Issue - meetings

Mr Joe Benmore, PC Daniela Casali, Mr Rick Geer, Ms Adeola Bello, Ealenor Girling and Heather Hutchings introduced the item.

The meeting heard that:

·       If a young person was arrested, an investigation would be conducted as normal, but the individual would also be subject to be safeguarding. The individual would be checked upon and assurances would be taken that the correct processes were in place. When a young person was interviewed, they would be given an opportunity to raise a section 45 defence and if it was raised, it would be taken into consideration.  

·       Haringey did not have specific areas where young people may be exploited. Many referrals came from social workers and were encouraged to do so.

·       Children were statistically being identified more in relation to the national referral mechanism. This was because there were more opportunities to do so when cases were encountered. Training was being offered to staff, especially within Adult Social Care to identify potential cases. Work could be done with the Voluntary and Community Sector and having better promotion on the transport network.

·       It would be useful to coordinate efforts relating to modern slavery and involve community groups to identify victims across communities. This would also coordinate with Weeks of Action and efforts involving publicising awareness.

·       Adults who were undocumented migrants and had no recourse to public funds had a fear of their situation being revealed to authorities and this could result in people being kept as modern slaves. 

·       Regarding the younger population, more work could be done with schools and positive news stories could be shared with young people to increase trust and confidence Police, Councils and the referral mechanism.

·       Most young people referred into the social work team were so significantly at risk of exploitation, it was difficult to manage the situation. Considerable intensive service was provided. Social workers worked overtime and saw young people weekly and social work staff had an attitude to ensure that maximum attention and resources were provided where possible.

·       Social media could be used to help young people to get information on key areas of crime. It was possible to obtain an algorithm to ensure that certain areas of interest were displayed first when performing a search.

·       CCTV could be used to determine where young people were congregating or if they were subjecting themselves to risk.

·       If a young person had an exploitation marker on the PNC record, they were more likely to be classed as high risk. 

·       Raising awareness regarding Cuckooing (a practice where people take over a person's home and use the property to facilitate exploitation) was actively worked on by generating leaflets which had been co-designed with the Police and was easy to read. It was delivered to areas which had the highest number of reports. The leaflet was also available in a poster format which was displayed at the relevant locations. Officers attended coffee mornings with some of the schemes and spoke to residents to raise awareness and to listen to their comments  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7