Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Children and Family Services which provided an overview of the work and progress of the Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), Missing and Trafficked Hub.  A copy of the report marked ‘Agenda Item 11’ is filed with these minutes.

Arising from the discussion, the following comments were raised:

i)             The multi-agency team now had a wider brief and it was questioned whether there was a risk that CSE work would get lost.  It was reported that when the work and training around criminal exploitation was rolled out, the number of sexual exploitation referrals had decreased and there had been joint referrals for criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation.  However, these were closely linked, particularly in terms of recruitment.  The service was trying to offer a trusted professional relationship with the child so that they had somewhere to go and someone to talk to.

ii)            In response to a query, there had been an increase in male referrals due to the roll out of ‘Breck’s Last Game’ which was a short film targeted at boys.  For child criminal exploitation, the majority of referrals had come from the Youth Offending Service and had also been for boys.  However, the majority of referrals received overall had been for females.

iii)           Details were provided around Operation Lionheart and the learning from this.  Multi-agency partnership meetings continued to take place in relation to families and children that had been affected by the enforcement.  There were a number of vulnerable adults who could potentially receive a lengthy custodial sentence for intent to supply Class A drugs and it was felt that these could be seen as victims of exploitation in the same way as the children and young people.  Consideration was being given to a public health model in relation to the violence reduction unit being developed in Leicestershire to look at earlier opportunities for intervention and awareness raising, particularly around preventing the exploitation and isolation of vulnerable families involved in criminal activity.  It was felt that the work undertaken through Operation Lionheart should be shared with all Community Safety Partnerships so that it could be disseminated locally and videos were now being produced for localities to show the work being undertaken.  The Safer Communities Strategy Board had previously received a presentation on Operation Lionheart and county lines and the Community Safety Partnership representatives on this Board would feed back the information in their local areas.

iv)           A comment was raised by a member that some local Community Safety Partnerships had previously set aside some money to help local schools pay to visit the Warning Zone.  It was noted that the Police and Crime Commissioner had committed some funding for this, and work had been taking place to develop a zone on criminal exploitation and to include key safeguarding messages around child criminal exploitation and emotional wellbeing in the existing zones.  The Warning Zone also visited older children (aged 10-14) to promote its messages and discussions were taking place with safeguarding leads in further education settings to provide a presentation.  A suite of slides had also been provided to Regional CSE leads and this gave them the opportunity to include data relevant to their local area.

v)            The service had been successful in the prevention, identification and pursuit of perpetrators of CSE and retained information around successful prosecutions.  It was noted that Leicestershire County Council had been successful in obtaining criminal compensation for 18 young people who had been victims, and this would make a significant difference to their long term life choices. 

vi)           The number of reported missing episodes had increased significantly at the end of 2017/18, and this could partly be attributed to improvements in the electronic reporting system as there were more features to identify a missing episode.  A further development was the holding of multi-agency strategy meetings if a young person went missing three times over a 90 day period.  The biggest cohort of missing continued to be out of area children.  In terms of children who went missing once, proportionately this had begun to reduce as had children missing from home.  Over the year, the majority had been those missing from home, not from care.

vii)          A member commented that, in some instances, it was necessary for adults and professional to change their perception of the children who were involved in criminal activity, and emphasis was given to looking at the child first and the criminal activity second.

viii)        In relation to gypsy and traveller provision, it had proved to be very difficult to relay messages around criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation and specific neighbourhood police and health colleagues had been used who were familiar to the community.  There was a general suspicion around the discussions and a different approach via social media around staying safe online was being attempted.

RESOLVED:

a)    That the report be noted;

b)    That a further update be received in six months.