#LookCloser: Child exploitation and night time economy

We all work hard to keep the children and young people we support safe in our care, but how much do we really consider the broader places and spaces in which they might be spending time? This session, covering the ‘Night Time Economy’ will enable professionals to consider some of the key locations where exploitation takes place and how we can engage with businesses in these to better prevent and disrupt exploitation. Within the session we will focus in particular on exploitation risks within fast food outlets, taxis and private hire vehicles and hotels and accommodation sites, as well as touching on other spaces where young people may spend their time, such as in retail outlets. We will update attendees around current national efforts to address these issues, such as Operation Makesafe and will explore how our #LookCloser campaign itself can play a role.

This session aims to:

• Discuss the benefits of recognising businesses as partners in safeguarding young people and how best to engage them.
• Examine the benefits and limitations of training approaches when supporting the private sector to better protect children and young people.
• Explore contextual safeguarding activities as a complimentary approach.
• Discuss the importance of location-based disruption in tackling businesses who are complicit or actively involved in child exploitation and abuse.
• Evidence best practice through learning from real life case studies.

This session will be hosted on Microsoft Teams Live which means:

• You will not be able to engage with the presenters such as in a typical virtual meeting.
• There will be a Q&A function and we will use external systems such as Menti to engage with the audience.

This session is to upskill you in the topic area and allow you points to reflect on this learning in your context. The audience is expected to be varied and so has been written to reach many different levels of expertise across many different sectors.

You may want to read some of our resources prior to attending our sessions to foreground your knowledge of child exploitation.