Professionals gather to protect children at risk of sexual abuse

Amid all the reports, serious case reviews, national outrage and soul-searching over cases of child sexual exploitation (CSE), the most important response for professionals must be to learn from past mistakes and gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to tackle the problem and, in doing so, safeguard all children in the future.

That is what CYP Now's conference in Birmingham on 25 March set out to do.

In her overview on understanding the problem, University of Bedfordshire research fellow Carlene Firmin said it was vital for professionals to recognise the "range of models" of CSE. These include organised crime networks, peer-to-peer exploitation and gang-associated exploitation. Crucially, she challenged all professionals to ask "what we mean by safety", particularly in the movement of looked-after children at risk of CSE.

"Rural areas are being flooded by young people from urban areas. We are stripping away the protective factors of the home environment," Firmin said. "Why focus movement on the victim and not disrupt the risk they are facing? Exploitation often travels with young people. We create a victim vacuum for other young people to move into."

She said media reporting of CSE might lead to victims making assumptions about their perpetrator's race. "How will a young person who is given vodka and abused and raped know their abuser is, say, Moroccan or Turkish? They may assume they are Pakistani."

Firmin also warned: "CSE is not an island - it overlaps with other behaviours. When it comes to adolescence, we have responded to issues rather than people."

Indeed, Research in Practice director Dez Holmes argued the current child protection system is unfit for purpose in dealing with adolescence. "Adolescence is a time of enormous neural development. Outside of the under-twos, it is the period of life when the brain turns to mush," she said.

Holmes said the system failed to take into account that adolescence is prone to increased risk taking, emotional highs and lows, and sensitivity to peer influence. She said: "The traditional child protection system can't work with these issues. We are missing opportunities to work with the grain of adolescent development."

Adolescent-centred approach

Citing the work of academics that "many adolescent interventions are either downward extensions of adult programmes or upward extensions of child programmes", she called for a "distinctive adolescent-centred approach" to tackle CSE and child sexual abuse.

"Adolescence itself provides a unique array of strengths and opportunities as a result of social and physiological development processes. Adolescents are part of the solution. They can make choices, unlike two-year-olds."

She called for a greater role for youth workers in supporting vulnerable teenagers, despite cuts to services. "In youth work, there is some enormous talent that we are in danger of flushing down the drain." And she echoed Firmin's central message that services remained focused around issues rather than young people. "We are not doing enough to make sure someone (a professional) is crazy about the kid. It's currently a service-led approach, around self-harm, substance misuse and so on."

Barnardo's CSE national implementation manager Wendy Shepherd, who runs the Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Streets (SECOS) project in Middlesbrough, delivered an impassioned talk on the importance of professionals forging genuine relationships with young people.

"Unless we have a relationship with children, we will never stop their exploitation because that's what perpetrators give them - a relationship," she said. "Vulnerable children are more at risk because they are seeking love and attention."

She said that for young victims, practitioners needed to "create a relationship that is non-collusive, with love and understanding". The SECOS project takes young people away on residentials that aid their personal and social development, and build their confidence.

On the issue of the ethnicity of certain perpetrators, Shepherd said: "We have not integrated communities who have come to scratch a living in a takeaway or a car wash in whose own culture it may have been okay to have sex with a 14-year-old in Roma communities, Eastern Europe or Afghanistan."

She said that since many youth centres were closing, some taxi firms were installing pool tables if space allowed, where young people might congregate and place themselves at risk.

Shifting attitudes

Shepherd, who has been working in the CSE field for more than 17 years, noted how attitudes and terminology has shifted from depicting young people as child prostitutes to regarding them as victims of CSE.

But she warned professionals to be wary of protectionist cultures within institutions, governments and councils, saying: "We must be on the terms and turf of children".

Tom Duffin, national partnerships director at Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation (Pace), outlined the charity's "relational safeguarding model", which focuses on the capacity of parents and carers to safeguard their child. Pace works with a number of multi-agency projects to combat CSE across England.

He cited detective sergeant Mark Whelan from Lancashire Constabulary, who is part of the Engage scheme in Blackburn with Darwen, as saying: "There is no greater safeguarding tool than a parent who is fully aware. Children are the victims of grooming and when working with families, no blame is attached to the parents of the child. A child would only be subject to a child protection plan if it was determined that parents had failed to protect the child from harm. We believe that parents are best placed to safeguard their child and that the voluntary sector is the most successful interface between children, families and the police."

The conference saw Rotherham director of children's services Ian Thomas speak about his work in the borough for the first time since taking up the post in January from neighbouring Doncaster.

Delivering the keynote presentation, Thomas said he was determined to "cultivate a learning culture" inside the council and with local partners, but criticised schools' lack of involvement. "I found it astonishing that in Rotherham, some schools see themselves as being outside of the problem, throwing darts at the local authority. Many of the head teachers will have taught the perpetrators and the victims. One school head has told me point blank he doesn't have a CSE problem."

He revealed the school with the highest rate of pupil exclusions was attended by many Gypsy Roma children. He also expressed his frustration that the Department for Education has not made personal, social and health education a statutory subject in all schools.

Significantly, Thomas said he agreed with the report from the government's troubled families adviser Louise Casey that there existed a culture of denial inside Rotherham: "There is a sense of denial; we need to accept what's happened, we do need to respond with efficacy to support our most vulnerable children, so I can concur with that view."

'Blatant failures'

The Jay Report last summer uncovered "blatant failures" in addressing sexual exploitation of at least 1,400 children in the town over several years. But the report praised the work of outreach youth project Risky Business in attempting to identify and support young victims of CSE in Rotherham, although Jay concluded it was "too often seen as something of a nuisance, particularly by children's social care".

Thomas told the conference: "Quite often it is a youth worker who young people will trust and engage with - less so social workers, who are working within a statutory framework." He revealed the council was "auditing with rigour around 900 Risky Business files". He also called for a national review to "reclaim youth work" along the same lines that Professor Eileen Munro was commissioned to review the child protection system and social work in 2010.

On questions of leadership in the borough, Thomas revealed: "When I was in discussions about joining Rotherham ... I found no shortage of action plans and reviews. Where we were short was on action. If you don't have the leadership to translate words into reality for kids, it's not going to happen."

To help realise his ambition of a genuine "learning culture", Thomas said he is using the "eight-step" model devised by US management guru Dr John Kotter for "leading change" inside Rotherham, as well as "appreciative inquiry" through David Cooperrider's model "to celebrate success, galvanise action and generate ideas". More specifically, he revealed he is restructuring the children's services department to improve early help services.

He praised children's social care commissioner Malcolm Newsam for his role in injecting urgency to help Rotherham launch a multi-agency safeguarding hub on 1 April.

But he bemoaned the failure of some professionals to focus squarely on the child in their decision-making. "Yesterday, I was looking at the management case notes of a child we had placed far away from Rotherham. The file just said 'place X as far away from Rotherham as possible'. Where she was placed was near a dock.

"Docks often have a thriving sex industry, so what was the rationale of placing her far away from Rotherham when you're not addressing the vulnerability in the child? What are we doing in terms of our thinking and our analysis when we make those decisions?"

Representatives from Safer London Foundation told a story exemplifying both a lack of focus on child victims and a lack of responsibility shown by schools.

The story concerned a schoolgirl who was found to have had oral sex with six boys. The school contacted the police but then chose to move the girl from the school while the boys remained, which served only to create a message to other girls that it was her fault.

While the conference highlighted much good practice that is under way in tackling CSE across the country, in too many corners and within too many professionals, there appears to be a continuing sense of denial.