Protective carers training
Jess Brown
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Training to help professionals provide support to parents and foster carers whose children have been victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.
- Child protection charity Lucy Faithfull Foundation specialises in preventing child sexual exploitation (CSE) and abuse
- It has been delivering a CSE training programme for professionals working with parents and carers of abused children since 2011
- The one-day training is the organisation's most requested programme and has achieved a 98 per cent satisfaction rate
ACTION
The Lucy Faithfull Foundation runs training days to help professionals support parents and foster carers - known as protective carers - whose children have been the victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.
The foundation specialises in working with adults and young people who have sexually abused others, which helps inform much of its training for professionals in relation to the behaviour of perpetrators, and how they groom children.
Lisa Thornhill, a senior practitioner at the foundation, has delivered the protective carers training since its inception. The course covers all aspects of CSE and abuse, and aims to equip social workers to support affected families who may be struggling to access support elsewhere.
The course, Thornhill says, encourages professionals to question and challenge their own beliefs and values, and those of their colleagues, so they can effectively support and pioneer for young people.
"We know the most vulnerable children can be seen as ‘putting themselves at risk,; they can feel blamed for adults taking advantage and exploiting them," she says.
In the training, professionals are helped to empower parents and carers to be effective "external inhibitors" between the child and the offender.
"In order for young people to be protected they need carers who understand the process of child sexual exploitation. Protective carers need to be able to understand how abusers operate in order to know how they can best protect their child."
The course is tailored to individual local authorities depending on their needs, and to each professional group it trains, including social workers, residential workers, foster carers, police officers, head teachers, childcare staff and drugs workers.
Thornhill says the training aims to help social care professionals to spot the signs of CSE early, and to work with at-risk children, as well as those who have been abused, to prevent further abuse taking place.
"For example, often people aren't aware of ‘return home, interviews, which take place when young people have returned after going missing, and are a key risk indicator," Thornhill says.
"As part of the training, we help people to understand whether a young person might benefit from a place outside the county and when that may increase the risk to them."
She says one aspect of the training highlights the typical behaviours of perpetrators, and how they groom and manipulate young people, and often without the young person realising that they are being manipulated. This is informed by up-to-date research and their own experience of working with offenders.
"We also look at how to use legislation, such as sexual harm prevention orders, to disrupt perpetrators," says Thornhill. "So they are mindful that they can get in the way of offenders trying to access vulnerable children and young people."
Another key aspect of the training, Thornhill says, is challenging unhelpful beliefs.
"You often hear professionals talking about young people putting themselves at risk. That terminology gives a clear message to young people that it's them who is responsible for what's happening to them, as opposed to focusing on the adult that's exploiting them," she says.
"The course puts people in a place where they're having discussions about young people's behaviour. Young people at risk often have testing behaviours, so it's important to be able to put that in the context of being a sign of CSE.
"We challenge people's thinking in relation to how we see children. It doesn't matter what their behaviour is, they always have the right to be protected from sexual exploitation."
Trainers also recommend resources, such as apps, designed to help and support staff and families, and videos that can help start conversations with children around abuse.
Thornhill says the training is much more comprehensive than what social workers receive in their initial training.
"It's really important that everyone is aware and takes responsibility for the child, and thinks of innovative ways we can communicate with children to make sure they are kept safe."
The training has been delivered to a number of local authorities in South East England. It has also recently worked with Bedfordshire County Council and Luton Borough Council to develop a bespoke course with the aim of delivering it on a multi-agency basis area-wide.
It helped develop and apply a working definition of CSE, help staff to recognise the signs of a child at risk of CSE and identify strategies to promote resilience.
IMPACT
Luton Borough Council said the training delivered to them was consistently of a "high standard", and staff reported that it equipped them to support children and young people at risk of CSE.
Figures supplied by Lucy Faithfull Foundation, show 98 per cent of 311 staff involved in training in Bedfordshire between 2014 and 2016 rated the training useful, and 95 per cent said they would be able to apply what they learnt into their current role.
