Minutes:
The Council had before it a Notice of Motion set out in the agenda papers standing in the names of Mr A D Kent, Mr M J Hart, Mr A C Roberts, Ms K J May and Mrs L C Hodgson.
The motion was moved by Mr A D Kent and seconded by Mr T Baker-Price who both spoke in favour of it, and Council agreed to deal with it on the day.
In the ensuing debate, the following points were made:
· The motion encouraged councillors to raise awareness of the ‘Get Safe’ Initiative. The initiative was wide-ranging and aimed at protecting children and young people up to the age of 25 years against a whole range of issues that affected them. In the past there had been a lack of support for children and young people who were at risk. In particular, drugs were a major threat to children and young people and had been linked to a number of other damaging impacts to their well-being
· The safeguarding of children was everyone’s responsibility. Safe communities required everyone to be vigilant for signs of all types of child exploitation
· It was queried how councillors would be able to find the necessary information to promote and publicise the initiative
· This initiative encouraged partnership working that enabled agencies to identify and support children at the earliest opportunity before they became entrenched in gangs/drugs/criminal activity
· It was disappointing that opposition members had not been invited to be signatories to this motion
· The Cabinet Member for Children and Families commented that a soft launch of the initiative had taken place in June. Since then it had been considered by the OSPB, the Children and Families Overview and Scrutiny Panel and the Corporate Parenting Board as well as a rolled out to district councils. There was information on the initiative available on the Worcestershire Children First web site. Councillors had an important role promoting this initiative acting as conduits to parish councils, community leaders and governing bodies. Children had always been vulnerable but the ease of accessibility via electronic devices in the modern age had made the situation worse
· The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills undertook to ensure that all schools would be made aware of the initiative and provided with all the relevant promotional material. He also hoped that Government funding for youth provision would increase in the future
· Whilst the initiative was laudable, in order for to be effective the Council needed to adequately fund other services such as youth provision and prevention of alcohol and drug abuse
· Councillors had a vital role in providing important local information to enable the Police to carry out their duties
· It was important for children to understand the implications of their actions and a useful tool to achieve this was the sharing of life experiences.
RESOLVED "Vulnerable children and young people have always faced danger but in modern times these risks come in new forms under the heading ‘criminal exploitation’.
This includes gang-related activity including county lines, sexual exploitation, trafficking, modern day slavery, absent and missing children, forced marriage, honour-based violence and female genital mutilation. Sadly, all can be part of modern life, even in Worcestershire.
The Worcestershire multi-agency initiative 'GET SAFE', launched in June this year, has been created to tackle criminal exploitation. It aims to protect children and young people up to the age of 25 years. The GET SAFE Partnership is committed to supporting victims and their families.
County councillors are uniquely positioned to see that the ‘GET SAFE’ Strategy is shared by every part of the local government family (including district and parish/town councils).
This motion calls on all county councillors to commit to safeguarding young people against the criminal exploitation, by championing the ‘GET SAFE’ initiative in their divisions and using their good offices to see that district and parish/town councillors in their divisions are well informed about the initiative.”