Decision details

In light of the forthcoming publication of the Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Strategy for 2024-2027, and in partnership with GMP, Programme Challenger and the Violence Reduction Unit, the GM Complex Safeguarding Hub is organising a Child Exploitation conference for the wider workforce.

Tackling child exploitation and extra-familial harm requires everyone to play their part and to work as a joint system. As such, the launch of this strategy is a call for action, as well as an opportunity to ensure that frontline professionals across all sectors are appropriately equipped to support complex safeguarding teams through early identification, information-sharing, safeguarding, and multiagency disruption.

With the support of the Deputy Mayor, who will be opening the event, the conference will aim to support this strategic vision by upskilling non-specialist frontline professionals.

The event will cover a range of key exploitation-related topics such as language, neurodiversity, trauma, child-centred approaches, lived experience, multiagency disruption, online harms, identities, the overlap between CCE & CSE, and the role of girls in County Lines. These thematics were selected in direct response to the training needs identified during our latest weeks of action.
To maximise reach, the content of the conference will be repeated across 4 days (listed below). Each iteration of the event will take place in person, at GMP Sedgley Park Training Centre in Prestwich, M25 0JT. The dates are the following:

• September 10th (first iteration)
• September 12th (second iteration)
• October 15th (third iteration)
• October 16th (fourth iteration)

Each GM district will be offered 9 tickets per event, which represents a total of 36 multiagency delegates across the four events.

The conference will be followed up by the delivery of an online programme of learning events in October, which will offer further opportunities for multiagency professionals to deepen their understanding of the topics raised during the event, and to involve the colleagues they believe would benefit from being trained.

Once the funding transfer has been authorised and actioned, further Decision Notices relating to venue and speaker costs will be submitted for approval.

The Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit are seeking authorisation to internally transfer £4,000 from its budget to the GM Complex Safeguarding budget (within the Deputy Mayor Investment Fund) to co-fund the 2024 Child Exploitation Conference for the Wider Workforce.