Agenda item

Clive Chambers, Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance, introduced the report on Child Sexual Exploitation updating the Committee on the ongoing work in this area. He gave a brief background to the issue. Councillor David Mellen, Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years, Helen Blackman, Director of Integrated Children’s Services and Racheal Osborne, CSE Co-Ordinator and Missing Children’s Team Manager provided additional information from a presentation and highlighted the following information:

(a)  Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is often difficult to recognise and for some time Nottingham City Council (NCC) has led work within the East Midlands region in the work to tackle this form of abuse;

(b)  In 2016 NCC ran an awareness raising event with over 50 individuals from the private security companies involved in the night time economy in Nottingham, to increase the profile of CSE and to highlight what to look for. This event was very well received by the industry and the attendees fed back to their companies;

(c)  The Z Card, a card detailing signs of CSE and primary contact details for lead agencies, was developed by Integrated Children’s Services and in August 2017 was distributed throughout Nottingham City Centre to venues involved in the night time economy. This was well received by the venues and covered by the local media;

(d)  In addition to the work with security staff NCC has developed the Multi Agency Sexual Exploitation (MASE) panel who meet monthly to pull together information on children at risk of CSE, venues where young people gather, and adults who may be involved in CSE but do not yet meet the criteria for police investigation;

(e)  The MASE panel is able to coordinate disruption tactics using community protection officers, CCTV cameras and other methods;

(f)  The MASE panel is not intended to replace work taking place elsewhere but allows a truly multi-agency approach to assessing information and adds an additional level of scrutiny and challenge;

(g)  The 9 authorities within the East Midlands have worked together to develop a series of 24 standards to provide consistency in response to CSE across the local authority boundaries. The individual regional authorities have RAG rated their performance against each standard and are addressing issues identified;

Following questions and comments from the Committee the following information was given:

(h)  The venues that the Z Cards were distributed to included fast food restaurants, bars and clubs. Security staff see a lot of what takes place outside their venue as well as inside, and it is this street activity that often is of interest. Assurance was given to the Committee that there is not an issue with excessive underage people within licenced premises;

(i)  The Z Cards detail signs and activities to be aware of and contact details for reporting concerns. If security staff feel that a person is in immediate danger then they are encouraged to contact police either via 999 or 101;

(j)  The security industry provided the resources for printing the Z Cards and is looking to roll them out nationally. They complement other work that is taking place on CSE and aim to raise awareness as CSE is challenging to recognise, they do not replace other resources available; 

(k)  It is difficult to quantify the impact of the Z Cards. The information that comes in from security staff as a result of the cards is fed into the concerns network meeting along with other bits of information and intelligence from other sources. Whilst individually the bits of intelligence would mean very little, as a whole they are helping to protect children;

(l)  Along with security staff, hotel reception staff and taxi drivers have also had awareness raising events. Taxi drivers are required to attend training as part of their license renewal;

(m)  The Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years and the Independent Chair of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board stated that they felt assured that Nottingham City was doing everything possible to reduce risk of CSE. The Independent Chair went on to state that he felt the arrangements in place were robust, the approach taken was proactive in dealing with a difficult area of work and that Nottingham should be proud of what it is doing on this issue;

(n)  Raising awareness in smaller faith schools and private faith classes is a challenge and feedback from Councillors is essential to help reach all groups of leaders across the high variety of communities within Nottingham;

(o)  The public can report concerns to the Children and Families team on 0115 8764800. If Councillors are approached by a constituent they can pass these details on. Any information will then be dealt with appropriately;

(p)  There are annual awareness campaigns directed at the general public. These aim to raise awareness of signs and things to look out for and where to report concerns. They signpost the public to online resources as well as ways to report concerns;

RESOLVED to thanks Clive Chambers, Councillor David Mellen, Helen Blackman, and Racheal Osborne for their attendance and to note the content of the report and presentation.