Our team delivers specialist one-to-one support that is tailored to meet the need of the young person or adult. Our intervention pathway is tailored to each individual to ensure we can evidence skills and learning of all our service users.
The service also offers a rescue service for anybody under the age of 25 that has been found in an exploitive situation outside of their area of residence. We see the ‘rescue’ as a reachable moment at a time when the young person is most in need of support. Our rescue service feeds directly into the support service, offering that consistency of caseworker young person rapport on return to their region of residence.
The West Midlands is a densely-populated, mainly-urban region, second only to London with a population of just under 3million (2,919,600 – 2021 census). It is split between seven local authorities:
The region is multicultural and has a diverse population. This can often cause issues when trying to engage with the public, due to certain communities having a mistrust of services and professionals.
Impact
In 2023-2024, we received 106 support referrals into the West Midlands team. 28 of these did not, however, meet the criteria for the service. In most cases, this was due to the individual being outside of the West Midlands areas.
In addition to the support and rescue services, we also delivered training and awareness sessions to 790 young people, adults, and professionals.
Outcomes
From the children and young people we supported:
- 80% reported having an increased feeling of safety,
- 85% reported seeing an improvement in their mental health,
- 80% made positive progress against goals at point of exit, and
- we saw a 90% reduction in young people’s criminogenic need.
Demographics
The following charts depict the breakdown of ages, gender, referral source, and types of exploitation seen within our Support referrals.
The first chart reflects the ages of the individuals that we have seen referred in.
The pie chart, depicting the types of exploitation that young people have reported, shows that many of the young people are victims of various forms of exploitation. This highlights the need to look beyond just County Lines when offering support to young people.
Referrals for females remain much lower than those for males. This comes despite having a Women and Girls Case Worker in place within our team. This is a common statistic across other services working with women and girls, and is something that remains a key target for everyone involved.
As seen in the next chart, our highest number of referrals have come from Police. This can be attributed to the strong links we have built with them. For example, we have a presence in the fortnightly OP Skyclash meeting, and our team joined them on operation during Intensification Week. We also attend daily exploitation and missing meetings, which has improved our relationship with Local Authorities.
Finally, the chart below highlights the largest number of referrals have come from the three cities within the region, with a smaller number from the four smaller local authorities.
Challenges
Resourcing
One of the main challenges for the service this year has been staffing issues, with a case worker being on long term sick and others leaving the service. This has put extra stress onto the remaining workers in an already high-pressure role.
We have been recruiting and the team is rebuilding into a positive and dedicated environment. An overview of our team structure can be seen in the full download.
Referrals
As the charts on the previous pages show, referrals from certain areas have been low. Although we have good links across the region, linking with these particular areas has proven difficult. This can mainly be attributed to these areas having exploitation teams within the local authority, and a reluctance to refer to an outside agency.
The number of females being referred into the service also remains low. This comes despite various awareness sessions being delivered to professionals, and partnership meetings happening.
Working in partnership
The County Lines Support and Rescue team are part of the local Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP) and attend monthly stakeholder meetings across the region. These bring together services and professionals from various backgrounds, opening up a variety of support, guidance and training for the entire region.
Daily briefings are also attended by the team in three of our regional areas. Briefings are in the process of being set up in two more areas within the coming weeks. These meetings offer all relevant agencies the opportunity to discuss missing and exploited children on a daily basis, thus reducing the time for professionals to respond to risk.
We are present at all OP Skyclash meetings. This is the West Midlands County Lines Vulnerability group, run and chaired by West Midlands Police, which takes places fortnightly. We also hold regular meetings with the Home Office and Crest, to look over trends and data, in order to work together to improve the service.
Internally, a Catch22 steering group takes place every quarter. This brings together senior partners to feedback and discuss what’s working and where we can improve.
The team continue to promote SafeCall whilst presenting our own service. We also signpost to parents, and refer on to SafeCall if a young person does not meet out criteria.
Finally, we work with Kooth: a digital mental health provider, that provides remote mental health We actively promote this service to the young people we support through the County Lines Support and Rescue service.
Service user-focused partnerships
Finding out what young people are interested in and enjoy doing is a huge part of our work. The pictures shown in the full document show young people who have got involved with a music studio, and who have gone on to share their story with local radio stations. This has provided an opportunity for them to have their voice heard in a positive way.
In addition to this, we have built relationships with other organisations within the region such as football teams, who offer football camps and activities.
