The final evaluation report for the Barnardo’s Families and Communities Against Sexual Exploitation project (FCASE) has been published by the International Centre, researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Trafficking at the University of Bedfordshire. The programme was launched in April 2013 and concluded in March 2015.
The FCASE model consists of the following elements: a structured programme of six to eight weeks direct work with young people and families where a risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE); delivery of CSE training with professionals; and community awareness raising. The report identifies the elements that work well and some of the challenges in its implementation. This had been done in order to determine good practice in supporting families and communities and embed more effective
practice on protecting children and young people, including those in foster care, from sexual
exploitation, harnessing the protective factors within a child’s family and/or foster home. The
learning from the project is intended to help other agencies to implement the FCASE model.
The key messages emerged from the report are the following:
Direct work:
FCASE legitimises work with parents and families and is an important and innovative project which demonstrates the value of:
- Working with parents and carers alongside young people using a strengths-based approach;
- Equipping families with the knowledge and information to help them safeguard their
children; - Promoting the role and value of the voluntary sector in developing working relationships with families and ‘building bridges’ between families and statutory services;
- Engaging workers with specialist knowledge, relational skills, and family centred / victim centred working;
- Assigning separate key workers to parents/carers and young people;
- Providing continuity of workers in building trusting and productive relationships;
- Providing effective training that makes appropriate and accurate referrals more likely;
- Ensuring flexibility of meetings and sessions with families and young people;
- Providing adaptability of programme materials which are localised, needs-based and
developed as required; - Promoting ‘Safer You’ family meetings as important spaces for resolving conflicts,
improving communication and devising action plans that increase protective factors.
Community awareness: The component of the FCASE programme which aims to raise community awareness of CSE demonstrates the value of a process which:
- Has clear aims and objectives and is incorporated alongside the direct work;
- Includes scoping exercises (for example Equality Assessments and analysis of existing work) in order to identify which groups are accessing services and which are under-represented;
- Evaluates community awareness raising to better understand how knowledge and
awareness can be raised effectively among different communities and groups; - Builds long term relationships and partnerships with groups, communities and sectors;
- Makes use of a multitude of spaces, places and resources;
- Invests resources and embeds good service planning;
- Recognises the complexity of the dynamics of community awareness raising;
- Considers careful selection of routes into work with communities, taking into
consideration child protection and children’s rights; - Develops appropriate strategies (such as single-sex groups) to enable the positive and open discussion of CSE, sex and sexuality with a wide range of communities;
- Incorporates co-work and support through FCASE staff training and through working
alongside CSE champions in different communities.