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This newsletter is for everyone working with children and adults in Waltham Forest.
Please share with your colleagues and encourage them to sign up to get it regularly
 National Child Exploitation Awareness Day (March 18) aims to highlight the issues surrounding child exploitation, encouraging everyone to think, spot, and speak out against the criminal and sexual abuse of children.
Child exploitation is complex, takes a variety of forms and doesn’t neatly fit into categories. In general, child exploitation occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of a power imbalance to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into criminal activity, sexual activity or modern slavery.
Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE), sometimes known as county lines exploitation, occurs when an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18. The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity appears consensual:
If you are concerned about the welfare or safety of a child, you will need to contact Children’s Social Care. All referrals to Children’s Social Care are first dealt with by the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).
If you don’t believe the risk requires immediate action, contact the MASH team to discuss your concerns with a social worker.
To contact MASH, please ring 020 8496 2310 or email MASHrequests@walthamforest.gov.uk.
Here are services available for children and young people who are being exploited (accessed through the MASH team):
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Supporting young people (14 to 17) at risk of exploitation: Voluntary service provision. The Youth at Risk Service uses the Think Family model to build resilience and achieve better outcomes for young people and their families.
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Adolescent at Risk Workers: Early help support for young people at risk of exploitation, primarily aged 11 to 14.
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Change Grow Live (CGL): Supports with substance or alcohol misuse. Providing relevant guidance and education to empower young people and support professionals and families.
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Liaison & Diversion: Meeting young people's needs in custody.
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Family Functioning Therapy (FFT): A strength-based model built on a foundation of acceptance and respect. At its core is a focus on assessment and intervention to address risk and protective factors that occur within and outside the family unit.
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NIA: One-to-one support for young women affected by child sexual exploitation or any other form of sexual violence. Offering community-based support to help empower young people who are exploited.
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Rescue & Response: Provide support to any London-based young person, aged up to and including 25 years, who is impacted by criminal exploitation (county lines).
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Ask Us: Trained ambassador is liaising with the programme about risk relating to people and places in their local area.
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Project Zero: Engaging young people in positive activities to promote social inclusion, reducing anti-social offending behaviours, and strengthening community cohesion.
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Spark2Life: Detached outreach supporting individuals with emerging gang affiliation to address the root causes and provide a different lifestyle.
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Exploitation Risk Panel (ERP): A multi-agency panel working to safeguard young people and vulnerable adults from exploitation and extra-familial risk. Alongside this, the ERP also coordinates interventions to disrupt and safeguard those that may be at risk of and/or are causing harm to young people. Extra-familial risks include criminal exploitation (county lines), sexual exploitation, harmful sexual behaviour, serious youth violence and going missing from home/care.
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Daily Risk Management (DRM): The DRM meeting has been developed to enhance and promote good practice, improve joint working between the Police, Social Care and partner agencies, and to ensure a robust multi-agency response where it is believed a child, young person or adult may be at risk of significant harm, particularly those who are at risk of CSE, Missing, Gangs, High risk DV and radicalisation. The DRM will consider these young people and adults, and a strategy meeting will be held where appropriate.
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 Professionals seeking additional information on child exploitation across the partnership are encouraged to use the following resources:
Email for more information on these resources.
The Youth at Risk Service (YARS) are delivering a series of virtual workshops (1.5 hours each) on exploitation, gangs and trauma that vulnerable children may potentially be exposed to in Waltham Forest. Parents, carers and professionals are invited to attend the workshops, which touch on the following subjects:
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Drugs Awareness Workshop: Delivered jointly with the CLG (commissioned drugs service for Waltham Forest Council). The workshop covers the links to exploitation, trauma and gangs via drugs.
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Missing Child Awareness Workshop: Delivered jointly with the Waltham Forest Council Missing Outreach Team. The workshop covers the links to exploitation, trauma and gangs with missing/truancy episodes.
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Gangs Awareness Workshop: Covers the links to exploitation and trauma via gangs. Current gang tensions, conflicts, territories, grooming (CSE and CCE) and social media use by gangs.
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Healthy Relationships Awareness Workshop: Covers negative friendship groups, exploitation from gangs and the impact this has on a family.
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Cyber Safety Workshop: Covers the links to exploitation via the internet and grooming on social media used by gangs.
Colleagues across the partnership are invited to take part in planned workshops on Safeguarding Adolescents.
This training session is aimed at those working or volunteering with children and young people who live in Waltham Forest. It will equip you with knowledge about our trauma-informed approach to working with children and young people and give you tips and tools for sharing within your school, agency or service.
By the end of the session you will be able to:
- Describe the principles for safeguarding adolescents
- Explain adolescent risks outside of the family context
- Use strength-based approaches with adolescents in response to risk and trauma
- Plan to apply the principles in your work with adolescents and share with this with colleagues in your school, agency or service
- Become a qualified Mental Health First Aider for young people:
Do you work with or care for children and young people? Do you want to improve your skills, knowledge and confidence in supporting the mental health of a young person? Why not become an accredited Mental Health First Aider?
The training will teach you the skills and confidence to spot the signs of mental health issues in a young person, offer first aid and guide them towards the support they need. In doing so, you can speed up a young person’s recovery and stop a mental health issue from getting worse.
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Become a qualified Mental Health First Aider for vulnerable children and adults:
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a training course which teaches people how to identify, understand and help adults who may be experiencing a mental health issue.
MHFA won’t teach you to be a therapist, but it will teach you to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis – and even potentially stop a crisis from happening. You’ll learn to recognise warning signs of mental ill health, and develop the skills and confidence to approach and support someone while keeping yourself safe.
Elop's Pride Together is a new befriending service for over-18 LGBT+ people. It provides a six-week programme focusing on developing social skills to support forming new friendships and building the confidence to engage in new social activities.
This is an ideal service for those who feel isolated, want to meet other LGBT+ people, make new friends and improve their social skills in a safe and inclusive LGBT+ space.
The online programme will require a commitment to attend six consecutive weekly group sessions and three brief one-to-one meetings with a befriending team member.
If you are working with anyone who you feel is suited to the service, please pass on our details and likewise send any referrals to befriending@elop.org.
 Professionals working with young people (16+) seeking a career in creative industry are invited to refer them to one week course, which is being delivered at Waltham Forest College, until the end of July 2023.
Throughout the course, young people will:
- Learn how to produce a podcast
- Meet successful guest speakers and expand their network
- Create social media profiles and influence their professional audience
- Make Artificial Intelligence work for them
- Build their own strategy
- Make new friends and support each other
- Partake in debates that will make them understand how to navigate in 2023
- Apply for jobs with one-to-one support
Contact Melissa Mann at Waltham Forest College for more information.
This newsletter is brought to you by the Strategic Partnership Boards, which is made up of Waltham Forest Safeguarding Children’s Board, Safeguarding Adults Board, Health & Wellbeing Board and SafetyNet (our Community Safety Partnership).
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