There is a vast body of research that explores cultural competence for practitioners working with children and families. Increasingly, cultural competence is cited as helpful when working with children who are criminally exploited, and this sparked our interest in this area. There is however limited research regarding what makes a practitioner culturally competent in this field. This leads us to draw on learning from other areas as a starting point. We have considered child criminal exploitation, child sexual exploitation and domestic abuse across a range of disciplines including social work, psychology, and youth work. We have pulled the main themes from these areas together and split them into knowledge, skills, and values to make it easy to digest. We have gathered the reflections of professionals to ensure the literature reflects what is happening in the field. We have also discussed the skills, knowledge and values children and caregivers’ find important in a practitioner.

The Pathfinder worked with parents with lived experience to co-produce a webinar based on what they told us they wish they had known at the start of their child’s exploitation. The webinar is approximately one hour and covers:

• What is child criminal exploitation and how county lines operate

• The methods that can be used to groom children

• What to do if your child goes missing

• The words of parents with lived experience, sharing the changes they noticed in their child and advice for parents who may be experiencing exploitation.

• Steps a parent can take (including capturing intelligence / evidence)

• How to work with Services

• Looking after yourself, family, and home.

• Further information / signposting

Tips

• Practitioners should read the accompanying paper (parent briefing) below.

• Practitioners should have a good understanding of criminal exploitation (see Pathfinder Resources on Youth Justice Board Resource Hub)

• Ideally, a practitioner would run through the webinar with a parent / caregiver, allowing for natural breaks to discuss relevant points.

• If this is not able to happen, the practitioner will need to share the link with the parent / caregiver and ensure that they have appropriate internet access and a suitable device. We would recommend that the parent takes breaks as the webinar contains a lot of information. The parent may need some support to access the webinar. The practitioner should follow up sharing the link to check in whether there are any questions / comments.

• The Families Learning About Thinking Skills programme (FLATS) was developed in Suffolk by a Clinical Psychologist, and informed by the existing evidence base, in addition to clinical judgement, knowledge and experience.

• FLATS was originally developed for use with young people at risk of exploitation from local gangs and has been adapted for use with young people potentially affected by criminal exploitation, including through ‘county lines’, and is informed by a range of established psychotherapeutic approaches and designed to target the needs and difficulties underlying young people’s risks and needs.

• FLATS is an intensive intervention programme, run over 16-weeks, and comprised of: weekly 2-hour group sessions for young people, weekly 1hr 1:1 sessions for young people, access to facilitators outside of these sessions (e.g., through WhatsApp) for support with applying skills in ‘real life’ situations. Additionally, there is a strong family component to the programme, and facilitators provide on-going practical and emotional support to caregivers, to address their own needs and any blocks or barriers which might prevent them from supporting their child.

In order to support bring children together safely, the Pathfinder created a risk assessment and plan. This can be adapted for other group based interventions.

If you are interested in running FLATS, please speak with your team Operational Manager or Catherine Bennett.

The Pathfinder undertook a rapid review of the literature in terms of seeking to establish what good practice would look like, when working with children who are experiencing exploitation.

This paper summarises a number of approaches and learning from research, serious case reviews and evaluations. We sought to pull out the main practice points in these documents to create an easy-to-read resource that would be helpful to practitioners and managers.

We reached out to a small number of professionals to act a as ‘critical friends’ to provide feedback on the paper.

The Pathfinder undertook a rapid review of the literature in terms of seeking to establish what good practice would look like, to support children and their families to exit safely.

This paper summarises a number of themes from research and evaluations from over 50 papers. We sought to pull out the main practice points in these documents to create an easy-to-read resource that would be helpful to practitioners and managers.

This briefing paper can be used to:

• Raise awareness for professionals who are new to this area of practice.

• Provide a helpful refresher to more experienced professionals.

• Consider the learning and reflect on individual children and families.

County Lines present a significant risk to children experiencing exploitation. Exiting a line can increase the risk of harm to a child and their family. The Safety Planning product is designed to help you consider:

• Trauma within the context of safety planning for children

• Principles and skills required to approach this area of practice

There is also an additional resource that contains tactics, and this is hosted on a secure Microsoft Teams (MS) Page that requires permission to access it. This is so we protect the tactics we have identified and ensure the tool is used as intended. If you are undertaking safety planning, please discuss the child and their family’s situation with your manager.

Should you need further information, please contact: Catherine.bennett@suffolk.gov.uk