Agenda item

30.1     A presentation on child exploitation and county lines was delivered by Stuart Hale, Detective Superintendent and Force Lead for Exploitation (Sussex Police) and the Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services (ESCC Children’s Services Department). The presentation explained that ‘county lines’ were when gangs and organised criminal networks exported illegal drugs from an area into one or more importing areas in the UK using dedicated mobile phone lines or other forms of deal lines. It was explained that child exploitation formed a significant element of county lines activity as gangs used children to move drugs between places. The presentation covered work by Sussex Police to identify and disrupt county lines and the work of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership’s (ESSCP) Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) group to safeguard children involved in county lines. A copy of the presentation that was delivered was included in the meeting agenda.

30.2     Committee Members and the Lead Member for Education and ISEND thanked the presenters for providing an interesting and detailed presentation on their work. The Committee and Lead Member then asked questions on a range of matters arising from the presentation: 

·                     Age profile – the Lead Member asked what the age profile of children involved in county lines tended to be. The Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services responded that the age-range of cases handled by the MACE hub and Vulnerable Adolescent Risk Panel (VARP) tended to be ages 14-17. The panel had seen cases of younger children in the past but this was rare.

·                     The long-term effectiveness of police interventions – the Lead Member asked whether it was common for a county line to be replaced by gangs following disruption. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation responded that unfortunately gangs would often replace county lines following disruption and that the police worked with the National Crime Agency (NCA) to address this, as the NCA had resources to tackle organised criminal activity at a more strategic level. Sussex Police also worked with charities and providers to promote support to users of county lines (for example, in sending a text message to all drug users on a line when it was disrupted to advertise support services) to reduce the chance that they would seek to purchase drugs through an alternative line. Sussex Police were also working with the Metropolitan Police to analyse information about users collected through county line operations to date to better target support for drug users in future.

·                     School exclusions – the Lead Member noted that the presentation had highlighted the prevalence of fixed term exclusions among the cohort the MACE group worked with and asked whether it tended to be the case that children became involved in county lines because they were subject to school exclusions or were excluded from school because they had become involved in criminal activity through county lines. The Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services responded that the MACE group saw cases of both circumstances, but knew that exclusions from school significantly increased a child’s risk of exploitation. The MACE group therefore worked very closely with schools and colleges to keep children motivated and engaged to stay in full-time education wherever possible to reduce this risk. The Department and Lead Member acknowledged that this could be challenging to do as the children the MACE group worked with had often had negative experiences of education earlier in their lives and had behaviours that were very challenging for teachers to manage and disrupted fellow pupils’ education.

·                     Phone numbers – the Committee asked how gangs and organised criminal networks sourced the phone numbers that drugs were advertised to. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation explained that gangs would develop a customer base and share information on people looking to buy drugs. Cuckooing was one particular method used to build a customer base, which was when a person would take over a property inhabited by a vulnerable person and use that base to become known in the community.

·                     Missing episodes – the Committee noted the presentation had highlighted that missing episodes were frequently reported in the cohort of children involved in county lines and asked how long a child had to be missing for this to be categorised as a missing episode. The Assistant Director for Early Help and Social Care responded that children who were in care placements could be regarded as missing if they were anything from 30 minutes later than expected at their place of residence. Children’s Services monitored how frequently those episodes happened and would always seek to make contact with the child to determine if there was an explanation for where they were. The Assistant Director noted that Children’s Services were required to try to undertake return-home interviews with all children who were reported missing from social care, even if just for short periods, so the Department had developed a triage approach in response to ensure interviews were undertaken with the most vulnerable and at-risk children, which was in line with the national approach.

·                     Early identification of exploitation – the Committee asked what work took place to identify early signs that a child may be at risk of becoming involved in county lines. The Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services responded that all social care and early help teams and staff in schools were provided with training from the ESSCP on the early warning signs to look for that may indicate a child was being exploited or at risk of exploitation (for example, having lots of new money or clothes); and what to do if they had concerns in order to intervene early and prevent the situation escalating wherever possible. The Chair of the Committee asked if this training was focussed on spotting the signs among children in care. The Strategic Lead clarified that the training was clear that early warning signs should be looked for in all children’s behaviour, regardless of background, as any child could be at risk of exploitation and many of the children who were supported by the MACE group were not in social care placements. 

·                     Youth activities and inclusion – the Committee asked whether there was any evidence of a link between the provision of services such as free youth clubs and/or after school activities and children with access to those being more engaged in school and at reduced risk of exploitation. The Director of Children’s Services responded that research on the correlation between provision of services such as youth clubs and certain public health outcomes showed a variety of different outcomes, and there was not necessarily a positive link between activities and inclusion. The Director emphasised that it was most important that children were included in school, felt they belonged to their school community and were able to engage in constructive activities. The Director assured the Committee that the Education and ISEND service advocated for schools to be inclusive for all children, and provided support to schools to help understand and manage the sorts of challenging child behaviour referenced as part of this discussion. The Director added that practice varied across the county and while some schools worked incredibly hard to keep children with challenging behaviour in school, other factors such as draft Department for Education guidelines on behaviour made the Department’s advocacy for inclusion more challenging by condoning use of fixed term exclusions despite limited evidence that they were effective at changing pupil behaviour.

The Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services added that while some ‘traditional’ youth and after school activities may not engage the children who were already known to the MACE group, as those children may have been excluded from education for a long period of time, the ESSCP had undertaken successful multi-agency work to provide targeted activities for children with the highest needs. This included work in Hastings with eight children at the Hollington Youth Centre, and other projects in Hastings, Uckfield and Hailsham which worked with groups in the community, such as local businesses, to provide activities and opportunities that kept young people engaged and at lower risk of being drawn into criminal activity. 

·                     Coronavirus impact – the Committee asked how coronavirus had impacted the situation and the Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services confirmed that county lines activity had continued in the pandemic, albeit adapted, and that the ESSCP had continued their work, including face-to-face contact with the most vulnerable children. It was noted that there had been challenges with children with the highest needs maintaining engagement in education during the pandemic.

·                     Exploitation Coordinators – the Committee welcomed the reference in the presentation to the new Exploitation Coordinator roles Sussex Police were recruiting to in each division of Sussex to work across agencies to further improve the multi-agency response to exploitation and child exploitation. The Committee requested that a future update be provided to the Committee on the effectiveness and impact of these roles.

·                     Longer-term response and resourcing - the Committee asked if longer-term work was planned to consider the multi-agency response to date and learn from cases of success. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation responded that any commitments that could be made around longer-term work were reliant on funding. Although those in Sussex Police working on disrupting county lines were in ‘mainstreamed’ posts that would be funded from ongoing budgets (partly by the uplift in the Police and Crime Commissioner Council Tax precept), other work, such as the work to provide activities for young people with the highest needs highlighted earlier in the discussion, was funded through other funding streams such as funding for the Violence Reduction Partnership. Such funding streams increased resources available but was committed on a fixed-term basis only.

The Chair of the Committee sought to clarify how much restricted funding impacted the multi-agency work that was able to take place. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation explained that the work to disrupt county lines was critical so would be funded by Sussex Police regardless, but that the additional resources outlined above provided important additional capacity and the ability to undertake more innovative work to keep children safe. One-off funding helped fund innovative pilot activity but the police, Council and other partners then had to work to identify ways to enable the approach to be scaled up and/or maintained longer-term. Officers assured the Committee that partners sought to take advantage of all one-off funding opportunities; for example, in applying for Home Office funding in 2021 which had been used to train all police officers, social workers, youth workers and staff in schools on adverse childhood experiences and trauma-informed approaches to working with children. The Director of Children’s Services added that the situation described here was also exemplary of a much broader challenge the Department faced in finding ways to direct the resources available to undertaking early intervention work wherever possible, rather than intervening once a situation had escalated, as it improved outcomes for children and was much more cost-effective.

·                     Geographic concentration of county lines – the Committee asked why the number of active county lines in Hastings was disproportionately higher than the rest of the county. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation explained that the issue of county lines was only one part of a broader picture of drug misuse, so while Hastings may have higher active county lines, other issues related to drug use were more prevalent in other parts of Sussex. The Force Lead for Exploitation committed to share further information about Sussex Police’s response to drug-related crime in Hastings, including the response supported by funding from Project ADDER. The Committee also asked why the Operation Centurion figures cited in the presentation on the number of county lines taken out in East Sussex and current live investigations was much higher in East Sussex than elsewhere in Sussex. The Force Lead for Exploitation explained that the figures were higher in East Sussex because there had been a particular focus on disrupting county lines activity there, supported by additional investment. It was expected that the figures would increase in West Sussex and Brighton & Hove as the approach taken in East Sussex was expanded there. 

·                     Reducing drug use – the Committee suggested that one element of the response to drug dealing undertaken through county lines was to reduce the demand for drugs, including from those who took drugs recreationally. The Sussex Police Force Lead for Exploitation agreed that this was one part of tackling the activity and that more work to educate people on the social consequences of drug use may support that.

·                     Resolving challenging MACE cases – the Committee asked for further information on the creative and imaginative methods referred to in the presentation, which were used to progress cases that had been with the MACE hub for more than 12 months. The Strategic Lead for Specialist Adolescent Services explained that in instances where the standard approach had not been successful in moving children away from criminal activity and exploitation, senior managers in the service would consider ways they could use resources across agencies more creatively to reduce the child’s involvement in criminal and exploitative activity. This could involve creative use of mental health support, education provision, work experience or a mentoring opportunity for example. The Assistant Director for Early Help and Social Care provided specific examples where the service had been able to arrange activities that tapped into a young person’s particular interests to improve their confidence and communication skills, and noted that the role of a ‘trusted adult’, which every child supported by the MACE Hub was allocated, was key in identifying those interests.

30.3     The Chair of the Committee thanked officers for their presentation and the responses to questions asked. The Chair summarised that the Committee had particularly understood the important preventative role schools, targeted activities and work within communities played in reducing the risk of children being drawn into criminal activity and exploitation; and the challenges one-off funding presented in planning future service provision. The Committee RESOLVED to request an update on the impact of Exploitation Coordinator roles at a suitable future date and to note the presentation.