Victims to help develop £2.1m national child exploitation programme
Tristan Donovan
Monday, June 18, 2018
Victims of child exploitation are to help develop a national programme to tackle the issue through a multi-agency approach involving youth workers and social workers, it has been announced.
The three-year £2.1m project, which is led by The Children's Society, will see multi-disciplinary teams established in Greater Manchester, London and the West Midlands, to support young people who are being exploited and enhance efforts to disrupt those who exploit children.
The design and delivery of the Big Lottery Fund-supported programme will be informed by the views of young people who have been exploited in the past. Work is due to begin next month.
Dara de Burca, director for children and young people at the charity: "This programme will explore and respond to a range of exploitation where we hope to join-up gaps and support young people, but also to go further and make tangible improvements to how child exploitation is dealt with or prevented in the future."
The programme's activities will include one-to-one work with young people including advocacy, therapeutic support, group work and participation.
The teams will also seek to disrupt those exploiting young people by working with local partners, including the police and local authorities, to identify risky locations for under-18s, train staff and pinpoint services that are not recognising exploited children as victims.
Concerns about the exploitation of young people have grown significantly since the summer of 2014 when it emerged that more than 1,400 children in the Yorkshire town of Rotherham had been sexually exploited over a 16-year period.
The Rotherham scandal prompted the creation of a government action plan backed by £30m of funding to strengthen efforts to stop abusers and support victims, and has seen children's services across the country act to improve their ability to tackle the problem and support victims.
The worries about child sexual exploitation have also been mirrored by rising concerns about so-called "county lines" crime, where urban drug gangs exploit vulnerable children, young people and adults to expand their criminal networks into rural areas.
Last November, the National Crime Agency reported that drug gangs are exploiting children in this way in two-thirds of England's 43 police forces.
