Good evening everyone and welcome to our 6th Awards evening.

As always it is a huge pleasure to be able to share this evening with you all, but to also ensure we share the winners with the rest of our network.

Everyone nominated for any of tonight’s awards have something in common, they all love their job, have clearly been outstanding in their commitment to young people and every single one is a worthy winner.

We all know that the young people we are supporting have experienced the most difficult of times, but many bravely choose to speak out, in court, to professionals, to other young people, all in an effort to make this world a better place for others and they couldn’t do that without the support of very dedicated individuals such as yourselves.

It is essential that when managing cases and developing work we ensure young people’s needs are met and they feel supported at that first point of contact. We all play a crucial role in ensuring the issues of exploitation within our society are dealt with as seamlessly as possible.

It is our great pleasure to recognise some of these people tonight; people who have been nominated by their peers.

Our categories for tonights awards are:-

* Inspiring Voices

* Helping Hand

* Working Together

* Safer Environments

The first award this evening is Inspiring Voices – this award category is for a young person or young people who have inspired others to tackle sexual exploitation.

We are only announcing the winner tonight to protect young peoples identities.

D has experienced the most horrific sexual and criminal exploitation over a long period of time. Today he still lives with the trauma. Despite all of his adverse experiences he spends time inspiring others and feels strongly that most awareness raised is viewed as an issue that happens to girls. As a result of his passion to raise the understanding of male CSE, D has voluntarily met with South Yorkshire police officers in an undercover investigation they were developing.D shared his experiences of grooming and CSE (some of which happened on the app Grindr),  he helped officers understand how to build a ‘realistic’ Grindr profile in the hope that they could catch potential sex offenders wanting to groom boys via the site. Remarkably, since D’s input, South Yorkshire police have caught and convicted one sexual offender of grooming, who thought he was talking to a 12 year old boy, when in fact it was the police using their fake profile that D had input in developing.  D has also contributed to raising the profile of male CSE by recording an anonymous video of his story, to be shown at a conference in Scotland, with key messages for professionals to think about and to help them recognise, understand and respond effectively to sexually exploited boys and young men.

On to the next award; Helping Hand –  awarded for Outstanding Contribution for those who work tirelessly to improve the response to children.

For this category the nominations are;

* The Engage Team

* Service Six

* Hexagon Care

* Penny Catton – Ferngate

* Doncaster Children’s Services Trust

* The Children’s Society

* Loudmouth

* Barnardo’s Independent Child Trafficking Advocates

* Doncaster child exploitation team

And the Winner is… The Doncaster Child Exploitation Team

The Doncaster Child Exploitation Team (CET) has worked proactively to strengthen links with the wider diverse community to include multi-cultural faith groups and supporting agencies to raise awareness of CSE and how the wider community can access the team.

Carmel and Jayne sensitively built relationships with community and support leaders, acknowledging the sensitivity of media coverage portraying perpetrators as Asian males.

This also provided an opportunity to highlight that all children are vulnerable to CSE regardless of faith or culture.

“I was unsure if the session was going to be suitable for my 7 year old but having observed the 8-11 year old workshop I now regret not allowing my son into the early session” Quote from a parent

During the past year over 7000 children and over 2000 professionals / parents have received preventative awareness of CSE

 

On to the next award; Working Together Award. Awarded to Local Authority and Community Groups who are working together to achieve positive change.

The nominations are:-

* Risk and Resilience Team, Middlesborough

*West Midlands Panel for the Protection of Trafficked Children

*Looking after me! Flintshire Social Services

The winner of the Working Together Award is… West Midlands Panel for the Protection of Trafficked Children (PPTC).

The PPTC is a multi-agency panel chaired and co-ordinated by Barnardo’s. The team includes representatives from each of the seven regional local authorities, West Midlands Police, West Mids ROCU, Dept for Work & Pensions, Border Force, National Crime Agency, NHS and others. The Panel aims to:

-Identify and disseminate good practice to build consistency of positive response across the West Midlands in relation to trafficked children

-Identify and overcome barriers and challenge poor practice

-Identify trends and themes relating to child trafficking in our region, and take action to address, safeguard, disrupt and raise awareness

Their work has:

* identified a trend for Romanian Children trafficked

* changed the Missing Unaccompanied Children Procedures

* facilitated improved relationship between Border Force, West Mids Police and Local Authorities.

* Directly improved safeguarding responses for trafficked children

* Awareness training on the NRM

* Mapping networks to understand victim/offender/location profiles to assist disruption

The next award is the Safer Environments Award, for those who work to improve their community.

The nominations for the Safer Environments Award are:-

* The Safe Project

* Hexagon Care

The winner is The Safe Project

The Safe Project are a small team based in Leeds Children’s Service. The team support young people and parents, careers and connected others, facilitating a parent’s forum which is open to parents/kinship cares in Leeds who have been effected by child sexual exploitation. They also run a sibling group in recognition of the impact of sexual exploitation on all the family.

This work deserves recognition as it is completed over and above the usual day time work. Along with police colleagues the team have visited over 550 establishments in Leeds (takeaways, off licenses, taxi firms etc) and shared general awareness raising around CSE as well as encouraging people working in the Night-Time Economy to share intelligence with the police.

They recently spent two days in the chilly Leeds Kirkgate market talking to stall holders and delivered training to other groups of workers in the city centre such as civil enforcement officers, street cleansing operatives and shopping centre staff.

Nominated by their manager, Sarah Langli with the comment “Every suggestion I have made as a manager around this part of our work has been met with enthusiasm and commitment.”

 

Special Award

The last of the award of the evening is a very special award, not chosen by us, the NWG team but sent to us as a special request to honour a mother on a son’s behalf. Let me read what he sent to us:-

My Mother goes above and beyond every day, working on the front lines and keeping children safe. She’s not at the top of a big company changing policy and implementing procedure, But in fact making huge waves in the industry and saving the lives of the children she looks after. You will not find a higher profile children’s home in the country that is doing the amazing work that Ferngate is doing. The care given to the girls of Ferngate is the best in the country and they are achieving real results. Whether it be scoring consistent outstanding on her Ofsted results, helping girls disclose their history and move on or just running a great happy home. My mother is well deserving of the nomination.

It gives me great pleasure to present this special award to Penny Catton on behalf of her son.

That concludes the 2019 Unsung Hero Awards, it always gives us great pleasure to present these awards at our Conference, I know that you ALL work tirelessly day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year to help protect sexually exploited children and I wish I could award you all for your tireless efforts, thank you for everything that you do, please keep it up.

So for tonight please enjoy the rest of the evening as we celebrate all of our own contribution to making this society a better.

The NWG Team

26.03.19