Improving Transitional Safeguarding - with Steve Baguley and Finn Madell

Martin Elliott interviews Finn Madell and Steve Baguley about how to improve transitional safeguarding to help prevent criminal exploitation of children and young people. 

They discuss its application in Wales, Newport Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACEs) meetings, and reflect on the future of safeguarding, changing legislation and improving communication between child and adult services.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Exchange Wales podcast, a series that explores research and practice sharing evidence and care experience to build better social care in Wales and beyond.

[00:00:20] Martin: So, hello and welcome to this episode of The Exchange Podcast. I'm Martin Elliot, and today's podcast is around safeguarding approaches for criminally exploited children. And I think we'll get onto a much broader discussion around safeguarding issues and, and, young people, but we'll, we'll use that title to start with.

[00:00:42] Martin: I'm joined today by two presenters who are going to talk to you and I'll get them to introduce themselves. So, Steve, do you want to say who you are? 

[00:00:50] Steve: Hello everyone. My name's Steve Bagley. I work for the NWG and I'm a safeguarding adolescent lead and I work across, supporting partnerships with their responses to abuse and exploitation.

[00:01:02] Steve: And I've also been involved in the development of transitional safeguarding, especially when looking at exploitation. 

[00:01:09] Martin: Brilliant. Thank you. And Finn. 

[00:01:11] Finn: Hello everyone. My name is Finn Madell. I'm a senior, manager in Newport City Council. I have a remit for safeguarding in relation to adults, children's education and IDFA.

[00:01:22] Martin: That's brilliant. Thank you. So as I say this, this session is, is around talking about safeguarding and we've framed it in terms of criminal exploitation, but I think, as I said, we'll get onto a broader discussion around safeguarding in its more general sense. And I think in their introductions, Steve made reference to transitional safeguarding, and I think that'll be something that we'll come onto in a minute in talking about that specifically both, both in general terms and in terms of sort of, it's, it's application in Wales, I guess. So I think acknowledging that, that not everybody that's going to listen to this will perhaps have a, have a background in, in things relating to safeguarding and exploitation. So I wondered whether it'd be worth having a, a very brief sort of outline of, of kind of how we've ended up, where we've ended up in terms of things like the development over, I guess the last 20 years, I suppose, around going from the, the sort of recognition of child sexual exploitation to then that being broadened out to criminal exploitation and other forms of exploitation. So I don't know who wants to take that first in terms of perhaps talking a bit about the history and the background of where we got to. 

[00:02:35] Steve: Yeah, I think, I don't mind starting that, that off in terms of, the responses to child sexual exploitation, in the late 2000, in the early two thousands, and I think it was about how we started to redefine adolescent safeguarding whilst looking at a particular thematic form of harm as in sexual exploitation. And then I think the responses to that supported partnerships and everyone to look at how do we redefine safeguarding of adolescents in this adolescent phase when we have a child protection system that's mainly set up to protect under-8s from familial abuse. Sometimes the abuse is taking place away from the family and how we looked at supporting and safeguarded that, and obviously we did it around sexual exploitation and then redefined how we were looking at criminal exploitation and moved just from a criminal justice response, but also looked at then how we safeguarded young people, for this form of exploitation and have recognized many other forms of abuse through exploitation like sextortion, financial exploitation. There's a whole raft of forms, sadly, of exploitation, modern day, the modern day slavery as well. So it's just helped us to redefine how we look at adolescent safeguarding and how we protect young people from all forms of harm that are happening to them.

[00:04:02] Martin: Brilliant. Thank you. I think that's, in terms of contextualizing what we're going to talk about, I think that's really helpful. I dunno whether Finn, whether you've got anything that you wanna add to that or, 

[00:04:11] Finn: I think as somebody who's spent most of their professional career in looking at managing and working with adolescents and seeing what risk society presents to them and you know, and what they can get themselves into, inadvertently, I think we've seen a huge gap in what, what the priority is for a children's social care response just because of capacity, understanding the kind of legislation that people are working to, as Steve said, being very framed on a child protection model. So looking at familial harm, and not looking outwards at some of the other kind of extra familial and contextual work that we know has become really, has gathered pace in the, in, in recent years around what we see, what we know, what we can do about it collectively. So it isn't just all falling onto local authorities to respond. It is very much kind of really bringing in partners and understanding, community focus work. And I know that's difficult against the backdrop of cuts and, but there are reasons why we're, we're looking at it and, and effectiveness in terms of making sure that everybody plays a part in understanding what the risk is and understanding how we better or best respond to it.

[00:05:21] Finn: It doesn't always have to be a social worker from a child protection team, and I think we we're kind of evolving some of that understanding and, and making sure that we're kind of having a read through for young people who remain vulnerable from, you know, through early teenage years, right up to adolescence and beyond.

[00:05:37] Finn: And we've got, we've got to be better at meeting those needs and vulnerabilities for that cohort. 

[00:05:43] Martin: Brilliant. Thank you 

[00:05:43] Steve: Finn, you, you make a really good point about, the exciting developments, around things like contextual, safeguarding and others that are helping us to redefine safeguarding, but also they've taken, those developments have taken place in parallel to austerity and cuts to services, especially things like youth work prevention and so on, which quite fundamental for me for developing those kind of responses too. But it has been a very exciting development. Contextual safeguarding as well as transitional safeguarding.

[00:06:16] Martin: We will, we'll come back to the, the transitional safeguarding 'cause I think that'll be quite a, a, a large part of the discussion a bit later on.

[00:06:23] Martin: But I wondered for, for listeners who perhaps aren't familiar with it, whether you could say a little bit, and I know it's a big, big topic area, but a little bit about contextual, safeguarding and kind of what that entails and how that that frames responses. 

[00:06:39] Finn: Yes. I think, I mean, and what, what I've seen as somebody who's kind of had oversight of lots of adolescent services, throughout my, career, we've looked at how things have moved away from, we've got the child protection backdrop around what front door services can do and, and do legislatively we've got kind of youth service, youth service cuts less so in Wales. I, I'm hasten to add than we see in, in, colleagues in, English authorities. But we've also seen changes in how youth justice is delivered and, and, and, and what that looks like.

[00:07:09] Finn: So, a much more community focused, looking at reducing criminality in young people, understanding vulnerability, understanding harm. And with that, we are looking at peer networks, what goes on outside family homes, looking at how people interact with each other, what that feels like, postcode issues amongst young people, things that have always been there, but we've got more insight in and to understand what that, what risks that can bring to individuals and to understand what, what that means to, to young people importantly and not, not kind of criminalize that, but make sure that we understand that in relation to their particular area, what the hotspots are, how we understand areas that are young people will say, I don't like that stairwell, or I don't like that corner, or I don't like that area of shops because of, you know, other young people hanging out around there or whatever.

[00:08:00] Finn: So we've, we've become far more flexible in terms of understanding what we're seeing. And, and hopefully then I think we're still learning how we respond to that and how we meet the need and understand, um, how to mitigate that and, and keep kids safe. 

[00:08:16] Martin: Yeah. I mean, is, have you got anything you'd, you'd add to that, Steve, or, 

[00:08:20] Steve: I, I fully support everything that Finn just says, but I think, you know, that looking at communities, looking at education, looking at the peer group, looking at the child holistically and the various environments where they live their lives is really, really helpful in terms of looking at how we can support and safeguard them throughout the whole context of life, that contextual safeguarding describes I think one of the areas, one of the areas where we do need to get better at, in, in this context though, is understanding and responding to the online and social media world of young people and how we can support them and safeguard them within that context of their life as well. And I know there's a lot of, there's work going on in various organizations to support practice around there and especially with the development of, of as artificial intelligence further develops within this context too, and how we can support and safeguard young people in that context because we know that it's relevant to all forms of exploitation and abuse, that they may be suffering or at risk from.

[00:09:23] Martin: Yeah, no, definitely. To, to go back to, to something that I think we came out of what, what you both said earlier on, I think, you know, there is that idea of, of moving away from, from a safeguarding focus, which is around younger children in the home, predominantly the home to sort of adolescents and extra familial harms and, and safeguarding in those areas.

[00:09:45] Martin: But I wondered if, if there's something also about the shift that's come about within that, which is around moving from seeing things like, criminality or involvement in criminal activities being around delinquency and the, the young person and offending behavior and actually starting to see young people as, as, as victims, if you like, of, of, of being exploited in those sorts of circumstances 'cause I think that is, certainly in the time that I was a, a, a social worker, I think that's quite a big move away from saying, you know this young person is a young person who offends to actually contextualize in that in terms of, well, why are they offending and how did they get into offending and responding to that rather than just focusing on, like I say, sort of a, seeing young people as delinquents who, who should be dealt with, I guess, through, through things like the youth justice system.

[00:10:41] Martin: I wondered whether you'd agree with that and whether you've got any comment. 

[00:10:45] Steve: I think the points you make about understanding the why and how are fundamental to some of this and, and looking at why young people are engaging in these behaviors, especially within the context of coercion control, et cetera.

[00:10:57] Steve: But it goes back to one of the early points to me about how we are redefining adolescent safeguarding and what we have seen at. Hopefully with the, the development of responses to criminal exploitation is much more synergy between the criminal justice, responses in youth justice teams and so on, and the safeguarding responses that traditionally weren't as synergized as they currently are now in a number of areas that I work with. I think we have to ask ourselves, did we take all the learning from youth justice around criminal justice responses and apply it to safeguarding. I think that's up for debate and not for me to talk to and, and also did we take learning from sexual exploitation into the arena of criminal exploitation when we started to define it as a form of harm that we needed to safeguard young people from.

[00:11:47] Steve: So it's always helpful to have those reflections, but I think that your points are really well made about looking at the why and the how rather than just looking at the presenting behaviors, which were typically, that was what we're responding to was the behaviors of the child not looking and using professional inquiry to look at the why and how that you highlighted earlier.

[00:12:08] Martin: I guess that, that, that then sort of leads us on to this, this idea of, of transitional safeguarding and, and that's within the context of this, the, that, that sort of cliff edge, I guess, where we're, where we're talking about young people and then what happens when they reach 18. And how we, we, we safeguard young people through that process of moving from a set of services and a set of responses within a sort of a children's services context to, to what happens within an adult framework. I wondered whether you could, you could perhaps explore a bit more the ideas around what transitional safeguarding is and how it's intended to, to help with that scenario. 

[00:12:56] Steve: Yeah. I think first of all, you know, in this area I'm, I'm very lucky that, I've been involved firstly around sexual exploitation and transition, but been involved in supporting the development, especially around exploitation, transitional, safeguarding. I do wanna acknowledge the work of people like Des Holmes, A D Cooper, and Professor Christine Cocker in the development of this framework, but transitional safeguarding, I think it's always helpful to look at, you know, just why this is such an important area and remind people of that is a number of reasons, but just first and foremost, we're told to listen to our young people and they've been telling us about this cliff edge they're not prepared for for years as well as parents, exploitation and the harm it causes doesn't stop because you're turn 18 as the Newcastle serious case review across children and adults identified and it's a fact. Perpetrators target vulnerability and not just age, good transition as well can help stop further problems developing. It meets what we know much better around adolescence to the development phase. Adolescence doesn't stop at 18. We have very binary notions in this country of legal, childhood, and legal adulthood where 18, you don't magically wake up. I've never met anyone yet who said, I woke up on my 18th birthday and felt yippee, I’ve got capacity. But that's sometimes what the current system is based on and I think we also need to look as well, you know, Finn is well aware of this and been very supportive around some of the issues around post- 16 transition and post- 16 safeguarding that were attached to this agenda. And for me that this issue has come up in a number of safeguarding adult reviews, child safeguarding practice reviews about why we need to get better at this and what we currently have in some, which is a bit of a frustration, is two systems that don't really understand each other. Children and adult safeguarding, or youth justice and probation. They're quite binary systems and it's not fair for our young people to be asked to be jumped between two binary systems. They've got to be more fluid.

[00:15:10] Steve: And my background's in children's services, i've learned a lot from adult services that I could apply to my children's career, but that learning across parts of our systems that could make things better for our 16 to 25 year olds, maybe earlier or beyond, there's learning in both sets of systems that could make things better in how we support and safeguard young people through towards and through what is and is legal adulthood is our definition of what is legal adulthood, but I've never met anyone yet- and if anyone listening to this wants to get in touch, please feel free to do so- who has told me that when I asked people to reflect on when they'd become adults, no one's ever said, I woke up on my 18th birthday and I woke up thinking, yes, I've got capacity. 

[00:16:00] Martin: Yeah, no, definitely. Then I guess, from, from your point of view, obviously in your introduction, you said you work across, across, both across adults and children. So I wondered if you've got any sort of further reflections on, on some of the stuff that Steve's raised.

[00:16:16] Finn: Yeah, and I, I'm going to badly paraphrase the Des Holmes quote, which is, you know, talking about how you, working with children, young people, you, you, you, you kind of want them to become sensible, well-rounded, capable adults. And as an, if you're an adult practitioner, you want to think about what childhood they had.

[00:16:34] Finn: So there's a read across in terms of how you interact with people in a relationship based way to get the best for them and from them. So with that, the binary notions of how we work aren't meeting that need, and I think we've got to be more fluid and flexible about. People, not thresholds, people, you know, working through stages of life that are really important.

[00:16:56] Finn: They're significant changes for, for, for young people into adulthood. They're frightening. They're frightening for teenagers who haven't got service histories or, you know, have had involvement from, from various services. And, and I think there's a whole. I go into meetings about young people who are kind of approaching 18 and you know, there's lots of, well, when they're 18, we'll step back or we'll, you know, and I think, well, how does that feel for that young woman, young man?

[00:17:20] Finn: How does that feel for that young person who's gonna go, right? Well, what happens then when I still, my needs won't change, but people around me have stepped back. I, I think that when you say out loud, it feels nonsensical. Yeah. So I think we've, it's time to do something about that really. 

[00:17:35] Steve: Finn, like you said, listening to young people and it's, I always end my presentations on this with their voice and their experience about, about being aged out the system I remember mentioned Des, and I think it was Max, who really stirred her up around developing transitional safeguarding, but the young people have been really consistent in some of the messages around the this area that we need to understand and apply and i've, I've just read that thematic review of some safeguarding adult reviews, which started off with a young person's quote as at 18, nothing changes, but everything changes, and they're not ready for that.

[00:18:13] Steve: Everything changes because we've not prepared them enough, and if we are gonna look at this, we need to look at culture. Children's partnerships need much more focus, and you, justice seems on the adulthood that they're, we're preparing children for but also adult services need to look at what's happened in childhood that's impacting on young people as they progress into their legal adulthood and their adulthood development stage that comes later.

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[00:18:57] Martin: So I mean, if we, taking on board what you've just said, I guess I'm thinking, well, what does, if we're applying that sort of framework to this, what, what does, what does a good transition look like in terms of safeguarding, in practical terms, what does that involve and how does that come about from, from your point of view? 

[00:19:16] Steve: I think it's a good point that, you know, for me, transition is part, obviously it's linked, it's not transitional safeguarding, but it's linked to transitional safeguarding. The definition of transitional safeguarding is what it is, and I think it's described as a non-negotiable. But if you were looking to do good transition, there's some really good principles in like the NICE guidance about, you know, the planning, preparation, doing it at the right time for the young person, be led by the young person. So there's some really helpful principles about how to do effective transition. that's gonna be, a benefit to young people and how they're gonna be safeguarded, I think in this case. So it's been clear that we are understanding what we're transitioning young people into 'cause if children's safeguarding and children's services and you've just assumed are not understanding, say adult safeguarding what it is and probation and what it is and what that system is, our young people are not gonna have much chance if we are not understanding what we are transitioning into. And I, I think a source some of this, last year, just just as an example, we very quickly had to get a briefing out about the national referral mechanism, you know, being identified as a victim in modern day slavery that young people weren't always being given the opportunity to update that as they moved into legal adulthood.

[00:20:40] Steve: And in some cases that was because we weren't equipping children's services enough with what that involved and what that young people got as they moved into legal adulthood under the NRM was different in childhood. So are we equipping the workforce to understand what we are transitioning young people into?

[00:21:00] Steve: Be it adult services in, in some of the cases or different service areas that they're going to benefit from. And there are some really sound principles that underpin some of the transition. And one point I always make when I come back to this word we mentioned quite a lot is transition. If you look at the dictionary definition, set this up with Wilke, Collins, or Oxford, not me, but the definition of transition it starts with, it's a process. But a lot of the time we are treating transition as an event, and looking at the event and not the process. And if we're gonna deliver transitional safeguarding, we need to redefine that word as it's not a service word. It's about develop, like Finn said earlier, it's about development.

[00:21:47] Steve: It's the development word. We look at how we support young people coming through later adolescence into early adulthood. That's what transitional safeguarding is really about, is supporting safeguarding and them through that development phase. But very often we are using transition as the service word and I think Health did a briefing on transition, transitional safeguarding, and there's a really good page in that which breaks down transfer of case transition and transitional safeguarding.

[00:22:18] Martin: Yeah, I, I, I, in thinking about this, I back a few years now, I, I, I've worked in a disabled children's team and obviously transitional planning as a, as a concept has been around in terms of children with disabilities for quite a while. And I was thinking of this in terms of the, the sort of practicalities, I guess in terms of one of the big issues that we used to have was that quite often young people who were transitioning from, from children's services to, to, to an adult services was there, was there, there often wasn't a direct service. There wasn't an equivalent, the other side of the cliff edge that you could, it wasn't just about moving your case to another person. Sometimes there was no other person, the other side or that that, what was provided was a lot more fragmented, the other side of that cliff edge. So I just wondered if you, either of you had got any sort of thoughts or comments about how you manage that process of, like you say, it is a process. It's, it's something that takes time and, and should continue through rather than being on your 18th birthday, you are going to move. 

[00:23:20] Martin: Or not.

[00:23:21] Steve: I'll let Finn come in onto this, but I think what she said earlier was really helpful is this isn't just about social work, it's about partnerships.

[00:23:29] Martin: Yeah.

[00:23:29] Steve: It's about the voluntary sector, the community safety partnership. It, it's, it's health. It's. It's a whole raft of partners there and it's looking about how we're developing supportive and safeguarding pathways. The volunteer sector has got some amazing learning in this area. They've not been as age restricted as some of our services in terms of childhood or adulthood.

[00:23:52] Steve: But it also, then it links me back to this magical world of how we are commissioning services and how cost effective those services are as well but it's how we're commissioning service is and giving us flexibility that allow us to support and safeguard young people as they become legal adulthoods and start thinking a little bit more about life course, not just a here and now, and not just a, we define young people and children by, we really define them by chronological age, given maturity through that age. 

[00:24:23] Finn: Absolutely Steve. I think some of the things that we, we, we are looking at are some research that we were involved with CASCADE around a three year study about outcomes for criminally exploited children.

[00:24:33] Finn: So really looking at case studies, looking at case files, looking at talking to young people. Looking at what services they access, given that it is in safeguarding terms quite a new area. So what, what you said there, Steve, about commission services, the outcomes from that will help us to reframe and look at what we know works 'cause nobody's really done that yet 'cause it's all still quite new. So from a local perspective in, in, in Southeast Wales, we've, we've got that evidence now to be able to go, right, this worked, this didn't. Now we can do something with that. Similarly in terms of the kind of newness of it as a safeguarding response.

[00:25:10] Finn: And I say that as in like 20 years new as opposed to sort of children act new. We are looking at how we do things differently from a practice point of view. And something that Steve and I have talked about and, and we've implemented locally is, is, is using our MACE process, so our multi-agency child exploitation process, which historically stopped at 18. We're now taking that up to 25. So we've got. That isn't to say that it's children's services or adult services necessarily that see the continuum of that. It's a collective response. So we've got the right third party, sorry, third sector people around the table. We've got police buy-in, we've got health buy-in.

[00:25:44] Finn: So we, when we have those meetings, we can really own it collectively and manage that safeguard and response better than we ever did because. We've got a forum for it to happen. We've got sign up, we've got a robust governance structure where we're reporting in on what that looks like. So that's quite an in innovative piece of work for change in the focus around safeguarding and getting the buy-in to maintain it.

[00:26:06] Steve: Yeah, and I, I'd like to come back to the point on MACEs just shortly, but as, as we were looking at criminal exploitation, obviously we wanna look broader at, all forms of abuse and exploitation, but there's, there's a couple of really recent reports in this context that I think are really, really helpful. You know, Professor Christine Cocker has done some really helpful research about you've justice and probation transition and I think it was last week, it was the formal launch of the Alliance for Youth Justice Report, exploited to exploiter, about transition around criminal exploitation to young people when they move from legal childhood into legal adulthood. And I don't wanna do any of those reports a disservice on this podcast 'cause I found them really, really helpful and they make a number of really good points.

[00:26:57] Steve: I've not got them in front of me, but I would encourage anyone who wants to look at this area to have a look at those reports because they sum up the issues with some really helpful recommendations about how we can rethink some of our safeguarding culture and our safeguarding systems. 

[00:27:14] Martin: Fantastic. Thank you.

[00:27:15] Martin: And I think we could probably put a link to, to those reports, on the, on the website with the, with the podcast to help people find them, as part of this. So to pick up on the, the, the sort of discussion around the use of MACEs and, and, and I guess, you know, that idea of that being a really useful way of, of, of connection between children's services and adult services and, and, and sharing across. I know that you've both done some work around observing MACEs meetings and, and, and I wondered if you'd be able to share some of the observations from that in terms of how they work and if they work as well for everybody in every context.

[00:27:52] Steve: Yeah, happy to do that. First of all, to respond to Finn's point around linking adults into the Mac's. It's not for me to say whether we should have them or not, but I think it's really encouraging that that connectivity, there's a mechanism to link children and adult partnerships together that allow for that understanding and learning to take place, which helps develop transitional safeguarding.

[00:28:15] Steve: But recently, the NWG. We've observed 60 plus of these MACE meetings across the country. They're called across England, parts of Wales. They're called very different things and have very different terms of reference. But we've been observing some of these meetings looking at a couple of things, really.

[00:28:34] Steve: What's the added value to the meetings? What are the value are they bringing to our current systems, and are we achieving safeguarding outcomes through them? And a lot of the times, I'm not gonna go into the full feedback, I'll share a briefing to link to that. A lot of the times we see high level information sharing that doesn't always result in set the achievement of safeguarding outcomes, but it's a helpful mechanism to further shared information.

[00:29:00] Steve: But just some of what we did see around the themes of young people was still, very strong gender bias when it comes to forms of exploitation. Boys criminal, girls, sexual. We are not always encouraging staff to be professionally curious, to look for all forms of exploitation. Our categories very sometimes can allow us to quickly categorize one form rather than to look for various forms, which we're told are happening to our young people.

[00:29:31] Steve: So we've gotta get better at supporting our staff and to identify all forms of exploitation and not just what's the main cause of exploitation and abuse. I was talking to, he's sadly recently left St. Giles, Evan, who from St. Giles, who does a lot of work in the things of gangs and other things, and he just made a point about girls and gangs.

[00:29:53] Steve: He goes, every one of them will be potentially sexually exploited and we're not identifying and picking it up and vice versa. We never really got boys being sexually exploited. Right? When we responded to sexual exploitation, there was still a strong gender bias there, but amongst a number of other points there was how we're identifying and responding to neurodiversity and linked trauma as well.

[00:30:19] Steve: That that was very common within some of the young people who presented at MACEs, how we are still thinking family, not just thinking into, or is it extra familial abuse, but looking at the whole family in the context of the extra familial harm and what's going off there and looking at how we're good at focusing on how we prevent things happening, and rightly so, but when harm has taken place that exploit when we, you know, abuse takes place for exploitation when we stop it happening is how we, also look at supporting recovery and rebuilding from those experiences too, and how we could do that. So currently how we're doing it better than we are. And, and lastly on this, what was very clear as well is we do adultify young people. It's interesting watching language still and how it changes with chronological age, and how we define young people a lot the time by chronological age.

[00:31:18] Steve: So we're still doing a lot of work, with areas around MACEs and how we achieve safeguarding outcomes, but how they added value to current systems that are already in place. Finn, I don't know what it's like locally for you and Newport and what you, how your MACE is and what you're seeing there. I think the great mechanisms to bring partners together.

[00:31:39] Finn: Agreed. I think echo absolutely what you've just said, Steve and I think we've put it into practice in Newport in terms of our membership of our MACE and we, we, we do it in a fairly chronological methodology, so we start kind of talking about the younger cohort and take it right through, but we've also bolted onto our MACE process, the work stream around adults at risk of sexual exploitation, because I think we could see a real read through from what we could see for, young people who are, who are known to be sort of involved in CSE and, and what happens that doesn't just stop. And again, looking at that recovery model.

[00:32:11] Finn: So we've got the right services around within the MACE meetings and adult services, and colleagues from housing. So we can really properly map what that looks like. And as I say, the MACE for us isn't a, it's a strategic meeting where we're talking about themes. So, so it's not, it's not about what goes on before that in terms of the operational response and how we identify practitioners, and their skill set to, to be able to look at that and, and, and report into us. We're also reviewing, 'cause we could see that the tool that we did use, is, is outdated and we've gotta keep evolving this because it's changing all the time. Like you said earlier, Steve, around the kind of online world. Our toolkit from four years ago doesn't cover that. So we've gotta keep things on the boil really to understand and shape and really allow that professional curiosity.

[00:32:56] Finn: So you're not looking for one source of, or one type of exploitation you're looking at, like you said earlier, vulnerability and harm. And what, how that's presenting is what we need to be minded to, as opposed to looking for a reason or a, a presenting issue because it's usually far more complicated than that.

[00:33:12] Steve: And, and people, there was a lot of commonality and people wanting to get much more focused on place based and perpetrator with the perpetrators and the use of disruption still as a tactic is very limited when we're not using all forms of legal and civil notices around how we disrupt perpetrators.

[00:33:32] Steve: What we know about exploitation and abuse is young people, adults don't readily tell us what's happening to them. We've really gotta create those safe spaces that allow them to do that. So important in terms of their recovery, rebuilding a whole rafta stuff, but not waiting for that disclosure. I think for the, the MACES and other things allow for that information sharing that allow us to be looking at how we could disrupt perpetrators and stop the harm happening as well.

[00:34:03] Steve: But the use of legislation and civil notices is still, there's some really good examples of it, but it, we're not using the full range of options that we've got between local authorities, police, and the whole raft of other areas. 

[00:34:17] Martin: Obviously, you've give, you've, you've started to give some practical examples from sort of the, the, the Newport perspective in terms of using things like the MACEs process, and I guess for me, the, the, the next stage on from that is starting to think about, you know, where does this go next? You know, where, where, in an ideal world if, if, if the two of you were in charge, where, where would safeguarding go next? What would you see as being the important things? 

[00:34:45] Steve: I want to come back to the bases. I just think- 

[00:34:48] Martin: That's fine. 

[00:34:48] Steve: Obviously people talk about, no doubt, legislators change and guidance change nationally.

[00:34:54] Steve: It'd be really helpful, but I think we've got flexibility in current systems that we're not currently utilizing and how we're empowering people to have that solution focused and, you know, creative and flexible way of working within current systems that allow us to do this because there's nowhere in our systems does it say, don't safeguard young people who are being exploited as they become 18.

[00:35:23] Steve: So no doubt if I was looking at this and you give me a magic wand, you know, you'd look at legislation guidance and the whole raft of things, but I think it's just looking at how we can support creativity, flexibility solutions within local systems that, well, local, regional, national systems that allow us to offer a better safe support and safeguarding response to young people who were really, really vulnerable, and have been significantly harmed in some cases. And just sometimes I, I just think, you know, when did that start becoming a safeguarding issue? When we know the harm that's being caused. But I think it's how we are empowering people to do this. Will we ever have an ideal system?

[00:36:06] Steve: I'd like to think so, but currently we've got systems that don't always talk to each other and could be much better connected and could learn from each other. And it's just encouraging people to do that. And look what's happened with contextual safeguarding and other developments we've just been talking about earlier.

[00:36:24] Steve: No huge legislation change of other things then. We've just been redefining how we've been looking at harm and how we're looking at safeguarding. So I think it's just trying to empower local partnerships to share. I don't know what, will work in this case in Newport, 'cause Finn's here but there's a lot of learning out there that could support and enhance those local responses.

[00:36:47] Steve: The more we are sharing the learning practice, research and guidance to support local areas who know their local areas and know their local lead, the better the safeguarding responses are going to be. If you would give me a magic wand now, what I would want change, just children are systems understanding each other.

[00:37:06] Steve: It's not that hard to understand each other. 

[00:37:09] Finn: I completely agree steve and I, I think what we can't do, magic wand or not, is nothing. I think we've got enough evidence now and enough kind of motivation and enough understanding to absolutely use what we've got and make my magic wand would be the legislative changes and the kind of real focus on it, but I think you know minded that we don't have that and we're working within systems that can compliment and do, it's about gathering will. It's about making sure that everybody understands what we're not doing and how we could do things differently for better outcomes for, for, for, for people, for citizens.

[00:37:44] Finn: I mean, that makes, that's what it's about. And I think certainly for the work I've done in Gwent is getting on agendas for things like safeguarding boards. So you've got a kind of high level governance of a process, a thought, a concept. So for example, in Gwent it was, it was one of the board's strategic objectives, so it was plugged in there, which kind of gave me and colleagues some positioning to be able to make some changes regionally, which has kind of gathered momentum and now it's it's something we talk about every day. So, you know, I think we've, we're utilizing what we've got, making the best of what we've got. There's still a load of learning to do. We're piloting things, we're trying things, but having the opportunity to be brave about that and to sort of go, we can't keep doing what we've always done 'cause it's not successful.

[00:38:27] Finn: It doesn't keep people safe. So I think it's being able to think, get your head out of it a bit, and be able to, and, and obviously conversations with steve and looking at kind of, you know, Steve will tell me, oh, greater Manchester have tried this, or South End have done that. So I'm like chasing those things as well just to look collectively and there's a real will I certainly, you know, in, in Wales, you know, I think it's the perception, and I would argue that this is correct, is that Newport's doing quite a lot of groundbreaking stuff, around the subject matter. But everyone's interested. We have pan- Wales meetings, networks where people are going, you know, how did you do that? What does that look like?

[00:38:59] Finn: And I don't have the answers. I just can say, we tried this or we are trying this. But it's having that space to do it and that courage. And the backup, you know, the backup from from managers to be able to go, we've gotta try this. And I think that's what we're, that's the position we're in at the moment.

[00:39:15] Finn: It's very early days, but hopefully it'll lead to a change of how we interpret, understand what risk and vulnerability looks like and harm in, in that older age group of young people. 

[00:39:27] Martin: Thank you. And for me that seems like quite a positive point to, to wrap up this podcast. So I'd like to thank both Finn and Steve for their time and for their input.

[00:39:38] Martin: It's been really interesting and I'm sure our listeners will find it really interesting too. So thank you both for joining us today. 

[00:39:45] Finn: Thank you. 

[00:39:45] Steve: Thank you. 

[00:39:47] Outro: Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Exchange Wales podcast. At Exchange Wales, we connect researchers, practitioners, and people with lived experience to share evidence, practice, and insights that shape social care Our work spans children's and adult social care, and we're also exploring the growing role of artificial intelligence in the sector. If you'd like to learn more or get involved please visit exchangewales.org