Lancashire vulnerability hub
Nina Jacobs
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Multi-agency hub works with vulnerable young people in Lancashire to reduce their risk of exploitation.
- After successful pilot it has been established in three locations in the county
- Analysis shows reductions in referrals and improved case closure since the hub was established
Action
Lancashire Council's vulnerability hub brings together children's professionals and police into one team focused on improving support for exploited children and young people and reducing the risk factors that cause it.
Following a successful pilot in Preston last September, two further hub teams in Blackpool and Blackburn have been established.
Tracy Poole-Nandy, the council's strategic lead for child exploitation, says the hub incorporates child sexual exploitation (CSE), criminal exploitation (CCE), modern day slavery and trafficking.
"What's also included is a centrally located missing from home lead which has helped us join up the information, analyse risk and get a better understanding of what our problem profile looks like," she explains.
She says the pilot aimed to reduce delays in intervention through multi-agency teams - comprising police, health and social care workers - which could provide a "real-time response" rather than waiting for locality teams to get involved.
"The rationale was about moving the statutory responsibility into that [multi-agency] service so that they could manage the risks better around those vulnerable children," she says.
Poole-Nandy believes co-locating professionals for each of the three teams has been essential to the hub's success.
"They work really well together and engage in strategic discussions over high-risk children so they can provide an immediate response," she says.
Significantly, the teams now carry out ‘return home' interviews for missing young people rather than commission the work out or use allocated social workers to complete them.
Poole-Nandy says access to such "rich information" has produced enormous benefits in terms of understanding the risks faced by vulnerable young people.
"When you find out where the young people are going, what they are doing and who they are associating with, you can start to understand the risks within each locality," she says.
To support the work of the hub's teams, the council simultaneously launched three panels, one each for children missing education, missing from home and multi-agency child exploitation (Mace).
The missing from home panel concentrates largely on high-risk children and ensuring "tight plans" are in place around them, explains Poole-Nandy.
The panel works in tandem with the missing education panel to target those high-risk children who "haven't got anything to do all day, every day and we don't know what they are doing".
Work is not duplicated as the main risk for each child or young person determines which panel they will be considered at, she adds.
"We then make sure there's a multi-agency plan around each child with timescales to reduce delay and manage risk," she says.
The teams use "trigger plans" - actioned through the Mace panel - aimed at young people at greatest risk of exploitation.
Poole-Nandy says steps are outlined for a multi-agency response if the risk is heightened for a young person or they go missing numerous times.
"The plans are uploaded onto police, social care and health systems so that if a child is missing or found in a high-risk situation out of hours, we have an agreed response," she says.
Impact
Experts, which include exploitation survivors, have delivered training to the teams as well as carrying out direct work with children and young people, explains Poole-Nandy.
"We are seeing an increase in CCE in particular, but our partners are better at recognising what it looks like and managing the risks," she says.
An evaluation study of the pilot revealed "clear evidence of performance improvements" highlighting a growth in awareness and understanding which was evidenced by the "improved quality of referrals".
In addition, the number of child exploitation cases being dealt with by the three teams fell from 303 to 221 between the first quarter of 2017 and 12 months later.
The research found almost half of all child exploitation cases were closed to universal services with no ongoing support required. A further 27.6 per cent of cases were closed with ongoing support provided by another welfare service.
The study says the level of case closures "demonstrates the effective management of the cases" and that new referral numbers are "closely mirroring" the number of cases able to be closed.
In terms of children missing from home, the study draws attention to the "strength and success" of the new approach to return interviews in Lancashire.
In particular, it says there have been improvements to the quantity and quality of information obtained from the interviews.
There was also an improved management oversight of missing episodes ensuring intervention meetings were held effectively and cases escalated when appropriate.
