Issue - meetings

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education attended the meeting to introduce the report presenting the Tackling Child Exploitation Strategy to the Committee. Also in attendance to provide additional detailed information was Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services, John Matravers, Head of Safeguarding, Quality and Assurance and Chief Inspector Paul Lefford, Nottinghamshire Police. During the presentation the following points were highlighted:

a)  The Child Exploitation Strategy has been developed by the Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Children’s Safeguarding Board partners and a range of other stake holders to create a single, whole system response to child exploitation aiming to reduce exploitation, and extra familial harm and protect communities.

b)  The Strategy reflects the need for a cross boarder approach and the language used has been amended to reflect the need to see children as children and to ensure that all children under 18 are treated as children first and foremost. This change in language is important to ensure the victims of exploitation are not made to feel implicit in their exploitation, and to remove possible suggestion of blame on the child. Guidance from the Children’s Society has been important in creating this shift in language as has feedback from children.

c)  The Tackling Child Exploitation (TCE) Steering Group is driving the work of the Strategy and meets quarterly. On the group there are representatives from the children’s safeguarding partners. The Steering Group regularly considers the work of the Strategy using the reflection tool specifically developed to assess progress on imbedding the 8 principles into local safeguarding practices. The tool also helps the group to identify areas for additional focus and improvement.

d)  Work to implement the Strategy is based on principals from research in practice tackling child exploitation which sets out how to work with children and their families and gives a basis for strategic oversight of practice and planning across the Partnership. The 4 P’s, Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare, developed from the Serious and Organised Crime Strategy 2023 have also been adopted and integrated into the work of the strategy supporting the creation of a whole system response.

e)  As awareness of exploitation is increased, partner organisations and the public become more confident in reporting issues and the number of reported cases will increase. This initial increase in numbers is confirmation that awareness is increasing and that the messages from the partnership are being communicated efficiently. 

f)  In response to the development of the Strategy, Nottinghamshire Police have restructured teams to better respond to child exploitation issues, with more Police staff embedded into Social Care teams, and an additional Disruption Team created to work with partners proactively around the nightime economy and target centres of concern. There are improved links into strategic multi-agency meetings and increased representation on multi-agency investigation teams.

g)  Joint training has been developed so that all partners have access to the same training materials, and can benefit from experiences of other organisations and practitioners when learning. A multi-agency joint  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41