Working together to enhance police responses to child sexual exploitation and related vulnerabilities
Project Summary
Last updated: Thu 07, 2016
The International Centre: Researching child sexual exploitation, violence and trafficking, together with the National Policing Lead for Child Protection and Abuse Investigation, have received funding from the Home Office, College of Policing and HEFCE to develop a CSE and Policing Knowledge Hub. The aim of this Hub is to enhance police responses to child sexual exploitation (CSE), other forms of sexual abuse and associated vulnerabilities in adolescence, through better use of research evidence and enhanced links between police and academics.
The programme of work will run from late 2015 to March 2017. It aims to:
- Improve links between policing and academia.
- Facilitate dialogue between police and other professionals, and police and young people affected by these issues, as to how police responses could be improved.
- Communicate the existing evidence base on CSE, other forms of CSA and associated vulnerabilities to police and relevant partners.
- Support police to develop and use research evidence in their work, with a particular focus on ‘what works’ in policing responses to these issues.
Planned activities include:
- A needs analysis of the key challenges police face in responding to CSE and associated vulnerabilities in adolescence (from the perspective of the police and external partners);
- Police-led research projects focused on testing possible solutions to these challenges;
- Academic mentoring for regional police CSE coordinators and analysts;
- A participatory solution-focused learning programme between police and young people;
- Online webinars;
- Practitioner briefing papers on approaches to, and learning from, research;
- A bi-annual research and practice research forum;
- Workshops with policy personnel and commissioners; and
- An end of project conference.
In order to extend the reach of activities and to ensure that local contexts are considered, the work is being supported by a network of four Regional Academics from the Universities of Cardiff, Sussex, Worcester and Central Lancashire.
