Tackling Child Exploitation: Summary of Recommendations
A summary of all recommendations from a range of reports, inquiries, serious case reviews and research
Click on the buttons below to reveal the recommendations aimed at each sector:
Education Providers
Awareness Raising and Community Engagement and Young People/Youth Participation.
E1. Targeted sessions should take place with younger teenagers about the boundaries between consent and coercion to ensure they understand what it means to get and give consent.
E2. Relationships and sex education should address pornography as an important influence on young people’s understanding about expectations of sex and attitudes to women and girls.
E3. Education and youth settings need to develop policies and practices that enable young people to critically explore gender- what it is to be male and female – and pressures or expectations to act in certain ways that potentially cause harm to others or oneself.
E4. Guidance on sexting should address not only the behaviours of those who manipulate young women into sending images, but also those that share such images without consent.
E5. Awareness raising and other preventative strategies addressing running away and CSE should be an integral part of PSHE.
A. Awareness-raising in schools with young people about Internet safety should include how young people can keep themselves safe on Facebook and other social media. There are a number of reporting facilities provided by Facebook so that young people can either; self-report that they do not feel safe because of someone else’s activity on Facebook.
B. Young people should be made aware that they have can use ‘social reporting’ to request that someone else, such as a teacher, youth worker or carer, reports to Facebook on the young person’s behalf that they have concerns about what is happening to them or another young person.
C. In addition to this, CEOP will support delivery of prevention messages into schools and directly to children and young people on risks around missing through its Thinkuknow educational products and materials provided to teachers for use in classrooms with children and young people.
D. CEOP have developed a wide range of resources that include films, lesson plans and online games that focus on children and young people at different key stages.
E. By utilising the Thinkuknow network CEOP will be able to bring important preventative and educational messages about the risks and issues relating to children and young people going missing to their network of over 60,000 users that cascade these messages directly into classrooms.
F. Although school membership of the scheme is voluntary, children have seen CEOP’s Thinkuknow package 9 million times since 2006.
G. Products such as CEOP’s new ‘Choices’ animated film will provide children with information on the risks of running away and going missing and provide signposts toorganisations and platforms where they can access support.
E6. Local action is required for all schools and education providers to ensure that there are opportunities for young people to explore the meaning of consent in the context of relationships and sex education.
Five aspects should be core to all discussions in educational or youth work settings in relation to consent:
i. That getting is as important as giving.
ii. Applying ideas about consent to real life situations.
iii. The gendered double standard.
iv. Positive and active communication that goes beyond expecting partners to ‘say no’.
E7. Awareness raising about CSE in schools should start before or upon starting secondary school. More should be done to address sexual harassment and sexual bullying within schools and colleges. Sex education in schools should include relationships education and foster respect for women and girls aimed to promote healthy relationships and a better understanding of what constitutes consent.
E8. The Committee calls for a national education programme on CSE, with support materials to be delivered in all schools and for higher and further education courses in social work and social care to cover all aspects of disability and child protection.
E9. The Committee recommends that a programme of training be co-ordinated across Scotland as part of the national strategy to tackle child sexual exploitation. Child protection committees should play a key role at local level.
E10. Education programmes need to show young people how to recognise and challenge sexual bullying and challenge girls being stereotyped as submissive and appearance-driven and boys as aggressive and active. A mapping exercise of current good practice in this area should be a first step.
E11. The Committee recommends that work in schools and in youth settings, with young men in particular, is undertaken to make them aware of inappropriate, coercive sexual conduct, and to offer alternatives.
Training.
E12. The Committee recommends that the With Scotland network explore how it might best co-ordinate with the NWG to publicise training opportunities in Scotland.
E13. The Committee expects that every effort should be made to involve young people in the content of training for adults. It is extremely hard for exploited young people to come forward and talk about what happened to them. Initiatives in England using photography and DVD projects with young people allow them to have their voices and thinking heard by the professionals. These should be studied for possible adaptation in Scotland.
Protection.
E14. The Committee recommends that social work and other child protection services give higher priority to addressing childhood sexual abuse in general, and other vulnerabilities in younger children, such as neglect, which may put them at particular risk of CSE.
E15. The Committee recommends that refuges for young people experiencing or at risk of CSE need to be established. Consideration should be given to placing a relevant duty on all local authorities in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The reasons for Scotland’s only refuge closing should be investigated.
E16. The Committee recommends that the powers of residential staff to protect the young people in their care need to be clarified.
Engagement with Parents.
E17. Improved information and education is needed in primary and secondary schools so that children know how to stay safe both online and in their community. Information provided should also alert parents and carers to the signs and symptoms of child sexual exploitation.
E18. Parents should be treated as equal partners with professionals and supported by a parent support worker in order to achieve the benefits/outcomes below:
1. To support work with parents/carers.
2. To increase parents understanding of CSE.
3. To improve relations within the family.
4. To reduce risk to children and young people.
5. To improve evidence gathering.
6. To support parents through prosecutions.
7. To realise potential cost-savings by involving parents.
E19. All agencies and LSCBs should consider the benefits of having an IPSW (independent Parent Support Worker) as advocated by PACE in their reports ‘TheRelational Safeguarding Model’ and ‘Parents as Partners in Safeguarding Children’
Intelligence Gathering and Information.
E20. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE CPS/Victim Support.
E21. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short-term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
E22. The Committee recommends that consideration be given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
Scoping the Problem/Data Recording
E23. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
CSE and E-safety
E24. Awareness-raising in schools with young people about internet safety should include how young people can keep themselves safe on Facebook and other social media. There are a number of reporting facilities provided by Facebook so that young people can either; self-report that they do not feel safe because of someone else’s activity on Facebook.
E25. Young people should be made aware that they have can use ‘social reporting’ to request that someone else, such as a teacher, youth worker or carer, reports to Facebook on the young person’s behalf that they have concerns about what is happening to them or another young person.
Central Government
E26. Schools should be reminded annually of their statutory responsibilities in this matter by the Secretary of State.
CSEGG Final Report
E27. Trained practitioners in every educational setting must provide relationships and sex education for all children and young people. This must be part of a holistic/whole-school approach to child protection that includes Internet safety and all forms of bullying and harassment and the getting and giving of consent.
Identification
E28. Gender itself may be a factor that obscures identification of CSE – where, for example, gender perceptions of masculinity mean young males are unlikely to talkabout having been sexually exploited due to shame, fear, and concerns about being labeled gay due to homophobic social attitudes.
Links between CSE and Going Missing
E29: The Government to respond by ensuring that all children are educated about the risks of running away, and what help they can access to stay safe.
E30. It is vital that all young people are educated about running away, and Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) lessons would be an ideal place to make this happen. This move would fit well with the overall aim of PSHE to give children theknowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives; and would also support schools in fulfilling their duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their care.The vast majority of missing incidents for young people involve 12-17 year olds, and soKey Stage Three would be the most appropriate time for this education to take place.
E31. The Committee recommends that consideration be given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
Scoping the Problem/Data Recording
E32. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
CSE and E-safety
E33. Awareness-raising in schools with young people about internet safety should include how young people can keep themselves safe on Facebook and other social media. There are a number of reporting facilities provided by Facebook so that young people can either; self-report that they do not feel safe because of someone else’s activity on Facebook.
E34. Young people should be made aware that they have can use ‘social reporting’ to request that someone else, such as a teacher, youth worker or carer, reports to Facebook on the young person’s behalf that they have concerns about what is happening to them or another young person.
Central Government
E35. Schools should be reminded annually of their statutory responsibilities in this matter by the Secretary of State.
E36. We recommend that the Government explore how pupil wellbeing could be measured in schools.
E37. We recommend that the Government take steps to incentivize schools to raise the quality of PSHE and SRE in schools.
E38. We recommend that the Government formally endorse and issue the 2014 advice produced by the voluntary sector, and promote this advice more actively to schools and governors.
E39. We recommend that the Government monitor schools’ compliance with the requirement to publish information about their PSHE and SRE curriculum on their websites.
E40. Ensuring that PSHE and SRE is delivered by confident and capable teachers is crucial to improving the quality of teaching. We recommend that the DfE restore funding for the National PSHE CPD programme, with the aim of ensuring that all primary and secondary schools have at least one teacher who has received specialist training in PSHE, and monitor progress towards this.
E41. We recommend that the Government ensure that there are sufficient school nurses training places, and that the ratio of school nurses to children is maintained.
E42. We recommend that Sex and Relationships Education be renamed “Relationships and Sex Education” to reflect the (existing) focus on relationships and to emphasise the importance of this part of children and young people’s education.
E43. We recommend that all schools be required to run a regular consultation with parents on the school’s SRE provision, in a way that allows all parents to participate.
Recommendation 9: We recommend that Ofsted inspect schools’ engagement with parents on Sex and Relationships Education.
E44. We recommend that Ofsted set out clearly in the school inspection handbook the way in which a school’s PSHE provision relates to Ofsted’s judgments on safeguarding and pupils’ “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development”.
E45. We recommend that the Government commission Ofsted to produce regular subject survey reports on the quality of PSHE and SRE.
E46.We recommend that the DfE clarify that children in primary schools should be taught the proper names for genitalia as part of the National Curriculum.
E47. The DfE must clarify the current status of SRE, including in different kinds of schools, and communicate this message clearly to schools.
E48. We recommend that the DfE develop a workplan for introducing age-appropriate PSHE and RSE as statutory subjects in primary and secondary schools, setting out its strategy for improving the supply of teachers able to deliver this subject and a timetable for achieving this. The statutory requirement should have a minimal prescription in content, and should be constructed with the aim of ensuring that curriculum time is devoted to the subject. Alongside this, statutory guidance should be developed to enhance schools’ duty to work with parents in this area and secure and effective home-school partnership.
E49. The College of Policing should give guidance to the police on how to respond to children identified in what were previously known as soliciting for prostitution situations (both in the community and online) to ensure that young people aged 16 and 17 are identified and responded to as childrenin need of protection. This should be part of training for all frontline police staff.
E50. Police, children’s services and education staff should receive initial and continuous development training on child sexual exploitation,
the emotional impact it has on a child, and how to work with and support victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation. All services should be adequately resourced to respond effectively to children who display indicators of sexual exploitation, and ensure that they can provide consistent support for young people.
CSEGG Final Report
E51. Trained practitioners in every educational setting must provide relationships and sex education for all children and young people. This must be part of a holistic/whole-school approach to child protection that includes Internet safety and all forms of bullying and harassment and the getting and giving of consent.
Identification
E52. Gender itself may be a factor that obscures identification of CSE – where, for example, gender perceptions of masculinity mean young males are unlikely to talk about having been sexually exploited due to shame, fear, and concerns about being labeled gay due to homophobic social attitudes.
Links between CSE and Going Missing
E53. The Government to respond by ensuring that all children are educated about the risks of running away, and what help they can access to stay safe.
E54. It is vital that all young people are educated about running away, and Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) lessons would be an ideal place to make this happen. This move would fit well with the overall aim of PSHE to give children the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their lives; and would also support schools in fulfilling their duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their care. The vast majority of missing incidents for young people involve 12-17 year olds, and soKey Stage Three would be the most appropriate time for this education to take place.
Government Departments
Engagement with Young People/Youth Participation
G1. Commissioners and service providers should also consider how to effectively and appropriately include young people with previous experience of running away and CSE in preventing and responding to running away and CSE.
Training
G2. The Committee recommends that the With Scotland network explore how it might best co-ordinate with the NWG to publicise training opportunities in Scotland.
G3. The Committee expects that every effort should be made to involve young people in the content of training for adults. It is extremely hard for exploited young people to come forward and talk about what happened to them. Initiatives in England using photography and DVD projects with young people allow them to have their voices and thinking heard by the professionals. These should be studied for possible adaptation in
Scotland.
Protection
G4. The Committee recommends that social work and other child protection services give higher priority to addressing childhood sexual abuse in general, and other vulnerabilities in younger children, such as neglect, which may put them at particular risk of CSE.
G5. The Committee recommends that refuges for young people experiencing or at risk of CSE need to be established. Consideration should be given to placing a relevant duty on all local authorities in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The reasons for Scotland’s only refuge closing should be investigated.
G6. The Committee recommends that the powers of residential staff to protect the young people in their care need to be clarified.
Engagement with Parents
G7. Commissioners should ensure commissioning processes for services to meet to the needs of young people who experience running away and CSE include provision of a specialist parents’ support worker.
G8. Parents should be treated as equal partners with professionals and supported by a parent support worker in order to achieve the benefits/outcomes below:
- To support work with parents/carers
- To increase parents understanding of CSE
- To improve relations within the family
- To reduce risk to children and young people
- To improve evidence gathering
- To support parents through prosecutions
- To realise potential cost-savings by involving parents
G9. All agencies and LSCBs should consider the benefits of having an IPSW (independent Parent Support Worker) as advocated by PACE in their reports ‘TheRelational Safeguarding Model’ and ‘Parents as Partners in Safeguarding Children’
Links between CSE and Going Missing
G10. The forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care should require local authorities to conduct return interviews, delivered by an independent professional a child or young person is comfortable speaking with, to all children who run away or go missing from home or care, within 72 hours of missing incident.
G11. Local authorities should incorporate learning about the relationship between running away and CSE into strategic and practice responses to young people and their families.
G12. The Government to respond by ensuring that every missing child or young person who is unable to return home safely can access suitable emergency accommodation to keep them safe.
G13. The Government to respond by ensuring that all children are educated about the risks of running away, and what help they can access to stay safe.
G14. OFSTED should inspect and report on the effectiveness of local authorities’ responses to homeless young people.
Specialist Services and Multi-Agency Teams
G15. Local authorities should pool resources; in order to ensure that specialist services are commissioned to support children and young people at risk. A lead officer should be appointed who is accountable and co-ordinates responses across statutory authorities and the voluntary sector.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
G16. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE.
Disruption (including use of Licensing)
G17. All local authorities ensure that there are clear lines of dialogue between their children’s social care departments and licensing boards.
CPS/Victim Support
G18. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
G19. The Committee recommends that consideration be given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
G20. All decisions and actions should be underpinned by the principles of safeguarding and promoting the ‘best interests’ of the child and assessed against these baseline standards.
G21. Early and systematic identification of vulnerability by the police and access to associated provisions.
G22. Adherence to good practice guidance around ABE interviews, specifically in relation to rapport building, reducing anxiety, questioning techniques, willingness to let youngpeople have a supporter present and early
CPS involvement.
G23. Effective multi-agency planning and coordination to enable a holistic assessment and response to young people’s needs.
G24. Ensuring every victim and witness has access to an independent specialist advocate throughout their engagement with the criminal justice system.
G25. Proactive facilitation of pre-trial therapy and removal of the barriers that currently impinge on this.
G26. Enabling proper preparation for court, including pre-trial visits with trained and sensitive personnel; familiarisation with Special Measures; appropriate facilitation of memory refreshing; and pre-trial contact with Barristers.
G27. Taking all steps to avoid unnecessary delays to, and rescheduling of, trial dates in CSE cases; Increased use of judicial powers to manage ground rules hearings and trials, and consider restricting access to the court.
G28. Comprehensive safety planning for children’s attendance at court, including ensuring the physical set up of courts can facilitate separation of victims and perpetrators, and their supporters.
G29. Greater willingness to facilitate involvement of witness supporters.
Further development of opportunities for peer support initiatives.
G30. Provision of post-court support, in recognition of the particular vulnerabilities associated with this time.
Scoping the problem/Data recording
G31. As part of children’s service planning, local authorities should undertake a cross agency risk assessment for child sexual exploitation to determine the level of need in each area.
G32. At a national level the Department for Education will continue to collect information on the number of looked after children in England absent for more than 24 hours from their agreed care placement. It will also continue to require local authorities to collect information about missing from care incidents, shared with police to ensure action is taken to find the child and minimise the likelihood of a repeat.
A. To support this, the Department for Education has already revised the National Minimum Standards for Children’s Homes and Foster Services in England to require all Homes and Fostering Services to have explicit procedures for missing or absent looked after children which minimise the likelihood of their going missing. These standards also require children’s homes to be familiar with local police missing person’s procedures and whenever a child is missing, homes should work closely with the police and proactively seek to locate the child.
G32. Processes and impacts associated with female perpetrators need to be recognised and better researched. This may help professionals and victims recognise this kind of exploitation.
G33. Better standardisation data collection mechanisms is an important first step towards conducting research into known CSE cases on a nationally representativelevel. To understand questions such as prevalence and how cases that are knownto the authorities differ from those that are not, alternative data collection methodscould usefully be employed – e.g. including questions in existing large-scale population surveys. However, both these important steps would first require a clearer and more consistently applied definition of CSE.
G34. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to Child Protection Plans. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
Serious Case Reviews
G35. The Government give the victim or their family, or an independent 3rd party, the right of redaction of serious case reviews, rather than the LSCB.
G36. Serious Case Reviews are published in full, subject to delay where it may compromise an ongoing investigation.
G37. Recommend to the Department of Education that the guiding principle on redactions in Serious Case Reviews must be that the welfare of any children involved is paramount.
Central Government
G38. A framework/tool should be developed to support reflection on trafficked young people’s changing levels of risk and resilience in foster/other care placements. Thiswould draw on the perspectives of the young person and wider team around the childto enable safeguarding measures to be responsive to changes in the placement.
G39. The Government are to publish the report and recommendations of the health-working group on CSE and a timetable for the implementation of all the recommendations it has accepted.
G40. The Government should ensure that all teachers are provided with the list of warning signs for local authority that they can contact with any concerns.
G41. The Government should ensure that where voluntary organisations are effectively supporting official agencies in tackling CSE, there are resources made available tocontinue the partnership. This is especially important in terms of funding for voluntary sector organisations, which work with young people at risk.
G42. Government to identify an appropriate body to produce central guidance.
G43. The Government commission work to examine the feasibility of introducing a statutory duty to co-operate and share information to tackle CSE.
G44. The Government should examine the Florida Protection of Vulnerable Peoples Act passed in 2012 in order to ascertain whether the mandatory reporting of child abuse could, and should, be implemented in England and Wales.
G45. Ministerial leadership would ensure that senior leaders from all the agencies recognise child sexual exploitation as an urgent child protection issue that needs to be addressed. It would also ensure that there is more effective co-ordination at the centre between the Home Office and the Department for Education.
G46. The Department for Education should ensure that guidance and action plans to address CSE and running away are accompanied by appropriate levels of funding to ensure their implementation.
G47. National Government should coordinate efforts to promote awareness in line with statutory guidance and the national action plan by taking an active co-ordination role where there are gaps in awareness-raising; and by working in partnership with others to address those gaps and deliver targeted awareness-raising. So, for example, to raise awareness among parents, carers, national Government should work with key stakeholders and partners, including parenting charities, to encourage and facilitate their work with parents and carers to raise awareness about running away and CSE.
G48. National Government should undertake analysis to identify the appropriate awareness-raising activity for the general public, professionals who work with young people and their families and parents and carers.
A. To support this local activity, the UK Government, together with the national Missing Persons Bureau and CEOP will ensure periodic national assessments of the nature, scale and risks associated with missing people to help inform policy making,local assessments and to aid in the identification of effective preventative work and risk assessments of missing people. CEOP’s recent assessment of child sexual exploitation greatly.
B. Improved existing levels of understanding of the extent and scale of the problem and with future work also planned with partners including the forthcoming scoping report on child abduction and periodic child trafficking reviews this will help ensure we have a better understanding of the nature and scale of the challenges we face.
G49. The government, in partnership with internet service providers, should embark on a national awareness raising campaign, underpinned by further research, to better inform parents, professionals and the public at large about the content of pornography and young people’s access of, and exposure to such content. This should include a message to parents about their responsibilities affording both children and young people greater protection and generating a wider debate about the nature of pornography in the 21st century and its potential impact.
G50. Through the commitments made to better protect girls and young women from gender based violence in the ending violence against women and girls action plan, the Home Office and the Department for Education should commence further research into the safeguarding implications of exposure and/or access to pornography on children and young people, particularly in relation to their experiences of teenage relationship abuse and peer exploitation.
G51. The Home Office should incorporate the findings of this report [Porn is everywhere] into the ongoing teen abuse campaign. Future activity on the work stream should reflect young people’s exposure to violent sexualised imagery within their peer groups and relationships.
G52. Relevant government departments (e.g. Department for Education, Home Office, Department of Health and Ministry of Justice) should produce national plans that include strategies for the prevention of sexual exploitation, to ensure better identification of victims, intervention and support for BME children and young people suffering from sexual exploitation.
G53. The Youth Justice Board should include questions on exposure and access to pornography within the revised ASSET assessment tool, to better inform understanding of possible associations with attitudes and behaviour and improve the targeting of interventions for young people displaying violent, or sexually harmful, behaviour’s.
G54. These plans should include dedicated funds to tackle sexual exploitation in BME communities.
G55. The current Home Office led Sexual Violence against Children and VulnerablePeople National Group should explicitly address the issue of peer-on-peer sexualviolence (including that associated with gangs) as a thematic priority, with agreedcross-Departmental deliverables.
G56. The Home Office should develop recommended principles to underpin all national and local responses to gang-associated sexual violence and exploitation, with a viewto informing the commissioning of services and disseminating best practice. These principles should include:
- Effective inter-agency working;
- Engaging young people as active partners;
- Sustainability;
- Prevention and early intervention;
- Clear pathways into support services;
- The complexity of the victim/perpetrator dynamic within peer-on-peer sexual violence.
G57. The Secretary of State for Education should ensure that a ‘whole school approach’ to safeguarding is consistently adopted to address all forms of sexual violence and exploitation, including sexualised bullying and coercive behaviours. All such initiatives should be delivered to both young men and young women in gender and age-appropriate forms. This work should link with other education, youth service and relevant universal service providers to promote a better understanding of healthy relationships and consent to sexual activity.
G58. The Cabinet Office should produce a strategy on the development of robust long-term youth work (prioritising community based youth work, detached youth work, youth mentoring systems and gender based violence awareness interventions) to engage with young people, their peers, families and wider community in gang affected neighbourhoods.
G59. National bodies with responsibility for training professionals should evidence how they incorporate peer-on-peer sexual violence (including that associated with gangs) into pre- and post-qualifying programmes.
CSEGG Accelerated Report
G60. Government should undertake a thorough examination of residential care, including the profile of children, location and type of homes, recruitment, qualificationand training of staff, and analyses of how local authorities are meeting their duties under the sufficiency requirements.
G61. Government should amend the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010 and related Guidance to state that a child’s care plan should include a safety plan when the child/young person is at risk of or has experienced CSE. This should be based on a thorough assessment of need and explicitly address the risks the child faces, be negotiated with the child and engage family, supporting adults and, as appropriate, the police.
G62. Regulations should proscribe any child in care, or leaving care, from being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation.
G63. Amendment should be made to Regulation 33 of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011) that monthly inspection visits to private children’s homes should be by a person independent of the organisation running the home and appointed or approved by the local authority.
CSEGG Interim Report
G64. The Government should amend the Care Standards Act 2000 (Registration) (England) Briefing for the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education,on the emerging findings of the OCC’s Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangsand Groups, with a special focus on children in care 12 Regulations 2010 to allow Ofsted to routinely share its information about the location of children’s homes with the police.
G65. All references in Guidance and Regulation to ‘prostitution’ when speaking of children should be amended to ‘child sexual exploitation’. (For example Schedule 5 of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
G66. Consideration should be given to amending Regulation 11(2)(d) of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. Currently this requires authorities to notify the area authority where the child is to be placed. This could be strengthened by requiring the placing authority to consult with the area authority to assist their assessment that the placement is the most appropriate placement available and that it will meet the child’s needs identified in the care plan.This would enable the placing authority to establish, for example, if there is known intelligence locally of sexual exploitation associated with the children’s home or local area.
G67. Consideration should be given, in the National Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan, to the role of Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards in having oversight of:
i. The relationships between police and local authority children’s homes in the local area, so that intelligence about groups of exploiters in the area and support to staff and young people can be provided
ii. Children who go missing and children at risk of or who have experienced exploitation: ensuring analysis of information gathered through Runaway Children and Missing From Care (RCMFC) records.
iii. In line with the 2009 statutory guidance on children who run away and go missing from care, regulations should be amended to ensure when children have run away from care, that all return interviews involve an independent person, preferably an advocate or trusted adult from outside the home. These should enable young people to talk about any concerns including about the home. The content should feed into local police intelligence about sexual exploitation. Police ‘safe and well’ interviews should be considered as well – with the young person’s agreement. Possibly through amendment to Sec 16 (4) (b) of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
iv. The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010 and related Guidance should be amended to ensure that a child’s Independent Reviewing Officer(IRO) should be informed when children run away and consider bringing forward the review. The IRO service should be informed about the pattern of absences or running away by children in care.
CSEGG Final Report
G67. The Department for Education should review and where necessary, revise the Working Together guidance on CSE (DCSF, 2009). This should include a review of the definition of CSE.
G68. Through the Sexual Violence against Children and Vulnerable People National Group, the Government should undertake a review of the various initiatives being funded by the Home Office, Department for Education, Department of Health and anyothers as relevant, in order to ensure services are not duplicated and that programs are complementary, coordinated and adequately funded. All initiatives should be crosschecked to ensure that they are effectively linked into child protection procedures and local safeguarding arrangements.
Government Departments of Northern Ireland
G69. When established, the SBNI should, as part of its work plan, consider the issue of child sexual exploitation and the effectiveness of current responses to it.
G70. DHSSPS should revise existing Safeguarding and Child Protection Guidance to explicitly reference the complex nature and impact of sexual exploitation. This should be supported by the development of detailed inter-agency procedural guidance for practitioners to assist them in responding appropriately to instances where the sexual exploitation of children or young people is confirmed or suspected. The latter will be amatter for the SBNI to consider when established.
G71. The HSC Board should progress the development of a targeted and fully resourced action plan on sexual exploitation that includes, but is not limited to, consideration of the following issues:
- Data collection and monitoring
- Professional competency and capacity
- Best-practice models for responding to sexual exploitation, including the merits of a co-located inter-agency model of response
- Regional implementation of the sexual exploitation risk assessment tool
- Resourcing of a regional specialist support service.
G72. The HSC Board should consider how best to coordinate and prioritise the provision of specialist (Tier 3) drug and alcohol counselling services to young people who display signs of drug and alcohol abuse which may make them vulnerable to sexual exploitation, in particular to children living in residential care.
G73. The Public Health Agency should develop a campaign to raise public awareness of the sexual exploitation of children and young people.
G74. The NI Policing Board should incorporate child protection (including sexual exploitation) as a priority in forthcoming Policing Plans, in reflection of the criticalimportance of this area of work.
The Scottish Government
G75. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government develop a National Strategy for tackling child sexual exploitation. This would be a framework for a coordinated national approach to tackling and preventing CSE and supporting the victims. The Committee expects the Scottish Government to report regularly to the Parliament on its progress.
G76. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government commission research into external trafficking in Scotland, that this takes account of evidence from TARA,Aberlour, Legal Services Agency, Izzy’s Promise and other groups knowledgeable in this field; and that evidence given to this inquiry, relevant to external trafficking and issues relating to sexual exploitation of refugees and asylum seekers is made available tothose commissioned to undertake this research
G77. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government gives high priority to ensuring that high-quality data collection tools, which will supply vital information on the prevalence and nature of CSE in Scotland, can be identified, standardised androlled out across Scotland.
G78. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government should call together representatives from the NWG, CPC Chairs’ Forum, Police Scotland, the Ministerial Working Group, Barnardo’s, social work, health, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and COPFS and others who have been, or should be, significantly involved in data collection issues, expertise and initiatives, and in promoting good practice throughout the UK.
G79. This forum should decide collectively on a coherent data collection strategy for Scotland, and the tools and techniques which will be most effective in tackling CSE.
G80. The Forth Valley Child Protection Committees’ pilot of data collection tools should be carefully monitored and evaluated, and if successful should play an important part, of the strategy for greatly improved data collection. An evaluation report of this pilot should be made available to the Scottish Parliament.
G81. It is the view of the Committee that in order to help young people recognise and escape from sexually exploitative situations, specialist and general services must be made available in every region of Scotland.
G82. Third Sector agencies make an important contribution to the support of traumatised young people. Greater recognition of the value and contribution of the third sector is needed. It should be funded to enable it to provide support services. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government take the lead on this.
G83. The Committee recommends mandatory training for frontline and specialist police officers on legislative options to disrupt perpetrators. The Committee also recommendsbetter police analysis and collation of information about and the tracking of abusive networks.
G84. The Department for Education should lead on providing guidance on partnership working, bringing together services dealing with gang involvement and missing services. This should include guidance on joint working between the MASH and community safety teams.
G85. The Home Office and the Department for Education should fund a joint, national research project into care placements and relocation of gang-involved children and young people. This should assess the rate of breakdown in placements for gang-involved young people located out of area and explore whether, and in what circumstances, this is an effective way to support those affected.
G86. The Department for Education should work with the VCSE sector to develop a pilot project launching specialist foster placements for gang- involved children and young people on the same basis as those piloted for those involved in CSE.
G87. Awareness and acceptance of gender identity issues affecting children must be improved. Barriers to changing identity documents, including cost, need to be removed.
G88. Young people aged 16 and 17 should have improved access to information about what consent is and how to report sexual crimes. The Government should undertake a public campaign aimed specifically at older teenagers and their parents and families, working with local agencies and community organisations.
G89. The data on sexual offending against children aged 16 and 17 should be reported separately and should not be subsumed within data on adults. The Ministry of Justice and Home Office should develop data collection that allows reporting of crimes experienced by victims, and outcomes achieved, to be broken down by age.
G90. The Office for National Statistics should report separately on findings in relation to 16 and 17 year olds who take part in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, in recognition of the evidence of the high levels of reported sexual offences experienced by this group.
G91. The Government should introduce victims’ legislation to ensure that the principles outlined in the EU Victims Directive that comes into
force on 16 November 2015are enshrined in law and are implemented in relation to children and young people. It should introduce clear standards on how young victims of crimes of a sexual nature are kept informed about the progress of investigation and court processes.
G92. The Government should clarify that for sentencing purposes where the victim of a sexual offence is 16 or 17, this should always be considered an aggravating factor in the offence. The law should send
a strong message that crimes against all children, including those aged 16 and 17, will not be tolerated.
G93. The Government should clarify that for prosecution and sentencing purposes a young person’s consent to
take drugs and alcohol can never be viewed as consent to sexual acts.
G94. The Government should recognise that some vulnerable young people – including children in care, children recovering from trauma,
and children with mental health problems or learning disabilities – are deliberately targeted, manipulated and coerced to consent to sexual acts by adults. Prosecution guidelines should clarify that vulnerabilities such as these should be considered when determining young people’s capacity to consent. In cases of sexual offences, where a victim is in one of these groups, this should always be considered a further aggravating condition of the offence.
G95. The Crown Prosecution Service should introduce further changes to guidance on prosecuting sexual offences cases to specifically include information on consent and 16 and 17 year olds.
G96. The Crown Court Bench Book for prosecutors should be amended to give advice to judges on how to instruct jurors in cases of sexual offences where the victim is 16 or 17, focusing on the vulnerabilities due to their age and the vulnerabilities recognised under child protection legislation. A focus on the vulnerabilities of 16 and 17-year-old victims of sexual offences should also be made part of training for all legal staff. To help juries make sense of complex psychological issues surrounding experiences of sexual offences by children – and particularly young people aged 16 and 17 from vulnerable groups – the Government should consult on introducing an expert witness requirement to ensure that as part of the prosecution case, evidence is presented on how psychological trauma experienced by children may result in children appearing to give consent.
G97. The government should amend section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to raise the age of a child victim of cruelty and neglect from 16 to 18. Such a change would reiterate the message that children aged 16 and 17 need to be safeguarded and that parents are responsible for their children up to the age of 18.
G98. The government should amend the statutory guidance so that all young people who present as homeless are assessed and clear reasons recorded for the outcomes of the assessment.
G99. The government should amend the statutory guidance to stipulate that young people aged 16 and 17 who present as homeless should always receive joint assessments no matter what tier or department of a local authority they present in.
G100. The Department for Education should work on the development of an assessment that is specifically focused on adolescents and which should be included in the Working Together Guidance
G101. The statutory guidance on the accommodation for homeless 16 and 17 years- olds should be reviewed to clarify that young people who are assessed as children in need of support (section 17) and who refuse to become accommodated under section 20 (as looked after children) should be given the status of a ‘vulnerable 16 or 17 year-old’ which would allow greater flexibility of responses but ensure the same level of entitlements and supports ‘looked after’ status. The guidance needs to specify that these young people should still have a pathway plan drawn, specifying what support they get to address their needs and the entitlements they should have before and after turning 18.
G102. The statutory guidance should also be amended to stipulate that where a vulnerable young person is assessed to be in need, but refuses to become looked after, they are allowed to change their mind if the solution they chose does not work for them or if risks escalate and they need to be supported without any further delay.
G103. No child aged 16 or 17 should be allowed to become intentionally homeless and abandoned by statutory services whose duty it is to safeguard all children under the age of 18. The law must change to clarify this and the guidance should be amended accordingly
G104. Local authorities, as part of their sufficiency duty, should review responses to all young people who present as homeless and underpin their sufficiency strategies with comprehensive data about those who present, the assessments undertaken, decisions made and types of accommodation provided.
G105. The sufficiency strategies of local authorities must explain what accommodation is commissioned to cover provision of emergency and long-term accommodation for young people who seek help because of homelessness.
G106. The use of bed and breakfasts for young people who present themselves as homeless should be banned.
G107. The range of accommodation that is used as ‘supported accommodation’ should have enforceable standards developed and should be inspected by Ofsted against these standards.
G108. There should be requirements for accommodation for 16 and 17 year-olds to be in areas that are safe.
G109. There should be a requirement around the level of training for those who are supporting young people in supported accommodation. It should include knowledge around child sexual exploitation and reporting missing incidences, conflict de-escalation, positive behaviour management and, most importantly, safeguarding referrals.
G110. Both the Department for Education and Department for Communities and Local Government should publish full analysis of their data
on homelessness among16 and 17 year-olds as part of monitoring the full implementation of the statutory guidance on the accommodation of homeless 16 and 17 year-olds
G111. Ofsted should undertake a thematic inspection of local authorities’ responses to homelessness among 16
and 17 year-olds, and develop recommendations for the improvement of services and how to include these issues in multi-agency inspections, particularly addressing how this issue can be inspected across all tiers of local government.
G112. Responses to homeless 16 and 17 year-olds should be inspected as part of new multi-agency inspections with a focus on the implementation of the statutory guidance as well as other safeguarding responses, for example when a child goes missing from accommodation that is not regulated.
G113. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner should monitor access to advocacy services for young people who seek help because of homelessness.
G114. All young people who are seeking help because of homelessness should be informed about their right to have advocacy support and be given the contact details of the advocacy provider in their area. The guidance should be amended to clarify this.
G115. The young people should also have access to legal advice if they find it difficult to understand their rights and entitlements.
G116. To ensure that there is a consistently good response to young people across local areas the Department for Education should develop young person friendly guidance on the entitlements and processes young people should expect when they seek help because of homelessness.
G117. Young people who are accommodated because of homelessness should be entitled to have a key professional who they see on a frequent basis and who will be the key link between the young person and other professionals involved in the young person’s life.
G118. The new government should rectify and streamline the legislative framework which currently fails to protect the most vulnerable older teenagers, by conducting a full review of relevant legislation and ensuring that vulnerable 16–17 year olds are fully protected from risk of harm and exploitation.
G119. The government should change the law to recognise the specific vulnerabilities faced by older teenagers and create a new status specifically for vulnerable 16–17 year olds, which would entitle them
to additional and flexible support during these late childhood years and post-18, to ensure that they are not abandoned when they are most at risk.
G120. The government and local authorities should ensure vulnerable 16–17 year olds have a right to advocacy, so they are supported to make fully informed decisions.
G121. The government should raise the age of a victim of child cruelty and neglect from 16 to 18 in the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, to ensure that 16–17 year olds living at home are offered the same protection as younger children.
G122. The Housing Act legislation and guidance should be amended to ensure that 16–17 year olds at risk of homelessness can never be evicted from their accommodation and become ‘intentionally homeless’.
G123. The government should establish a right for 16–17 year olds to be entitled to support from Child and Adolescent Mental Health services (CAMHS) when they need it. This support must be available as early as possible, and long before mental health needs turn acute.
G124. The government should raise the age for Child Abduction Warning Notices from 16 to 18, to ensure that the police can intervene where vulnerable 16–17 year olds are targeted by predatory adults for the purposes of exploitation, either of a sexual or otherwise criminal nature.
G125. The government should change the law so that families are automatically entitled to continue to receive child benefit and child tax credit for children living with them until they reach 18. For those in Apprenticeships, the minimum rate of pay should be aligned with the under 18 rate of the Minimum Wage.
G126. The government should extend eligibility for the Bursary Fund so it benefits more 16–17 year olds who are from lower socio-economic backgrounds and/or face vulnerabilities beyond the current group. Automatic entitlement should be extended to those living in families with an income below £16,000 and to all those known to the Local Authority as a ‘child in need’.
CSEGG Accelerated Report
G127. Government should undertake a thorough examination of residential care, including the profile of children, location and type of homes, recruitment, qualification and training of staff, and analyses of how local authorities are meeting their duties under the sufficiency requirements.
G128. Government should amend the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010 and related Guidance to state that a child’s care plan should include a safety plan when the child/young person is at risk of or has experienced CSE. This should be based on a thorough assessment of need and explicitly address the risks the child faces, be negotiated with the child and engage family, supporting adults and, as appropriate, the police.
G129. Regulations should proscribe any child in care, or leaving care, from being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation.
G130. Amendment should be made to Regulation 33 of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011) that monthly inspection visits to private children’s homes should be by a person independent of the organisation running the home and appointed or approved by the local authority.
CSEGG Interim Report
G131. The Government should amend the Care Standards Act 2000 (Registration) (England) Briefing for the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, on the emerging findings of the OCC’s Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups, with a special focus on children in care 12 Regulations 2010 to allow Ofsted to routinely share its information about the location of children’s homes with the police.
G132. All references in Guidance and Regulation to ‘prostitution’ when speaking of children should be amended to ‘child sexual exploitation’. (For example Schedule 5 of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
G133. Consideration should be given to amending Regulation 11(2)(d) of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. Currently this requires authorities to notify the area authority where the child is to be placed. This could be strengthened by requiring the placing authority to consult with the area authority to assist their assessment that the placement is the most appropriate placement available and that it will meet the child’s needs identified in the care plan. This would enable the placing authority to establish, for example, if there is known intelligence locally of sexual exploitation associated with the children’s home or local area.
G134. Consideration should be given, in the National Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan, to the role of Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards in having oversight of:
i. The relationships between police and local authority children’s homes in the local area, so that intelligence about groups of exploiters in the area and support to staff and young people can be provided
ii. Children who go missing and children at risk of or who have experienced exploitation: ensuring analysis of information gathered through Runaway Children and Missing From Care (RCMFC) records.
iii. In line with the 2009 statutory guidance on children who run away and go missing from care, regulations should be amended to ensure when children have run away from care, that all return interviews involve an independent person, preferably an advocate or trusted adult from outside the home. These should enable young people to talk about any concerns including about the home. The content should feed into local police intelligence about sexual exploitation. Police ‘safe and well’ interviews should be considered as well – with the young person’s agreement. Possibly through amendment to Sec 16 (4) (b) of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2001 (as amended by the Children’s Homes (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
iv. The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010 and related Guidance should be amended to ensure that a child’s Independent Reviewing Officer(IRO) should be informed when children run away and consider bringing forward the review. The IRO service should be informed about the pattern of absences or running away by children in care.
CSEGG Final Report
G135. The Department for Education should review and where necessary, revise the Working Together guidance on CSE (DCSF, 2009). This should include a review of the definition of CSE.
G136. Through the Sexual Violence against Children and Vulnerable People National Group, the Government should undertake a review of the various initiatives being funded by the Home Office, Department for Education, Department of Health and any others as relevant, in order to ensure services are not duplicated and that programs are complementary, coordinated and adequately funded. All initiatives should be crosschecked to ensure that they are effectively linked into child protection procedures and local safeguarding arrangements.
Government Departments of Northern Ireland
G137. When established, the SBNI should, as part of its work plan, consider the issue of child sexual exploitation and the effectiveness of current responses to it.
G138. DHSSPS should revise existing Safeguarding and Child Protection Guidance to explicitly reference the complex nature and impact of sexual exploitation. This should be supported by the development of detailed inter-agency procedural guidance for practitioners to assist them in responding appropriately to instances where the sexual exploitation of children or young people is confirmed or suspected. The latter will be a matter for the SBNI to consider when established.
G139. The HSC Board should progress the development of a targeted and fully resourced action plan on sexual exploitation that includes, but is not limited to, consideration of the following issues:
- Data collection and monitoring
- Professional competency and capacity
- Best-practice models for responding to sexual exploitation, including the merits of a co-located inter-agency model of response
- Regional implementation of the sexual exploitation risk assessment tool
- Resourcing of a regional specialist support service.
G140. The HSC Board should consider how best to coordinate and prioritise the provision of specialist (Tier 3) drug and alcohol counselling services to young people who display signs of drug and alcohol abuse which may make them vulnerable to sexual exploitation, in particular to children living in residential care.
G141. The Public Health Agency should develop a campaign to raise public awareness of the sexual exploitation of children and young people.
G142. The NI Policing Board should incorporate child protection (including sexual exploitation) as a priority in forthcoming Policing Plans, in reflection of the critical importance of this area of work.
The Scottish Government
G143. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government develop a National Strategy for tackling child sexual exploitation. This would be a framework for a coordinated national approach to tackling and preventing CSE and supporting the victims. The Committee expects the Scottish Government to report regularly to the Parliament on its progress.
G144. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government commission research into external trafficking in Scotland, that this takes account of evidence from TARA,Aberlour, Legal Services Agency, Izzy’s Promise and other groups knowledgeable in this field; and that evidence given to this inquiry, relevant to external trafficking and issues relating to sexual exploitation of refugees and asylum seekers is made available to those commissioned to undertake this research
G145. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government gives high priority to ensuring that high-quality data collection tools, which will supply vital information on the prevalence and nature of CSE in Scotland, can be identified, standardised and rolled out across Scotland.
G146. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government should call together representatives from the NWG, CPC Chairs’ Forum, Police Scotland, the Ministerial Working Group, Barnardo’s, social work, health, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and COPFS and others who have been, or should be, significantly involved in data collection issues, expertise and initiatives, and in promoting good practice throughout the UK.
G147. This forum should decide collectively on a coherent data collection strategy for Scotland, and the tools and techniques which will be most effective in tackling CSE.
G148. The Forth Valley Child Protection Committees’ pilot of data collection tools should be carefully monitored and evaluated, and if successful should play an important part, of the strategy for greatly improved data collection. An evaluation report of this pilot should be made available to the Scottish Parliament.
G149. It is the view of the Committee that in order to help young people recognise and escape from sexually exploitative situations, specialist and general services must be made available in every region of Scotland.
G150. Third Sector agencies make an important contribution to the support of traumatised young people. Greater recognition of the value and contribution of the third sector is needed. It should be funded to enable it to provide support services. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government take the lead on this.
G151. The Committee recommends mandatory training for frontline and specialist police officers on legislative options to disrupt perpetrators. The Committee also recommends better police analysis and collation of information about and the tracking of abusive networks.
Health Professionals
Awareness raising and Community Engagement
H1. It is important to raise awareness of running away and CSE and work with Directors of Public Health as they decide health priorities based upon an assessment of local need. Health promotion and protection also falls under jurisdiction of Directors of Public Health.
Protection
H2. The Committee recommends that social work and other child protection services give higher priority to addressing childhood sexual abuse in general, and other vulnerabilities in younger children, such as neglect, which may put them at particular risk of CSE.
H3. The Committee recommends that refuges for young people experiencing or at risk of CSE need to be established. Consideration should be given to placing a relevant duty on all local authorities in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The reasons for Scotland’s only refuge closing should be investigated.
H4. The Committee recommends that the powers of residential staff to protect the young people in their care need to be clarified.
Training
H5. Health professionals, particularly local safeguarding nurses, should receive training addressing running away and CSE.
H6. CSE and Trafficking awareness training should be included in every Child Protection Training course.
H7. Bespoke training should be available for health professionals tailored to the area of work e.g. SHS, A&E, midwives etc.
H8. The Committee recommends that the With Scotland network explore how it might best co-ordinate with the NWG to publicise training opportunities in Scotland.
H9. The Committee expects that every effort should be made to involve young people in the content of training for adults. It is extremely hard for exploited young people to come forward and talk about what happened to them. Initiatives in England using photography and DVD projects with young people allow them to have their voices and thinking heard by the professionals. These should be studied for possible adaptation in Scotland.
Identification/Knowledge of Risk Factors and Indicators
H10. Sexual health clinics should identify a lead health professional who is informed about running away and CSE and can identify those young people at risk and develop trusting relationships with them.
H11. A basic toolkit for health workers should be developed in order that health workers can be aware of and can recognise warning signs. The computer version should have relevant drop-downs.
H12. A flow-chart to be developed that is a clear written pathway for health practitioners to follow when concerned about a young person and to include what happens next.
Engagement with Parents
H13. Parents should be treated as equal partners with professionals and supported by a parent support worker in order to achieve the benefits/outcomes below:
- To support work with parents/carers
- To increase parents understanding of CSE
- To improve relations within the family
- To reduce risk to children and young people
- To improve evidence gathering
- To support parents through prosecutions
- To realise potential cost-savings by involving parents
H14. All agencies and LSCBs should consider the benefits of having an IPSW (independent Parent Support Worker) as advocated by PACE in their reports ‘The Relational SafeguardingModel’ and ‘Parents as Partners in Safeguarding Children’
Links between CSE and Going Missing
H15. Health plays an important role in addressing running away and CSE and has a unique position in relation to coming into contact with young people who are unknown to, or do not engage with, other services.
H16. Health services should be part of multi-agency responses to running away and CSE and should prioritise developing their service delivery so that health can support with meeting these young people’s needs.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
H17. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE CPS/Victim Support
H18. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short-term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
H19. The Safeguarding Board, through the CSE sub-group, should work with local agencies, including health, to secure the delivery of post abuse support services.
H20. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
Scoping the Problem/Data Collection
H21. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to a Child Protection Plan.
Information Sharing
H22. Given the importance of STD’s as a marker for CSE, sexual health services give consideration as to how such information might be shared across the region in order to better identify children at risk.
H23. NHS organisations and staff should manage information in a way that is open and transparent to safeguard children who may be sexually exploited or at risk of exploitation.
H24. Staff should be clear that safeguarding considerations override the usual requirements for confidentiality and be confident to act accordingly, following the adviceof the safeguarding professional. The child should be informed as appropriate and their consent to share information sought whenever possible.
CSEEG Accelerated Report
H25. The Department of Health should commission work on where the gaps are in the existing evidence base on CSE, what the priorities are to address them should be.
H26. The Department of Health should request NICE Guidance on how to identify and treat children who have been sexually abused which should also cover children who have been sexually exploited.
CSEGG Interim Report
H27. The Department of Health should issue guidance to all health agencies to ensure effective information sharing so that victims of child sexual exploitation, and children at risk of CSE, are identified.
H28. Families with children should not be housed in in Bed and Breakfast or other types of temporary accommodation but must instead be provided with safe, secure, affordable and permanent housing. If temporary accommodation is the only option it needs to be child friendly, clean and safe. It must never be used to house families with children for more than six weeks.
Links between CSE and Going Missing
H29. Health plays an important role in addressing running away and CSE and has a unique position in relation to coming into contact with young people who are unknown to, or do not engage with, other services.
H30. Health services should be part of multi-agency responses to running away and CSE and should prioritise developing their service delivery so that health can support with meeting these young people’s needs.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
H31. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE CPS/Victim Support
H32. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short-term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
H33. The Safeguarding Board, through the CSE sub-group, should work with local agencies, including health, to secure the delivery of post abuse support services.
H34. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
Scoping the Problem/Data Collection
H35. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to a Child Protection Plan.
Information Sharing
H36. Given the importance of STD’s as a marker for CSE, sexual health services give consideration as to how such information might be shared across the region in order to better identify children at risk.
H37. NHS organisations and staff should manage information in a way that is open and transparent to safeguard children who may be sexually exploited or at risk of exploitation.
H38. Staff should be clear that safeguarding considerations override the usual requirements for confidentiality and be confident to act accordingly, following the advice of the safeguarding professional. The child should be informed as appropriate and their consent to share information sought whenever possible.
CSEEG Accelerated Report
H39. The Department of Health should commission work on where the gaps are in the existing evidence base on CSE, what the priorities are to address them should be.
H40. The Department of Health should request NICE Guidance on how to identify and treat children who have been sexually abused which should also cover children who have been sexually exploited.
CSEGG Interim Report
H41. The Department of Health should issue guidance to all health agencies to ensure effective information sharing so that victims of child sexual exploitation, and children at risk of CSE, are identified.
Local Authorities / Local Safeguarding Children Boards
Prevention
L1. It is important for LSCB to consider how they will approach the sensitive issue of raising awareness of CSE risks among year 6 & year 7 students, as abusers are targeting that age group.
Protection
L2. The Committee recommends that social work and other child protection services give higher priority to addressing childhood sexual abuse in general, and other vulnerabilities in younger children, such as neglect, which may put them at particular risk of CSE.
L3. The Committee recommends that refuges for young people experiencing or at risk of CSE need to be established. Consideration should be given to placing a relevant duty on all local authorities in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The reasons for Scotland’s only refuge closing should be investigated.
L4. The Committee recommends that the powers of residential staff to protect the young people in their care need to be clarified.
L5. Local Authorities should work with the voluntary sector to ensure that they can offer young people a range of appropriate accommodation.
L6. Social Care Departments should assess the needs of homeless 16 and 17 year olds. Awareness Raising and Community Engagement
L7. Police and local authorities (especially Local Safeguarding Boards) should work in partnership with local community organisations (e.g. religious organisations, women’s groups, youth groups and other civil organisations) to raise awareness of CSE and prevention/protection strategies amongst BME communities, including parents, families and young people. The learning gained from such partnership working should be cascaded down to parents and community organisations in order to build the resilience of Asian/Muslim children and youth and prevent them from becoming victims or offenders in online and street grooming circles.
L8. There is a need for awareness among professionals and the general public about the fact that CSE affects males as well as females – as there are currently hugely varying percentages of male victims reported across different geographical areas and services.
L9. There should be more direct and more frequent engagement by the Council and also the Safeguarding Board with women and men from the minority ethnic communities on the issues of CSE and other forms of abuse.
L10. The Safeguarding Board should address the under-reporting of sexual exploitation and abuse in minority ethnic communities.
L11. Community Safety Partnerships in gang-affected areas should develop an action plan for how they can more effectively engage parents/carers and the wider community in preventing gang-associated sexual violence and exploitation, and other forms of harm associated with gangs.
L12. Community awareness should have clear aims and objectives and is incorporated alongside the direct work.
L13. It should include scoping exercises (for example Equality Assessments and analysis of existing work) in order to identify which groups are accessing services and which are under-represented.
L14. Community awareness raising should be evaluated to better understand how knowledge and awareness can be raised effectively among different communities and groups.
L15. Community awareness should build long term relationships and partnerships with groups, communities and sectors.
L16. Makes use of a multitude of spaces, places and resources.
L17. Invest resources and embed good service planning.
L18. Recognise the complexity of the dynamics of community awareness raising. Consider careful selection of routes into work with communities, taking into consideration child protection and children’s rights.
L19. Develop appropriate strategies (such as single-sex groups) to enable the positive and open discussion of CSE, sex and sexuality with a wide range of communities.
L20. Incorporates co-work and support through FCASE staff training and through working alongside CSE champions in different communities.
Training
L21. Training should be developed for frontline staff in services for children and young people to recognise the warning signs and risk factors of child sexual exploitation and how to respond using child protection procedures. This should include understanding the elements of grooming and coercion so that a child or young person’s behavior is not dismissed as rebellious or consenting to the abuse.
L22. Professionals from a range of agencies who work with young people and their families should receive training on the different forms of relationship can take between running away and CSE.
L23. LSCBs to ensure that all professionals who have direct contact with young people receive safeguarding training to build knowledge and understanding of running away and CSE.
L24. Health, social care, education, the police, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), youth justice and the voluntary sector ensure professionals receive training relating to running away and CSE.
L25. LSCBs should ensure that there is sufficient specialist training for front line service providers so that they are equipped to identify children at risk. Professionals should havean understanding of key indicators of exploitation and that although many victims canpresent as ‘streetwise’, they are in fact highly vulnerable.
L26. CSE training must be provided to frontline professionals such as social workers, youth offending practitioners, youth workers, teachers, police and health workers that includes an understanding of sexual exploitation of BME victims and of different types of victim-offender models. This training should demonstrate links with other safeguarding issues such as forced marriage and honour-based violence. Although most cases of forced marriage and honour-based violence are likely to be genuine, being alert to the possibility that offenders could be exploiting these issues is important. These issues could be used by offenders to encourage girls to run away from home and seek assistance from the police or shelter from women’s groups so that they become more accessible.
L27. LSCBs should facilitate local multi-agency training opportunities so staff from different professions can meet to consider their shared responsibilities in identifying, and working with, gang-affected young men and young women at risk of sexual violence or exploitation.
L28. All those in a team around the child supporting a young person at risk, or a victim, of sexual exploitation and/or trafficking should receive appropriate training to ensurethey are working from similar perspectives on the risks to young people.
L29. Advanced or more specialist ongoing training should be available to specialist carers. This could include knowledge of the immigration system in order to support trafficked young people, the use of specific safety measures, and challenging societalassumptions that increase young people’s vulnerability to exploitation, including inequality and discrimination. See section 1.1 on the need for training to explore gender inequality.
L30. The Committee recommends that the With Scotland network explore how it might best co-ordinate with the NWG to publicise training opportunities in Scotland.
L31. The Committee expects that every effort should be made to involve young people in the content of training for adults. It is extremely hard for exploited young people to come forward and talk about what happened to them. Initiatives in England using photography and DVD projects with young people allow them to have their voices and thinking heard by the professionals. These should be studied for possible adaptation in Scotland.
L32. All relevant staff should receive the training, supervision and support required to enable them to understand and respond appropriately to young people affected by CSE. Evidence from research would suggest that, in addition to procedural aspects of responding to CSE, such training should include a specific emphasis on:
- Professional principles and values, and how these impinge upon practice;
- Understanding, engaging and communicating with adolescents affected by CSE;
- Understanding the complexities of CSE and responses to trauma; and
- Recognition of the potential risks that engagement with the criminal justice system may pose to young people and their wellbeing.
Identification/Knowledge of Risk Factors and Indicators
L33. Given the links between sexual exploitation and other vulnerabilities, LSCBs must ensure that those working with or in contact with children who are particularly vulnerable, understand the signs of exploitation and can refer children for tailored support.
L34. There should be particular emphasis on foster carers and residential care staff, as well as all front line workers that come into contact with missing children.
L35. Robust plans must be put in place to ensure that multi-agency and multidisciplinary approaches also work for BME victims and frontline agencies should implement processes and practices to ensure they proactively reach out to and identify BME victims.
L36. LSCB’s should ensure that gang-associated sexual violence and exploitation is explicitly identified as a risk in all gang-affected areas. They should also ensure that allrelevant strategies and operational systems are gender-proofed and address the issue within a shared framework of understanding that integrates learning and reads across the fields of child sexual exploitation, sexual violence, domestic violence and gangs.
Engagement with Young People/Youth Participation
L37. A range of therapeutic interventions should be available to young people in specialist placements who are in need of support, including both formal counselling and informal outreach-based project work.
L38. In the case of trafficked young people who are new to the United Kingdom, the specialist placement team should consider how to ensure young people are able toparticipate in decision making, without over-burdening them in the early days of aplacement. This could include providing explanations in a young person’s language ofwho various professionals are and the role they play, as well as limiting the number of meetings young people are expected to attend in a week.
L39. Wherever possible, decisions should be made with, rather than for, young people. Professionals should also take account of the evolving capacities of adolescents when considering the ways in which they can involve young people in decision making processes.
Engagement With Parents
L40. Parents should be treated as equal partners with professionals and supported by a parent support worker in order to achieve the benefits/outcomes below:
- To support work with parents/carers
- To increase parents understanding of CSE
- To improve relations within the family
- To reduce risk to children and young people
- To improve evidence gathering
- To support parents through prosecutions
- To realise potential cost-savings by involving parents
L41. All agencies and LSCBs should consider the benefits of having an IPSW (independent Parent Support Worker) as advocated by PACE in their reports ‘The Relational SafeguardingModel’ and ‘Parents as Partners in Safeguarding Children’
L42. Working with parents and carers alongside young people using a strengths-based approach.
L43. Equipping families with the knowledge and information to help them safeguard their children.
L44. Promoting the role and value of the voluntary sector in developing working relationships with families and ‘building bridges’ between families and statutory services.
L45. Engaging workers with specialist knowledge, relational skills, and family centered /victim centered working.
L46. Assigning separate key workers to parents/carers and young people. Providing continuity of workers in building trusting and productive relationships.
L47. Providing effective training that makes appropriate and accurate referrals more likely.
L48. Ensuring flexibility of meetings and sessions with families and young people. Providing adaptability of programme materials which are localised, needs-based anddeveloped as required.
L49. Promoting ‘Safer You’ family meetings as important spaces for resolving conflicts, improving communication and devising action plans that increase protective factors.
L50. Having wider CSE support within the service. This can include:
- Accessing other CSE services so that inappropriate referrals or those that do not meet the criteria can be channeled towards more appropriate intervention.
- Referring young people (or even parents and carers) on to support groups which can help to sustain the learning or manage overarching push factors such as low self esteem,bullying and attachment difficulties.
- The use of tried and tested materials for the sessions and access to more diverse materials which might include localised case scenarios.
Specialist Services and Multi-Agency Teams
L51. The remit and responsibilities of the joint CSE team should be urgently decided and communicated to all concerned in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
L52. Agencies should commit to introducing a single manager for the multi-agency CSE team. This should be implemented as quickly as possible.
L53. The council, together with the Police, should review the social care resources available to the CSE team, and make sure these are consistent with the need and demand for services.
L54. LSCBs should review their current policies and operational systems to ensure that they have appropriate inter-agency systems in place regarding common thresholds of intervention, shared assessment of risk and clear referral pathways for both young men and young women, and those perpetrating and experiencing sexual violence.
L55. Specialist foster placements should be in place for at least a year to enable trusting relationships to be built, which are crucial to achieving further positive outcomes.
L56. Given the importance of consistent, trusting relationships, consideration should be given to employing project workers to provide 1-1 support to young people to support their transitions between specialist foster placements, into other placements, or independent living post-18.
L57. Specialist placements are at highest risk of breakdown where a young person does not want to be in a foster family environment and has a strong attachment to people/communities they are likely to run back to. Specialist care plans therefore need to consider how to ‘hold young people in’ to their specialist foster placements by giving them viable reasons to stay and invest, particularly in the short-term.
L58. All relevant information should be shared within the multi-agency team as early on as possible so that all agencies and partners can agree on a young person’s level of risk and appropriate safeguarding strategies. This includes agreement between police and other services about responses to young people going missing.
L59. Ongoing support should be available to carers in the form of respite and opportunities for peer-support with other specialist carers.
L60. An ability to build positive trusting relationships with young people should be the primary quality that fostering teams look for in their recruitment of specialist foster carers. This is likely to be characterised by confidence, commitment, compassion andthe ability to cope with challenging situations. At least one carer in a placement should be available to provide full-time support – especially in the early days of a placement.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
L61. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE Protection
L62. LSCBs must ensure that children who are at risk can be identified at an early stage across a range of agencies and that there are clear protocols for sharing information.They should ensure that children at risk have a full assessment of their needs andreferral to relevant services for intervention and support.
L63. Local Authorities must have a statutory duty for ensuring sufficient flexible emergency accommodation in their local area, to fit in with their responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting a child’s welfare.
L64. Managers should develop a more strategic approach to looked after children who are sexually exploited. This must include the use of out of area placements.
A. The Borough should work with other authorities to minimise the risks of sexual exploitation to all children, including those living in placements where they may become exposed to CSE
B. The strategy should include improved arrangements for supporting children in out of area placements when they require leaving care services.
L65. The council should make every effort to make help reach out to victims of CSE who are not yet in touch with services. In particular, it should make every effort to restore open access and outreach work with children affected by CSE.
L66. Directors of Children’s Services should ensure that all victims of gang-associated sexual violence and exploitation within their area have access to a trained and supported practitioner who will support them in a crisis, advocate on their behalf, and provide longterm consistent support. They should also ensure that all such programmes of work are independently reviewed to ensure consistency of provision to young people in need.
Assessment
L67. Each LCSB be required to set up a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, which would house representatives from social care, local police, health professionals, education, youth offending teams and voluntary organisations.
L68. As the multi-agency body with responsibility for coordinating responses to CSE, LSCBs should hold the tiered framework of risk and ensure that each agency is working to effectively manage the continuum of risk.
L69. LSCBs should support the development of a specialist multi-agency team that can support vulnerable victims as well as deterrence and prosecution activity
L70. Senior Managers should ensure that there are up to date risk assessments on all children affected by CSE. These should be of consistently high quality and clearly recorded on the child’s file.
L71. The numeric scoring tool should be kept under review. Professional judgments out risk should be clearly recorded where these are not adequately captured by the numeric tool.
Disruption (including use of Licensing)
L72. Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards should monitor the relationship between children’s social care departments and licensing boards and ensure that any recommendations made to the licensing board are acted upon. LSCB’s to coordinate and organise a strategy to address perpetrators and ensure that a range of statutory and voluntary sector agencies – including representatives from social care, the police, health, education, CPS, probation, licensing and specialised projects –are part of this strategy.
CPS/Victim Support
L73. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
L74. The Safeguarding Board, through the CSE sub-group, should work with local agencies, including health, to secure the delivery of post abuse support services.
L75. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
L76. All communication with young people should be underpinned by principles of accessibility, participation, transparency and respect. Communication should be proactively initiated in a timely manner and enable opportunities for meaningful dialogue.
L77. In practice effective communication means:
• Avoidance of jargon;
• Clarity of message, particularly around young people’s entitlements;
• Using sensitive and respectful language;
• Promoting access to independent support and advocacy;
• Considering in all cases the use of a registered intermediary, at the earliest possible stage;
• Providing explanations which promote young people’s understanding of systemic requirements – supporting them to understand why certain things happen and why decisions are made;
• Facilitating informed choice on the part of young people; in relation to issues such as the engagement of witness supporters or their preferences for Special Measures; and
• Ensuring access to a named single point of contact with responsibility for communicating case progress and regular contact with a young person and their supporters.
L78. Complaints processes and other forms of redress must be accessible and meaningful for young people. Young people need access to informed independent advocacy to support then to seek redress when standards of engagement fall short of what should be expected.
Scoping the problem/Data recording
L79. Every Local Safeguarding Children’s Board should publish an annual report on the work of the CSE team, using the data collected to assess the scale and nature of CSE within the local area. This should include data on the number of: complaints; investigations; prosecutions; convictions: and, police officers social workers and otherspecialist support workers working on CSE.
L80. A CSE co-ordinator ought to be nominated for every LSCB and they should ensure that the report on the work of the CSE team is published in a standard format across the different LSCB areas in order to make comparison of local authority areas easy for the public and to assist.
L81. Ofsted as part of the multi-agency inspection of services for children which they are planning to implement.
L82. In accordance with guidance, LSCBs should undertake scoping activity to identify the needs of young people who experience both running away and CSE to inform local authorities’ allocation of the required funding prioritise meeting need.
L83. LSCBs should undertake mapping activity to understand how the relationship between running away and CSE occurs in the local area, as well as acknowledging that the form this relationship can take can shift over time and between individual children and young people.
L84. There is a lack of specialised services to meet the needs of young people who experience running away and CSE. To ensure that service provision meets local need, in line with recommendations from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for Englandand the University of Bedfordshire, this research highlights the need for LSCBs to undertake scoping activity in the local area. This would identify the level of need and ensure commissioning processes reflect it so that service provision effectively supportsyoung people who experience both running away and CSE.
L85. In accordance with the need for continued monitoring of data to assess the nature and prevalence identified in Tackling Child Exploitation: Action Plan, LSCBs should ensurethat local authorities use the University of Bedfordshire’s data monitoring tool and this data from LSCBs should be centrally collated.
L86. All agencies should continue to resource and strengthen the quality assurance work currently underway under the auspices of the Safeguarding Board.
L87. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
Information Sharing
L88. The research supports the All Party Parliamentary Group’s recommendation (2012) for local authorities to be supported by central government and ACPO to establish a local multi-agency information sharing process to ensure information is shared between agencies on individual running away in the local area. This would also include information about sexually exploited young people.
L89. Wider children’s social care, the CSE team and integrated youth support services should work better together to ensure that children affected by CSE are well supported and offered an appropriate range of preventative services.
CSEGG Interim Report
L90. Coordinated by the local safeguarding children board, and using the self-assessment tool produced by the University of Bedfordshire, all local areas should conduct their own audit of CSE based on the list of warning signs and vulnerabilities produced in this report.
L91. LSCBs should agree policies and procedures for ensuring partner agencies including children’s social care services, YOTs and police work cooperatively to identify and deal with children and young people who are both victims and perpetrators of CSE. These procedures should be incorporated into each LSCB’s CSE strategy and monitored for effective practice.
L91. Every LSCB should ensure that the core training delivered to all professionals who come into contact with children and young people should include information on warning signs, and impact, of child sexual exploitation, to ensure victim identification, and should outline an implementation plan for training as part of their 2013/14 business plan.
L92. Every Local Safeguarding Children Board should take all necessary steps to ensure they are fully compliant with the Working Together guidance on CSE (DCSF, 2009).
L93. Every Local Safeguarding Children Board should review their strategic and operational plans and procedures against the seven principles, nine foundations and the See Me, Hear Me Framework in this report, ensuring they are meeting their obligations to children and young people and the professionals who work with them.
L94. Gaps should be identified and plans developed for delivering effective practice in accordance with the evidence. The effectiveness of plans, procedures and practiceshould be subject to an on-going evaluation and review cycle.
L95. Ensuring flexibility of meetings and sessions with families and young people. Providing adaptability of programme materials which are localised, needs-based and developed as required.
L96. Promoting ‘Safer You’ family meetings as important spaces for resolving conflicts, improving communication and devising action plans that increase protective factors.
L97. Having wider CSE support within the service. This can include:
- Accessing other CSE services so that inappropriate referrals or those that do not meet the criteria can be channeled towards more appropriate intervention.
- Referring young people (or even parents and carers) on to support groups which can help to sustain the learning or manage overarching push factors such as low self-esteem, bullying and attachment difficulties.
- The use of tried and tested materials for the sessions and access to more diverse materials which might include localised case scenarios.
L98. Where children and young people are missing repeatedly, local authorities should work with the VCSE sector and troubled families’ teams to ensure that families have ongoing support.
Specialist Services and Multi-Agency Teams
L99. The remit and responsibilities of the joint CSE team should be urgently decided and communicated to all concerned in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
L100. Agencies should commit to introducing a single manager for the multi-agency CSE team. This should be implemented as quickly as possible.
L101. The council, together with the Police, should review the social care resources available to the CSE team, and make sure these are consistent with the need and demand for services.
L102. LSCBs should review their current policies and operational systems to ensure that they have appropriate inter-agency systems in place regarding common thresholds of intervention, shared assessment of risk and clear referral pathways for both young men and young women, and those perpetrating and experiencing sexual violence.
L103. Specialist foster placements should be in place for at least a year to enable trusting relationships to be built, which are crucial to achieving further positive outcomes.
L104. Given the importance of consistent, trusting relationships, consideration should be given to employing project workers to provide 1-1 support to young people to support their transitions between specialist foster placements, into other placements, or independent living post-18.
L105. Specialist placements are at highest risk of breakdown where a young person does not want to be in a foster family environment and has a strong attachment to people/communities they are likely to run back to. Specialist care plans therefore need to consider how to ‘hold young people in’ to their specialist foster placements by giving them viable reasons to stay and invest, particularly in the short-term.
L106. All relevant information should be shared within the multi-agency team as early on as possible so that all agencies and partners can agree on a young person’s level of risk and appropriate safeguarding strategies. This includes agreement between police and other services about responses to young people going missing.
L107. Ongoing support should be available to carers in the form of respite and opportunities for peer-support with other specialist carers.
L108. An ability to build positive trusting relationships with young people should be the primary quality that fostering teams look for in their recruitment of specialist foster carers. This is likely to be characterised by confidence, commitment, compassion and the ability to cope with challenging situations. At least one carer in a placement should be available to provide full-time support – especially in the early days of a placement.
L109. More effort must be given to resolving problems between children and their foster carers. Social workers must always work with children and their foster carers towards resolving problems before placement change is considered.
L110. Children under the age of 18 and young people up to the age of 21 should be allowed to choose when they are ready to leave care placements.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
L111. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence-gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE Protection
L112. LSCBs must ensure that children who are at risk can be identified at an early stage across a range of agencies and that there are clear protocols for sharing information. They should ensure that children at risk have a full assessment of their needs and referral to relevant services for intervention and support.
L113. Local Authorities must have a statutory duty for ensuring sufficient flexible emergency accommodation in their local area, to fit in with their responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting a child’s welfare.
L114. Managers should develop a more strategic approach to looked after children who are sexually exploited. This must include the use of out of area placements.
A. The Borough should work with other authorities to minimise the risks of sexual exploitation to all children, including those living in placements where they may become exposed to CSE.
B. The strategy should include improved arrangements for supporting children in out of area placements when they require leaving care services.
L115. The council should make every effort to make help reach out to victims of CSE who are not yet in touch with services. In particular, it should make every effort to restore open access and outreach work with children affected by CSE.
L116. Directors of Children’s Services should ensure that all victims of gang-associated sexual violence and exploitation within their area have access to a trained and supported practitioner who will support them in a crisis, advocate on their behalf, and provide long-term consistent support. They should also ensure that all such programmes of work are independently reviewed to ensure consistency of provision to young people in need.
L117. LSCBs should undertake local mapping in partnership with LCJBs to understand the link between gang involvement, going missing and CSE as part of their statutory duty to monitor and scrutinise data on children and young people missing from home and care.
L118. Police and crime commissioners should drive forward a joined-up approach to collecting and sharing this data in partnership with LSCBs and LCJBs, and ensuring that joint actions are agreed.
Assessment
L119. Each LCSB be required to set up a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, which would house representatives from social care, local police, health professionals, education, youth offending teams and voluntary organisations.
L120. As the multi-agency body with responsibility for coordinating responses to CSE, LSCBs should hold the tiered framework of risk and ensure that each agency is working to effectively manage the continuum of risk.
L121. LSCBs should support the development of a specialist multi-agency team that can support vulnerable victims as well as deterrence and prosecution activity
L122. Senior Managers should ensure that there are up to date risk assessments on all children affected by CSE. These should be of consistently high quality and clearly recorded on the child’s file.
L123. The numeric scoring tool should be kept under review. Professional judgments out risk should be clearly recorded where these are not adequately captured by the numeric tool.
Disruption (including use of Licensing)
L124. Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards should monitor the relationship between children’s social care departments and licensing boards and ensure that any recommendations made to the licensing board are acted upon. LSCB’s to coordinate and organise a strategy to address perpetrators and ensure that a range of statutory and voluntary sector agencies – including representatives from social care, the police, health, education, CPS, probation, licensing and specialised projects –are part of this strategy.
CPS/Victim Support
L125. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
L126. The Safeguarding Board, through the CSE sub-group, should work with local agencies, including health, to secure the delivery of post abuse support services.
L127. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
L128. All communication with young people should be underpinned by principles of accessibility, participation, transparency and respect. Communication should be proactively initiated in a timely manner and enable opportunities for meaningful dialogue.
L129. In practice effective communication means:
- Avoidance of jargon;
- Clarity of message, particularly around young people’s entitlements;
- Using sensitive and respectful language;
- Promoting access to independent support and advocacy;
- Considering in all cases the use of a registered intermediary, at the earliest possible stage;
- Providing explanations which promote young people’s understanding of systemic requirements – supporting them to understand why certain things happen and why decisions are made;
- Facilitating informed choice on the part of young people; in relation to issues such as the engagement of witness supporters or their preferences for Special Measures; and
- Ensuring access to a named single point of contact with responsibility for communicating case progress and regular contact with a young person and their supporters.
L130. Complaints processes and other forms of redress must be accessible and meaningful for young people. Young people need access to informed independent advocacy to support then to seek redress when standards of engagement fall short of what should be expected.
L131. Children should not have to undertake time-consuming and expensive journeys to court when nearer options are available. If children do have to travel outside of their local area for court hearings financial and practical support must be available to help them attend.
L132. Make transitions easier between the criminal justice system and daily life. This should include providing support services for children who have been arrested to help them re-enter education and employment.
L133. Police officers need to communicate effectively and sensitively with children, and explain in a way that children can understand what is happening to them and why. In order to do this, they must receive extra training on how to talk to and approach children. Youth-led training should be implemented to help police officers work more positively with children.
Scoping the problem/Data recording
L134. Every Local Safeguarding Children’s Board should publish an annual report on the work of the CSE team, using the data collected to assess the scale and nature of CSE within the local area. This should include data on the number of: complaints; investigations; prosecutions; convictions: and, police officers social workers and other specialist support workers working on CSE.
L135. A CSE co-ordinator ought to be nominated for every LSCB and they should ensure that the report on the work of the CSE team is published in a standard format across the different LSCB areas in order to make comparison of local authority areas easy for the public and to assist.
L136. Ofsted as part of the multi-agency inspection of services for children which they are planning to implement.
L137. In accordance with guidance, LSCBs should undertake scoping activity to identify the needs of young people who experience both running away and CSE to inform local authorities’ allocation of the required funding prioritise meeting need.
L138. LSCBs should undertake mapping activity to understand how the relationship between running away and CSE occurs in the local area, as well as acknowledging that the form this relationship can take can shift over time and between individual children and young people.
L139. There is a lack of specialised services to meet the needs of young people who experience running away and CSE. To ensure that service provision meets local need, in line with recommendations from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England and the University of Bedfordshire, this research highlights the need for LSCBs to undertake scoping activity in the local area. This would identify the level of need and ensure commissioning processes reflect it so that service provision effectively supports young people who experience both running away and CSE.
L140. In accordance with the need for continued monitoring of data to assess the nature and prevalence identified in Tackling Child Exploitation: Action Plan, LSCBs should ensure that local authorities use the University of Bedfordshire’s data monitoring tool and this data from LSCBs should be centrally collated.
L141. All agencies should continue to resource and strengthen the quality assurance work currently underway under the auspices of the Safeguarding Board.
L142. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
L143. Local safeguarding children boards should include data on rapes and sexual assaults against 16 and 17 year olds in their mapping of child sexual exploitation.
L144. Local authorities should collect comprehensive data
on homelessness among 16 and 17 year-olds, which should include: the number of all young people who present as homeless; the number of assessments undertaken both under the housing legislation and the Children Act; the outcomes of assessments; and accommodations offered. This data should underpin the commissioning of services for this group of young people and their families.
L145. Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards should review the data on the number of presentations, number and types of assessments conducted and the number of children accommodated under different provisions to ensure that 16 and 17 year-olds in their area do not slip through the safeguarding net.
Information Sharing
L146. The research supports the All Party Parliamentary Group’s recommendation (2012) for local authorities to be supported by central government and ACPO to establish a local multi-agency information sharing process to ensure information is shared between agencies on individual running away in the local area. This would also include information about sexually exploited young people.
L147. Wider children’s social care, the CSE team and integrated youth support services should work better together to ensure that children affected by CSE are well supported and offered an appropriate range of preventative services.
L148. All return interview providers and commissioners should ensure that strong information-sharing arrangements are in place to share return interview data with all relevant partners as soon as this data is recorded
L149. Ofsted inspections increasingly focus on whether return interviews are being offered to all children and young people. However, there should be a focus on whether looked-after children placed out of area are receiving return interviews
L150. Where children and young people are relocated with their family to a different area but do not reach the threshold for care, their home local authority should have an obligation to share information with their host local authority.
CSEGG Interim Report
L151. Coordinated by the local safeguarding children board, and using the self-assessment tool produced by the University of Bedfordshire, all local areas should conduct their own audit of CSE based on the list of warning signs and vulnerabilities produced in this report.
L152. LSCBs should agree policies and procedures for ensuring partner agencies including children’s social care services, YOTs and police work cooperatively to identify and deal with children and young people who are both victims and perpetrators of CSE. These procedures should be incorporated into each LSCB’s CSE strategy and monitored for effective practice.
L153. Every LSCB should ensure that the core training delivered to all professionals who come into contact with children and young people should include information on warning signs, and impact, of child sexual exploitation, to ensure victim identification, and should outline an implementation plan for training as part of their 2013/14 business plan.
L154. Every Local Safeguarding Children Board should take all necessary steps to ensure they are fully compliant with the Working Together guidance on CSE (DCSF, 2009).
L155. Every Local Safeguarding Children Board should review their strategic and operational plans and procedures against the seven principles, nine foundations and the See Me, Hear Me Framework in this report, ensuring they are meeting their obligations to children and young people and the professionals who work with them.
L156. Gaps should be identified and plans developed for delivering effective practice in accordance with the evidence. The effectiveness of plans, procedures and practice should be subject to an on-going evaluation and review cycle.
Police Forces
Training
P1. In accordance with the Tackling CSE: Action Plan, ACPO should ensure all frontline police officers receive awareness-raising and training focusing upon running away andCSE so they can respond effectively to young people and to parents and carers.
P2. Each policing team that may come into contact with victims or offenders needs to have an understanding of CSE. Training should be provided to appropriate police units and teams, including CAIUs, CID, PPUs and community policing. Police forces should also develop a strategy to ensure that cases of CSE are identified and progressed appropriately.
P3. Similarly on training, CEOP will focus training and best practice advice for police on identifying risks that may lead to a child going missing and suffering harm, and to help manage the consequences of a child or young person going missing.
P4. The Committee recommends mandatory training for frontline and specialist police officers on legislative options to disrupt perpetrators. The Committee also recommendsbetter police analysis and collation of information about and the tracking of abusive networks.
P5. The Committee recommends that the With Scotland network explore how it might best co-ordinate with the NWG to publicise training opportunities in Scotland.
P6. The Committee expects that every effort should be made to involve young people in the content of training for adults. It is extremely hard for exploited young people to come forward and talk about what happened to them. Initiatives in England using photography and DVD projects with young people allow them to have their voices and thinking heard by the professionals. These should be studied for possible adaptation in Scotland.
Identification/Knowledge of Risk Factors and Indicators
P7. The issue of race should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised child sexual abuse in the Borough.
P8. The Association for Chief Police Officers should ensure that the existing initiative of mapping all girls and young women associated with gang-involved males is reviewed,rolled out nationally and utilised to inform Governmental responses to the issue.
Protection
P9. The police and the CPS should also produce guidance on data sharing via the MASH.
P10. The Committee recommends that Risk of Sexual Harm Orders (RSHOs) are used in a much more comprehensive way for the protection of young people in Scotland.
P11. The Committee recommends that social work and other child protection services give higher priority to addressing childhood sexual abuse in general, and other vulnerabilities in younger children, such as neglect, which may put them at particular risk of CSE.
P12. The Committee recommends that refuges for young people experiencing or at risk of CSE need to be established. Consideration should be given to placing a relevant duty on all local authorities in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. The reasons for Scotland’s only refuge closing should be investigated.
P13. The Committee recommends that the powers of residential staff to protect the young people in their care need to be clarified.
Engagement With Parents
P14. Parents should be treated as equal partners with professionals and supported by a parent support worker in order to achieve the benefits/outcomes below:
- To support work with parents/carers
- To increase parents understanding of CSE
- To improve relations within the family
- To reduce risk to children and young people
- To improve evidence gathering
- To support parents through prosecutions
- To realise potential cost-savings by involving parents
P15. All agencies and LSCBs should consider the benefits of having an IPSW (independent Parent Support Worker) as advocated by PACE in their reports ‘The Relational SafeguardingModel’ and ‘Parents as Partners in Safeguarding Children’
Links between CSE and Going Missing
P16. The second tier of identifying responsibilities and managing risk relates to the police who have to be consistently informed about running away and CSE and have clarity about the appropriate procedures to follow when a young person is reported as missing to the police after running away and being sexually exploited.
A. The police should also ensure that the appropriate action is implemented to engage other agencies to further manage risk. The police are central to addressing running away and CSE and it is essential that they are part of a multi-agency approach. The police should work closely with specialised projects supporting young people who experience running away and/or CSE, so that both sets of agencies, and young people, can benefit from sharing information.
P17. It is also essential that the police respond appropriately to young people they come into contact with who have experienced both running away and CSE, and recognise that these young people are vulnerable, in need of safeguarding and require support from the appropriate support agencies and not criminalisation. It is necessary to ensure that police officers react in a fitting manner to parents and carers when they report a young person missing when they have run away.
P18. There is need to review how the police work with young people who experience running away and CSE so that the prosecution of perpetrators becomes less stressful for young people who experience CSE.
Specialist Services and Multi-Agency Teams
P19. The Council, together with the Police, should review the social care resources available to the CSE team, and make sure these are consistent with the need and demand for services.
Intelligence Gathering and Investigation
P20. All police forces ensure their IT systems are able to identify CSE incidents and whether multiple perpetrators have been involved.
P21. The College of Policing work with CEOP to formalise the sharing of perpetrators.
P22. With support from ACPO, local police forces should use learning from previous police operations and work with local projects supporting children and young people to enable them to provide information that can be turned into intelligence.
P23. Police forces should proactively gather intelligence and develop regular problem profiles of CSE.
P24. The Committee recommends that third sector agencies be fully involved and consulted in multi-agency arrangements for intelligence gathering and intelligence sharing in relation to CSE
Disruption (including use of licensing)
P25. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and all key agencies adopt a high commitment to disrupting perpetrator activity and identifying those at risk.
P26. The lack of understanding of the complexity surrounding Child Sexual Exploitation by all agencies. The police were in 2008, in the main, the enforcement agency operating in a broader environment of social care. Information sharing and collaborative working was challenging to all agencies in Rochdale at that time.
P27. The role of police officers is changing through necessity to become more vigilantto the signs and triggers of vulnerability and to look at a family from a whole agency response rather than what may be presented to them in isolation following a call for help or a missing from home report.
P28. Information sharing across different agencies that operate on different IT systems with differing priorities undermines safeguarding.
P29. The need to focus more professionally on investigating the crime rather than investigating the victim due to their complex lifestyles and/or vulnerability. There has been too great an emphasis on examining the credibility of the victim by the decision making agencies within the criminal justice system rather than the complexity of this type of offending.
P30. Specifically for GMP, a strong target driven culture that was focused predominantly upon Serious Acquisitive Crime and other targets. At best this was distracting for seniorleaders and a barrier to skilled resources being channeled into threat/risk and harm.
P31. The skill set required to manage CSE investigations is very different to traditional reactive CID investigation. Victims present with complex lifestyles, often refuse to engage with agencies including police and perceive their abusers to be their saviours.
P32. Developing trust and rapport with vulnerable victims requires considerable investment in time, specialist interviewing skills and the knowledge and understanding to know when and how to draw in appropriate support from health and other key agencies.
P33. The ‘churn’ of staff at Rochdale, particularly in the Inspecting ranks meant that leadership and proper ownership of this issue could not be maintained. There was little in the way of effective handover between staff.
Prosecution
P34. It is the responsibility of the Chief Constable to ensure that investigations lead to prosecutions.
P35. Police forces be required to notify the CSE co-ordinator of the LSCB as to how many have been prosecuted and how many of those prosecutions were successful to be published as part of their annual report.
P36. CEOP use the reports by CSE co-ordinators to monitor the performance of all police forces and, if necessary, implement an action plan for improvement where forces are failing to perform.
P37. Improve prosecution procedures. To increase the number of cases that lead to a conviction, action is needed to improve police, prosecution and court practice, particularly in supporting victims to act as witnesses.
P38. A joint review of police practice and prosecution procedures is required in order to overcome the barriers to achieving prosecutions in cases of child sexual exploitation and to facilitate and disseminate good practice.
P39. The CPS and police force in each region should work together to ensure they become more effective in bringing forward prosecution cases involving BME victims.
P40. The Committee recommends that post-legislative scrutiny of the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005 be undertaken to ensure that the intention of this legislation is delivered and that all possible perpetrators of CSE crimes are being prosecuted.
CPS/Victim Support
P41. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
P42. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
Scoping the Problem/Data Recording
P43. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
P44. Developing trust and rapport with vulnerable victims requires considerable investment in time, specialist interviewing skills and the knowledge and understanding to know when and how to draw in appropriate support from health and other key agencies.
P45. The ‘churn’ of staff at Rochdale, particularly in the Inspecting ranks meant that leadership and proper ownership of this issue could not be maintained. There was little in the way of effective handover between staff.
Prosecution
P46. It is the responsibility of the Chief Constable to ensure that investigations lead to prosecutions.
P47. Police forces be required to notify the CSE co-ordinator of the LSCB as to how many have been prosecuted and how many of those prosecutions were successful to be published as part of their annual report.
P48. CEOP use the reports by CSE co-ordinators to monitor the performance of all police forces and, if necessary, implement an action plan for improvement where forces are failing to perform.
P49. Improve prosecution procedures. To increase the number of cases that lead to a conviction, action is needed to improve police, prosecution and court practice, particularly in supporting victims to act as witnesses.
P50. A joint review of police practice and prosecution procedures is required in order to overcome the barriers to achieving prosecutions in cases of child sexual exploitation and to facilitate and disseminate good practice.
P51. The CPS and police force in each region should work together to ensure they become more effective in bringing forward prosecution cases involving BME victims.
P52. The Committee recommends that post-legislative scrutiny of the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005 be undertaken to ensure that the intention of this legislation is delivered and that all possible perpetrators of CSE crimes are being prosecuted.
CPS/Victim Support
P53. All services should recognise that once a child is affected by CSE, he or she is likely to require support and therapeutic intervention for an extended period of time. Children should not be offered short term intervention only, and cases should not be closed prematurely.
P54. The Committee recommends that consideration is given to having a named person support CSE victims throughout the justice process.
P55. Children should not have to undertake time-consuming and expensive journeys to court when nearer options are available. If children do have to travel outside of their local area for court hearings financial and practical support must be available to help them attend.
P56. Make transitions easier between the criminal justice system and daily life. This should include providing support services for children who have been arrested to help them re-enter education and employment.
P57. Police officers need to communicate effectively and sensitively with children, and explain in a way that children can understand what is happening to them and why. In order to do this, they must receive extra training on how to talk to and approach children. Youth-led training should be implemented to help police officers work more positively with children.
Scoping the Problem/Data Recording
P48. Data collection for looked-after children should be reviewed including half-yearly reviews of information held on all children subject to a Child Protection Plan. Data from specialist services on children at risk should be collated by child protection committees. There should be a category for CSE, and there needs to be a policy investigation around why so few children over 12 are currently subject to Child Protection Plans.
P49. Police and crime commissioners should drive forward a joined-up approach to collecting and sharing this data in partnership with LSCBs and LCJBs, and ensuring that joint actions are agreed.