Within the media Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) has had a great deal of attention over the past 12 months. As the ‘front door’ service within Children Families & Safeguarding, we must ensure that we provide a service with highly skilled staff who are up to date with their knowledge on current trends and practice development. Within Conwy and particularly Assessment and Support & Family Intervention Teams it was recognised that our staff should receive enhanced training on CSE in order to respond effectively to the growing concern.
Staff generally can access basic awareness training but in Conwy we recognized the need to provide families with an effective service particularly with the increased risk presented to children through social media. The aim is to continue to upskill the workforce to provide direct intervention to the children who are at risk of CSE. We undertook research to identify and commission an organisation that delivered a 2 day bespoke training package. We specifically targeted practical skills, tools and knowledge to engage with and work with children and their families who are at risk of CSE.
The training was focused on delivering suggestions on interventions to assist the direct work undertaken by social workers and also intervention workers in their engagement with the most vulnerable children and young people. The feedback was extremely positive and we aim to commission the training again in order to provide the opportunity to additional professionals unable to attend the first event. The tools provided have increased the skill base of our workforce to enable effective support to families and reduce risk. The resources are also being shared with other professionals. Whilst it is too early to report on measures or tangible outcomes, this training forms an important element of a developing multi-agency framework to meet this challenge.