Child Exploitation Leads Forum

We have partnered with NWG to provide quarterly workshops for those leading on child exploitation for Looked After young people in foster or residential care and 16/17 year olds in supported accommodation.  NWG is a specialist charity formed as a UK network of over 14,500 practitioners who disseminate information down through their services, to professionals working on the issue of child exploitation (CE) and trafficking within the UK, supporting those working with children in care.

With a background in youth and community work for over 25 years , Maria is passionate about working with organisations to ensure that the experiences of families affected by exploitation are listened to and that their voices are heard. Working at NWG, Maria works alongside safeguarding partnerships and national organisations to assist them in creating a culture which values and recognises families as safeguarding partners. She is also instrumental in bringing areas together to share emerging practice about their work with families that others can learn from. Maria’s national work has included developing resources, briefing papers, workshops, benchmarking tools, videos, and training “Experts by Experience” which all include the voice of families with lived experience of exploitation.

We’re looking for organisations to identify a child exploitation lead in their organisation who can become part of the network, keep up to date with training and current developments around the exploitation of young people, share problems and ideas and provide in-house expertise in their own setting.

Child exploitation leads have access to:

• a regular 2-3 hour online forum every 3 months
• CPD, project/group work on shared goals and an opportunity to share ideas, problems and successes with other leads
• speakers on relevant topics
• facilitation by highly experienced leaders from the NWG and dialogue
• ad hoc initial advice and support to members in between sessions
• Ideas for policy development, staff training and support
• relevant research and publications as they become available so your staff are always up to date
• a telephone helpline for initial support

Membership (including at least 12 hours of CPD) is just £99+vat for a whole year which includes subscription to NWG Network Gold membership for their organisation, including:

• the latest information, news and research on the exploitation of adolescence
• a range of exclusive NWG resources
• access to monthly surgeries
• a discount on NWG events and learning offer
• (current NWG members can join at a 50% discount – be sure to tick NWG under the membership section on booking form).

This is a great opportunity to ensure there is a real focus on the risk of exploitation for some of the most vulnerable children in the country and to create the capacity and learning opportunities for your team to develop.

Membership is open to anyone working to support those children in care.