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The Safeguarding Children’s Boards of Cheshire (Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton and Warrington) and Merseyside (Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens and Wirral) have identified tackling the sexual exploitation of children as a key strategic priority. Child sexual exploitation is child abuse and is completely unacceptable. The Safeguarding Children’s Boards of Cheshire and Merseyside are committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children via effective multi agency and partnership working.
Children who are subjected to sexual exploitation can have serious long term issues effecting their physical and mental health and their overall well being. Although young people aged 16, 17 and 18 are able to consent to sexual activity, they can still be subjected to exploitation and the exploitation can continue through to adulthood. The Safeguarding Children’s Boards of Cheshire and Merseyside will therefore work closely with the Safeguarding Adult’s Boards of Cheshire and Merseyside to ensure children and young people continue to receive support through the transition phase from childhood to adulthood. Child sexual exploitation can also effect the lives of the child or young persons family and carers and can lead to relationship breakdown.
Sexual exploitation of children and young people under 18 will normally, but not exclusively, involve an adult developing a relationship with the child or young person, groom or utilise violence, coercion and intimidation to sexually exploit the child or young person.
All agencies have a reponsibility to help identifiy those children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation; agencies also have responsibility both individually and collectively for ensuring that the child or young person is protected from any further risk of harm.
All agencies have a responsibiilty to do what they can to prevent children and young people becoming victims of child sexual exploitation. There are a number of ways this can be achieved including ensuring that our communities, especially the children and young people of Cheshire and Merseyside are aware of and understand the issues and risks involved in child sexual exploitation.
The aim of this strategy is to prevent and safeguard all children from child sexual exploitation and to prevent and safeguard individual children who are identified as at risk, or victims of child sexual exploitation.
Safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation is everyone’s business.
The purpose of the strategy is:
Our shared key strategic priorities are:
What are we going to do?
Each Local Safeguarding Children Board will undertake a self-assessment to review the local response to child sexual exploitation. This review will involve;
Profiling
Assess the awareness and levels of understanding of professionals in relation to child sexual exploitation.
Identify the prevalence and models of child sexual exploitation in the area
Service Provision
Map the availability of services for supporting sexually exploited children and young people, ensuring agencies, when planning and commissioning services, focus on the needs of children and young people who may be sexually exploited.
What are we going to do?
There are three key features in preventing children and young people becoming subjected to sexual exploitation, they are awareness, training and disruption.
Awareness
Awareness Raising with Children and Families
It is extremely important to ensure that we focus on raising children and young people’s awareness of sexual exploitation. Schools and youth services are key agencies and have a very important role to play in awareness raising and safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation.
Any work on raising the awareness of children and young people must be supported by work with parents and carers to supplement and reinforce that awareness.
Agencies who work with children need to;
Awareness Raising in Communities / Community Engagement
Development of community intelligence is very important in preventing child sexual exploitation.
Raising awareness of targeted groups / organisations, for example, taxi, hotel and leisure organisations, is another key feature of prevention.
We will engage with our local communities and raise awareness of CSE and how it affects individuals.
We will undertake proactive communication with the media
Training
A review is to be undertaken of all single and multi-agency training for professionals in terms of content and targeted delivery.
The Local Safeguarding Children Board will ensure the provision of appropriate multi agency training.
Single agency training needs to;
Agencies must consider the provision of training for their agency that should be delivered in line with the role of the professional and the level of detail they require.
Disruption
Disruption of perpetrator activity is an important tool in preventing child sexual exploitation. All agencies need to work together to develop appropriate disruption tactics. Individual agencies must consider how they can contribute to disrupting perpetrator behaviour.
What are we going to do?
Research and experience suggest that early intervention and a coordinated response by all agencies is a key factor in making a difference and safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation. The Local Safeguarding Children Board will;
What are we going to do?
Ensuring abusers are brought to justice is an effective and appropriate way to safeguard children and young people. Offenders must be held to account for their behaviour.
A clear understanding needs to be developed and agreed about the balance between the welfare of the child and the criminal justice considerations.
All agencies should;
The police should;
What are we going to do?