverse and innovative inputs into the missing agenda.

Kay also presented at Sheffield Hallam University, giving three class inputs on exploitation, disruption and offender management.

The first Cesium project technical drop of the child exploitation risk assessment tool to identify children & locations most at risk of CE, as well as those most likely to perpetrate CE, both now and in the future in order to reduce harm and effectively deploy and commission safeguarding services. The development of this tool is a collaboration between Trilateral Research, Lincolnshire Police and the NWG. The Cesium Project is a UK Government backed funding 14- month project concluding November 2020.

Kay continues to manage the Police exploitation leads online network and some of the queries and summaries of responses I circulated were in relation to;

• Terms of reference for child exploitation teams
• Disruption and closing of Hotels
• County Lines Videos
• Newly developed Child Abduction warning notice forms and information
• Use of Airbnb properties for exploitation
• CE software used by forces         

Training -Sarah Brown

Time has been spent reviewing and updating our training packages to ensure they are current.

We have produced and delivered a 3-hour session to final year Social Work students around Criminal Exploitation which they engaged with really well though some were disillusioned with the system of social care which was sad when they have not yet qualified.

NWG was commissioned to develop and deliver two half day sessions around Appropriate Language in the south of England. These two days were really well received – the teams were really engaged, and the discussions were brilliant. Attendees reflected that they didn’t think about the more subtle ways in which they blame young people or families, and all said they were going to think much more about what they write and how they write it. The plans for this course to become a short-day accredited training.

Partnership work has taken place with Marie Collins and their “Click Path to Protection” training

The key messages from Families effected by exploitation video montage has been updated for the Working Alongside Families training to remove references to include messages from parents affected by criminal exploitation. The updated film was launched on awareness day.

Network Activity – Cheryl Stevens

The start of the year is always a busy time for the network. February saw the continued build-up towards the awareness day – new resources were designed as a collaboration between the whole team. A new poster (Spot the Signs) was designed and produced both as a free download and available in hard copy from the ecommerce store. The poster was designed to be ‘future proof’ and suitable not only to support the awareness day but also to be used throughout the year – a spot the signs poster has been a resource the network has regularly asked for. We were also able to have the poster translated (free) into Welsh ensuring Wales could fully support the campaign.

We spent some time revamping the online shop and restructuring the pricing of resources to enable a better experience to shoppers.

Downloads of our resources for the Awareness Day were also impressive–

Resource Name                                Download numbers

Spot the Signs Welsh                     20 (this resource was not available until 11.03.20)

Spot the Signs English                   1,100

Key Message Awareness Day       1,946

Awareness Day Poster Welsh       182

Awareness Day Poster English     1,112

NWG Charity History document 106

CEO Biography                                116

Awareness Day Fact sheet            319

The awareness day was very well supported once again even though many practitioners – us included- closed their offices the same week, many took annual leave or started working from home. COVID19 meant that many of the awareness day planned events across the country had to be cancelled, support was shifted to social media for many although there were still some ‘live’ events taking place.

Much of March has been work on ensuring the website and messages out to the membership are up to date regarding COVID19 resources and support.

Conference & Unsung Heroes – The venue postponed our planned May conference due to the ongoing COVID19 situation and a decision was made to hold the conference in 2021 (April 27^th -28^th 2021)

The Unsung Hero Awards will go ahead as planned on 6^th May 2020 (the original date), planning is taking place on how to run the ceremony using online technology/video. The nominations closed earlier this year.

View the teams profiles HERE