The Committee will receive a presentation from Barnardo’s about their work with the Council on Children’s rights, Sexual exploitation and Miss U(missing from care missing from home).Gloria Stott , manager of the north London Sexual Exploitation and Missing Service , and Babette Bleach , who manages the London Children’s Rights Services will provide this presentation.
Minutes:
The Committee received a presentation from Gloria Stott and Babette Bleach of Barnardo’s about their work with the Council on children’s rights, sexual exploitation and trafficking. Barnardos had been working, contractually with the Council since 1995 until 2011 on these areas of work . At the start of this financial year they had entered into a spot purchasing arrangement with the council to provide an advocacy service to identified children , undertake independent visits to children’s homes and work with young people who had been identified by the council as being vulnerable to trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Recently external funding had also secured the services of a practitioner from the Barnardo’s to work in the Safeguarding service with missing children, 2 days a week.
Although the Children’s service had block commissioned 6 places this did not limit them procuring further places if the need arose. On an influential level, Barnardos’ was educating the Safeguarding service about the circumstances that can put a child /young person at risk of sexual exploitation. Barnardo’s also shared intelligence about potential cases of sexual exploitation and worked with the services when cases were identified by them. Barnardos also offered a child /young person an alternative support provision separate to the local agencies that they were required to deal with.
The Committee further considered information about the Children’s Rights services provided by Barnardo’s. The Advocacy service had started as a short term project and had been expanded in the last three years. This had culminated in a contract between the Council and Barnardo’s to provide advocacy support services to 87 young people. This support from Barnardos was about enabling children / young people to provide their views on their care and feel independent of the process .
Barnardos also provided independent visits to the Council’s children’s residential homes and were contracted to support 10 young people living at these homes. Members were reassured that there was a separate non statutory body that could make visits to the homes and speak with the young people at the home.
A question was asked about how issues raised by young people through advocacy services were taken forward with the Council. In particular concerns about independent living arrangements, The Committee noted that there were regular monitoring meetings held between the Children’s service and Barnardo’s where each party provided an update on all the cases that they are working on. As part of this working relationship with the council, Barnardo’s felt able to raise the individual issues of children/young people as well as be influential in the types of services provided to them. In the unlikely event that they found their views not taken on board by the Children’s Safeguarding service, Barnardo’s representatives were aware that they could advance their concerns to a higher management level.
Members were interested in how the service decided on the children that would access the services provided by Barnardo’s . This information was sought to be assured, as corporate parents, that there was not an over demand being dealt with, meaning some children would miss out on the service. An example was provided on how a child or young person was identified as needing advocacy. Usually this was through a case review which would have the input of the IRO (Independent Review officers) and there would be a criteria followed to help understand whether an independent person was needed to advocate for the young person/child.
A question was asked about the overlap in sexual exploitation and trafficking. Gloria Stott of Barnardos explained that often where children and young people were trafficked for involvement in criminal activity and domestic servitude, unfortunately due to their age and vulnerability they were susceptible to sexual exploitation. The trafficking workers worked a number of agencies to locate the trafficked children remove them from this situation.
In terms of sharing local intelligence and liaising with government agencies, this was a critical in identifying children that were being trafficked as usually a trafficked child would be moved around rapidly. Where a local concern was reported to housing such as an illegal appropriation of a house involving children from a particular transient community then this information would be considered by the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub(MASH). This team included housing officers who were able to share concerns with the other agencies on the hub and quickly identify if there were any safeguarding issues which needed further investigation and action from local agencies such as the Police and Health.
The Committee noted the nature of Barnardo’s work in investigating sexual exploitation in Haringey and other boroughs and were informed that there had not been a investigation into a Children’s Home in the last year.Barnardo’s further provided yearly training sessions to the Safeguarding team to ensure that Social Workers and officers were able to detect the signs of sexual exploitation.
In response to the question about the number of places available on the advocacy programme it was noted that there was not an impediment to renegotiating the contract with Barnardos to provide advocacy services if there was a demand for places.
Representatives from Barnardo’s advised that they were due to provide a presentation of their targeted work with the council on missing children to a Scrutiny panel . This was a recent project and Barnardo’s felt that it would be too early to report on the outcomes of this work in January and asked that Scrutiny colleagues be asked to defer this presentation to an April meeting.
The Committee thanked Barnardos for their informative presentation and it was agreed that the clerk re distribute the background information provided on Children’s right service, trafficking and sexual exploitation service.
Members of the Committee were welcome to put forward any further information requests or questions to Barnardo’s after the meeting.