Adolescents at risk of Criminal & Sexual Exploitation and Missing

Sexual and Criminal Exploitation can have a devastating impact on young people and their families. Firstly and foremost we see exploitation as a form of child abuse and therefore look beyond a young person’s presenting behaviour which can easily be mislabelled as problematic or challenging.

Our approach is centred on understanding the lived experiences and relationships that young people have in order to effectively intervene and support them. 

It is a paramount that we understand our community and that we build and maintain strong links with; statutory and voluntary partners, as well as grass roots, faith organisations business and the public. 

Vulnerable Adolescents Strategy 2020-2022 

The Vulnerable Adolescents Strategy 2020 - 2022 provides the overriding objectives and frameworks of our approach in Barnet and how we collectively respond to child sexual exploitation, missing children, gangs and criminal exploitation.  

This document focuses on the following priorities:

• strategic, operational and practice leadership
• engaging young people 
• predict and prevent
• identify and intervene
• disrupting and stopping perpetrators.
• transitional safeguarding 

Services and information

We are often asked as to what services and support are available for young people who may be at risk of exploitation. The Vulnerable Adolescent Service Directory provides a directory of both various organisations that operate in Barnet as well as information to assist practitioners who are supporting young people and their families.  

This is of course no way and exhaustive list and services regularly change 

Tackling Violence and Exploitation Team 

Using forums such as: 

• Child Exploitation And Missing, Strategy (CEAM) meetings
• Vulnerable Adolescents Risk Panel (VARP)
• Strategic Multi Agency Child Exploitation Panel (MACE) 

Working in partnership with all organisations, the Tackling Violence and Exploitation Team: 

• collates and share intelligence to understand emerging themes of exploitation in the borough and supports and coordinates effective interventions to support young people and  to disrupt and stop perpetrators of exploitation
• support statutory, voluntary and charity organisation in awareness raising, staff training/development.
• Coordinate and deliver briefings and community events to raise awareness of exploitation in the community and public spaces.

Updates:

Our latest Focus newsletter (Spring 2023) is aimed at keeping you informed about what is happening in Barnet and good practice developments. We hope you find it a useful source of information in working with Young People to reduce the risk of them experiencing Violence or exploitation.

The Vulnerable Adolescents team can be contacted via email at CEAM@Barnet.gov.uk