I am involved with a Conference Planning Group relating to Divert – Scotland’s Serious Organised Crime Strategy has four strands: Divert, Deter, Detect and Disrupt. Earlier this month, I attended the Conference titled ‘Criminal Exploitation Awareness Raising Event’ in Edinburgh. It was attended by a wide range of colleagues from various organisations across the sectors and it was a great networking event. I saw some familiar faces and met some interesting new people too.
Opening remarks were made by Angela Constance MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs and Chair of the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce. One of the Keynote speaker was Janine McGowan, the Divert Theme 3 Lead who provided a recap of the ‘Criminal Exploitation Guidance for Practitioners’. I met a Colleague who told me about a 7 Minute Briefing (very short document giving all the relevant information with links to supplementary information for those who wish this) they had developed in Falkirk and I asked her for a copy which she then kindly sent on to me – you can access the 7 Minute Briefing Here 7 Minute Briefing
Probably the most powerful input of the day, came from a man with many, many years of lived experience of Criminal Exploitation, who has now turned his life around and acts as a Mentor for others at risk of or currently being Criminally Exploited. He encourages those who cannot see a way out to recognise that escaping that life and having a different way forward, is a possibility.
Sharon Maciver from Action for Children presented a really helpful round up of the key issues arising from the Jay Review on Criminally Exploited Children – ‘Shattered Lives, Stolen Futures’. Which states Tens of thousands of children and young people are at risk of being exploited across the UK – groomed, coerced and threatened into a life of violence, criminalisation and abuse. A new approach is needed to end this crisis. Click for the full document: Jay Review
My lasting impression from this interesting day was how heartening it was to hear almost all the speakers refer not only to children being at harm from Criminal Exploitation, but also young adults and vulnerable adults generally. Until very recently, I think that people considered that you fell off a cliff edge at age 18 years + one day, and were suddenly making all your own free choices – when just 24 hours early you would have been considered a child and vulnerable to exploitation. The work of people like Dez Holmes – https://www.researchinpractice.org.uk has started to have impact – helping people to appreciate that as Dez makes clear – “Transition’ is a process or period of changing from one state to another. It can happen throughout our lives and it’s experienced differently by different individuals. Within some aspects of social care, in particular safeguarding, the notion of transition can imply a definitive ‘line in the sand’ – a point of no return – at the age of 18 years. Children become adults on their eighteenth birthday; assumptions about capacity change overnight and eligibility for safeguarding support is very different depending which side of this line a person falls.”