Taking time to build trusting relationships with young people
- Identifying who the child feels most comfortable with.
- Discuss consent with the child, unpick what they understand by that.
- Support the child to feel believed.
- Work with systems around the child to improve safety,
- The professional network having a shared understanding of CE and language,
- Harm reduction-access to sexual health services, SARC, substance use services etc
- Safety planning with the family and the child
- Partnership working, speaking to each other, sharing information.
- Submitting INTEL to the police through Partnership Intelligence Platform
- Asking open questions and get detailed answers from children.
- Recording information including the small details in order to build a bigger picture.
- Use of language around exploitation – being wary of victim blaming language and appropriately challenging others if needed
- Professional curiosity
- Timely response with regards to safety planning
- Following timescales on multi-agency meetings and having the right professionals at meetings
- Using the systems that are in place such as MACE meetings, VRMP meetings (social work led), Risk Management Panels (Youth Justice), Area Project Shield SYV (Serious Youth Violence) meetings, Guiding a New Generation meetings, peer mapping.
- Avoid duplication of processes where possible.
- Focus on disruption, look at the risk contextually.
- Do not be disclosure dependant-children cannot always see their exploitation and therefore can’t disclose what they don’t know.
- Understand additional needs-what does that mean for the child, how does it impact on their ability to consent?
- Do not underestimate the impact of positive activities for a child; these can create safety, confidence and resilience, as well as helping to disrupt exploitation.
- Consider a National Referral Mechanism.
Practice Principles
Research in Practice have created practice principles for working with children at risk of exploitation. These principles are aligned with the Leeds Practice model and ensure that families receive a trauma informed and restorative approach.
The eight Practice Principles are evidence-informed, which means they draw on the expertise of children, young people, parents, carers and professionals and on what we know from research. Taken together, they promote a holistic response to child exploitation and extra-familial harm that recognises the potential presence of different and multiple forms of harm in children and young people’s lives.
The Practice Principles, which together support a more holistic response to
child exploitation and extra-familial harm, characterised by:
- Putting children and young people first.
- Recognising and challenging inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.
- Respecting the voice, experience and expertise of children and young people.
- Being strengths-based and relationship-based.
- Recognising and responding to trauma.
- Being curious, evidence-informed and knowledgeable.
- Approaching parents and carers as partners, wherever possible.
- Creating safer spaces and places for children and young people.
To support partnerships, agencies and professionals to shape how they respond to this context, the Practice Principles:
- Offer a compass to help navigate a complex landscape, rather than a detailed map for every individual situation, as no one set of circumstances or local context is the same as another, and there is no single answer for how to respond to these types of harms.
- Are high-level to support a coherent approach across local partnerships and to support multi-agency working.
- Focus on behaviours and culture to help direct work with children, young people, and families, operational management and strategic leadership to align.
Complement existing and forthcoming guidance and are broad enough to sustain utility over time and to fit within diverse local working arrangements.
Multi-agency Practice Principles for responding to child exploitation and extra-familial harm (researchinpractice.org.uk)