Partner agencies continue to work to combat child sexual exploitation
Telford & Wrekin Council’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee published a review of multi-agency working against child sexual exploitation, in May 2016 which made 38 recommendations. Now a new progress report is going before the Scrutiny Committee on September 12.
In addition, the Community Safety Partnership will soon be publishing a new strategy document which will also identify three priority areas of work through analysis of recorded crime and through consultation with agencies.
These are tackling child sexual exploitation, addressing domestic abuse and reducing the impact of crime on community wellbeing.
The progress report to the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee tells how the Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Children Board has continued to drive, monitor and challenge the progress made against those recommendations.
This includes:
•Working with partners to establish a multi-agency dataset to monitor the impact of the CSE pathway
•The launch of a new contract for the 0-25 Emotional Health and Wellbeing Service, allowing better access to mental health services
•New conditions on the licences of Hackney Carriage and Private Hire vehicles, including requiring operators to have a designated CSE contact and to display CSE information material on their premises
•An enhanced process for out of area placements to help mitigate further risks to vulnerable young people
•The police CSE team implementing a range of interventions and disruption techniques to reduce re-offending
•Launch of the Tell Someone campaign and holding of a Raising Awareness Day
•Awareness training delivered to approximately 220 hotel staff
•A bespoke multi-agency training course for frontline safeguarding practitioners which will be delivered from next month onwards
Andrew Mason, Independent Chair of Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Children Board, said: “We will continue to scrutinise the recommendations of the Scrutiny Review but I am satisfied that good progress has been and continues to be made.
“The work of the Child Exploitation priority sub-group of the Board continues to include “horizon-scanning” which enables the group to ensure its action plan reflects emerging issues and any good practice from other areas.”
West Mercia Police Superintendent Tom Harding, who chairs the Community Safety Partnership, said: "Investigating child sexual exploitation remains our number one priority and we have put additional resources in this area to support victims and identify perpetrators utilising all available opportunities."
Both reports contain the latest data relating to known incidents of CSE in Telford and Wrekin, which includes the following:
In 2016/17, Telford & Wrekin Council received 337 contacts with concerns about child sexual exploitations. These contacts related to 224 young people.
The outcomes of those contacts were 56% progress along child protectyion procedures, 22% were referred to other agencies for support and the remaining 22% were provided with information and advice.
As of 31 March this year, the council’s specialist Children Abused Through Exploitation team were working with 68 young people, of which 62 were female.
54 of these were of a white British heritage, six of a mixed heritage and the remaining eighth of an Asian, Black or other white heritage.
A further update report on progress against the 38 recommendations made by the original review will be provided to the Scrutiny Committee in September 2018.
