Across our service, we offer specialist one-to-one support to young people aged under 25 who are victims of county lines exploitation in Merseyside, London, West Midlands, and Greater Manchester, with a key aim of reducing the risk to them and those around them. We deliver specialist support that is tailored to meet the needs of the young person: the intervention pathway is tailored to each individual to ensure we can evidence skills and learning of all the young people we work with.
The main purpose of the support side is to offer specialist one-to-one support to young people, and their families under the age of 25. The service receives support referrals from professionals or families that have identified a need of concern around a young person, who they believe is a victim of county lines / child criminal exploitation (CCE). A young person is also able to refer themselves into the service.
Each young person has a dedicated caseworker who will complete an assessment of needs, goals and aspirations then develop a bespoke plan of support with them. Together, they focus on areas of concern to create a programme of interventions to help prevent and protect the young person from further being exploited.
The service also provides a rescue service to young people who reside in our four delivery regions, but who are found out of the area, in order to return them home safely to the region in which they reside. These referrals tend to come from Police or Social Care once a young person has been arrested or found out of area.
This part of the service is essential in trying to quickly build a relationship with the young person, establish how the activity of county lines has affected them, and support the young person going forward to exit their involvement in county lines. The journey home gives our case workers a chance to engage the young person and begin building a rapport with them, as it is important to understand how the young person could be feeling during that journey. This then feeds into our support work, offering consistency of case worker to the young person.
Merseyside is the smallest of the four County Lines Support and Rescue service regions with a population of just over 1.4 million residents. This is in comparison to London with 8.8 million residents, West Midlands with 2.9 million residents, and and Greater Manchester with 2.9 million residents.
According to the 2021 Census, the Mersyside population is divided relatively evenly between males (48.5%) and females (51.5%). 91.7% of the population are White British, and 63.2% of the population identify as Christian.
Merseyside is often featured in the top hot spots for county lines, which displays the vulnerabilities presented to our young people.
Each borough in Merseyside has a dedicated Child Exploitation Team within each Local Authority. These teams provide support to young people who are currently at risk of, or who have been, exploited either sexually or criminally.
The County Lines Support and Rescue Service have been working closely with these teams in order to provide the best support for the victims of county lines.
We attend Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) meetings in Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley, and St Helens, and Exploitation Team Around the Child (ETAC) meetings in Sefton. This allows us to offer support, guidance and information to young people who are on plans, and the professionals who are supporting them.
In Merseyside, Catch22 also runs the Pan Merseyside Child Explotation and Missing from Home service. We have worked closely with this team to establish
professional relationships, complete training, and plan group work in education settings. It is important that our young people feel supported by both services and that they are not being overwhelmed by more than one Catch22 case worker. We aim to work together to ensure we communicate and provide an effective service across Merseyside.
Impact
In this reporting period the team have supported 85 individual young people around county lines. 11 of these have remained open from the previous year.
Merseyside received 84 new referrals, of which 74 were accepted. Those which were not accepted by the service were predominantly due to the young person not meeting service criteria of being a victim of exploitation through county lines. All of these inappropriate referrals were discussed with the referring agency and onward referrals for appropriate support were completed either through one of the Local Authority exploitation services, Catch22 services, or other voluntary agencies.
The majority of our referrals came in from children’s social care. This is due to the extremely positive relationships that we have built up with the child exploitation teams in each of the Local Authorities, working together to ensure that young people have the right support, at the right time, by the agency that is most appropriate.
We can also see that self-referrals were the second highest referral pathway. This can be attributed to the work the team are doing in HMP Liverpool.
Demographics
The team have worked with young people from all boroughs of Merseyside, with the team receiving the highest number of referrals from Liverpool.
The team have worked with a wide age group of young people, with the youngest being referred in at 12 years old and the oldest being 24.
The young people who have been referred to the service have been predominantly White British (78%), with low numbers of young people from BAME backgrounds being referred.
Rescues
The team have completed four rescues across the year.
A 16-year-old male from the Liverpool area was found in a property in Peterhead, Scotland. The property had been taken over by a criminals for the purposes of selling class A and B drugs. The male had been missing for four days and was arrested alongside two adult males; one of the males was also from Liverpool. The young person was later de-arrested and safeguarding measures were put in place, including his safe return back to Liverpool via the Cacth22 rescue service. The team were able to have some meaningful discussions during the journey, where the young person also discussed other occasions where he had been involved in county lines. The team offered some guidance around safety planning and ongoing support around county lines.
One rescue has been completed for two females, who were missing children found in Aberdeenshire. The young female, who were both on MACE plans, had previously been located in London and North Wales. The girls had no legitimate reason to be in Scotland and had reportedly spent the night in a drug user’s flat before presenting themselves at a police station.
The girls were known to use substances themselves, and on searching their rooms the police found various drug paraphernalia. The team collected the girls from Gretna Green and transported them back to their placement and home addresses. The girls were tired and slept the majority of the way back. Follow-up sessions were offered to the girls who met with the team, as well as onward discussions with their allocated support workers from other agencies.
The fourth rescue was completed for a young person already open to the service, The young person was missing for almost a month before being found in an exploitative situation relating to county lines. There had been several threats made to his mum and his home address, so social care moved the young person to an area outside of Merseyside. Work has continued with his Mum to help her understand the grooming process, county lines, and the devastating impact this can have on young people. Work will continue with the young person remotely until he is moved back to one of our regions.
A number of discussions have taken place with various professionals about potential rescues for children who are known to be involved in county lines and currently missing from home or care. Plans to complete rescues were put in place should the young person be found in exploitative situations relating to county lines. However, all of these young people had returned of their own accord.
Training
Training and community events have also allowed the team to upskill professionals, parents and carers.
Our sessions cover topics including county lines, the grooming process, gangs, referral processes, and how to respond. These training sessions have empowered over 1,000 professionals to be better equipped to spot the signs of county lines, to offer better support, and to be able to signpost to specialist services such as ours.
Training has also been delivered with all Merseyside Police Custody Suites. This has not only raised the profile of the service, but equipped the officers to spot the signs that someone may have been exploited through county lines. Promotional materials are now visible in all custody suites.
Whilst in custody, all children will be offered a phone call to Childline. To complement this, the team have delivered county lines training to both regional and national Childline teams who are now better equipped to spot the signs and indicators of county lines, how best to respond, and how to make a referral into the County Lines Support and Rescue service.
Our Mental Health Worker developed and delivered a two-hour training session around the impact of criminal exploitation through county lines on mental health. The first session took place in March, with 43 tickets sold to professionals. We received positive feedback after this first session and the feedback will inform how we deliver future training sessions. The aim is for the session to be delivered to external professionals once every quarter.
Nationally, the team supported British Transport Police with a request for training which was delivered in York. Webinars have also been delivered in conjunction with the other three regions around girls in county lines.
“The training was really thought-provoking. Although I consider myself knowledgeable around child exploitation and county lines, the mental health lens was really useful in terms of making me see how I can improve my own practice.”
– Professional
Early intervention
Early intervention and community sessions have been high on the agenda for the team, with group work sessions being delivered to just under 1,000 young people this year. Group work has also been completed with a variety of agencies, organisations, and schools such as Everton in The Community, Liverpool Foundation, youth justice services, youth provisions, colleges, and schools. The providers identified that there were a number of young people within their provisions that were at risk of, or who are involved in, county lines. The team delivered a series of sessions looking at healthy relationships, grooming, peer influence, gangs, exploitation, county lines, and what to do if they felt that they, or one of their friends, were being pulled into county lines. The sessions were impactful, with young people gaining the knowledge and information they need to help implement safety plans. In addition. the team have been able to upskill the professionals working directly with these young people with the knowledge and tools they need to best support their young people.
HMP Liverpool
We gained access to the prison through the Equalities Lead, and conducted a forum for 20 young men who were in prison for county lines offences. During this workshop, we provided information about the service and how we intend to deliver it in the prison. We also did an activity around healthy relationships, and engagement was positive.
Following this, we developed a series of sessions to be conducted in HMP Liverpool. To date, 11 young males have engaged with the service. On the first session, we complete the Warwick Edinburgh scale to ascertain their wellbeing which has informed how we conduct the sessions.
The content of the sessions is around healthy relationships, the signs and indicators of exploitation and the grooming process, self-esteem and identity, life mapping, conflict resolution and goals and aspirations. The intention is to cover these topics in approximately 8 sessions. However, this can vary depending on the young men we are working with.
Many of these young men have reflected
upon their own experiences and, where
previously they would have not been able to recognise themselves as victims or perpetrators, now accept that they have both been groomed and have groomed others into county lines. The males have been very open and honest about their lived experiences and believe that the work they have completed with Catch22 will allow them to make better, more informed decisions.
Mental health booklet
Our Mental Health Worker created a free resource for professionals, parents, carers, and trusted adults who want to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. The resource contains information around:
- what mental health is, and what it means to experience difficulty coping,
- spotting the signs that one might be experiencing poor mental health,
- maladaptive coping strategies,
- ways of coping,
- ways to maintain mental health, and
- when and how to reach out for support.
Christmas
Some of the young people we work with expressed that they struggle around Christmas time, due to loneliness or financial pressure to buy gifts for family when, as the weather gets colder even keeping warm can be tough with the rising cost of living. This leaves them with difficulty managing their emotions and potentially being pulled further into exploitation to gain reward.
In response to this, the team put together some Christmas packs containing basic things such as toiletries, a blanket, gloves, socks, and a few small treats such as a selection box, hot chocolate, and a thermal cup. The young people were also given a pack of Christmas cards so that they could send these to family or friends.
All of the young people were extremely appreciative:
“I haven’t got a Christmas present for years. I am going to save these until Christmas day!”
“I can’t believe you have given me these things! I love this blanket… at least I will be warm.”
Challenges
The team have concentrated a lot of focus in raising the profile of the service in Liverpool and Sefton. Historically these Local Authorities have been difficult to find a role for Catch22.
Despite this, the team have delivered training to the Liverpool Early Help and Family Support teams, which has also helped to build awareness of the service. As a result, Catch22 has been added to the agenda for the supervision of of every Early Help Worker, as a reminder that they can refer into the service if they deem necessary.
Moving forward the team will also be attending Liverpool Child Exploitation Risk Management (CERM) and Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) meetings. This is not only to take referrals from Liverpool, but enables us to be a specialist service on these panels offering support, information, and guidance.
In Sefton the team have attended and presented to a Safer Schools conference where all Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), Assistant Designated Safeguarding Leads (ADSLs) and Safer Schools Officers were present. Following this, there has been an influx in requests for case consultation, training for staff, and early intervention group sessions.
As previously mentioned each Local Authority in Merseyside has existing established Child Exploitation teams.
The teams usually consist of prevention workers, child exploitation caseworkers, personal advisors, social workers and the Police. Alongside and embedded in these teams are Catch22’s Pan Merseyside Child Exploitation service and the Knowsley, St. Helens and Wirral Missing from Home teams.
Due to the amount of expertise within Merseyside, the referral rate might not be as high as other areas. Referrals that do come in clearly meet the criteria of the service and all of the young people are either confirmed victims of county lines who may still be being exploited through county lines, or young people who have multiple high-level signs and indicators that they are involved in county lines. This means that the caseload of young people are extremely complex and high-risk. Progress in cases may, therefore, sometimes seem slow. However, it is vital that a trusted relationship is built so that effective and meaningful work can be undertaken to support young people exit county lines activity.
Finally, staffing levels within the team have been up and down with the team only at full capacity for four months. This has been due to recruitment issues and one of the team being off on maternity leave. This has had an impact on the promotion of the service and has meant that we have not been able to meet all of the requests for early intervention work.
Working in partnership
The service remains committed to working in partnership with our designated partners and stakeholders:
- The Home Office: We continue to share our practice, our challenges, and collaborative working with the Home Office. The Home Office have met online within this time period.
- Abianda: Not only has the service attended frequent training and booked in case consultations with Abianda staff, we also promote the service in the forums that are being held with our Women and Girls Caseworkers in other regions.
- Safecall: We continue to promote SafeCall within presentations to organisations within the community, young people, and parents who require advice and guidance on a young person that they are concerned about with regards to county lines, missing and exploitation.
- Reign Collective: We are due to begin focus groups with Reign Collective, in addition to conversations about specific young people, and how to support young women involved in county lines.
- Kooth: Kooth is a digital mental health provider, that provides remote mental health support to service users with identified needs. We actively promote this to the young people we support.
The team have also supported with Operation Medusa, Operation Stonehaven and Operation Toxic. We were asked to present at a Stonehaven conference to not only give a safeguarding perspective about county lines but to celebrate the positive work that is going on within the team. Following on from this, the team will be linking in with Operation Overlord and supporting with the safeguarding of young people identified as being exploited through county lines on transport networks.
As part of the Police County Lines Intensification week, the team worked with Merseyside Police to ensure that any young person who was found in an exploitative situation was safeguarded. This was partially achieved by delivering training to frontline officers around vulnerabilities and signs and indicators of those involved in county lines.
The team linked in with Operation Toxic when a young person disclosed the level of exploitation he was suffering. The young man, now 19-years-old, homeless and care-experienced, disclosed that he had been exploited through county lines since the age of 14. He had been trafficked to the Isle of Man on at least five occasions over the past year. The team supported him to further disclose information including names, addresses, dates, modes of transport, and quantities of drugs to the Police responsible for Operation Toxic and closing county lines.
The Police were able to safeguard the young person and treat him as a victim, placing him in safe and secure accommodation whilst initial investigations were ongoing. Catch22 were then able to link the young person back in with his Personal Advisor from the Looked After team and ensure that he had a place to stay once initial police accommodation had ended. The County Lines Support and Rescue Service has offered him ongoing support around exiting county lines. The support has largely been focused around supporting his mental health and processing his experiences. We have also supported him to access mental health agencies. The police were able to act on the information disclosed to them, and a number of warrants were executed both in Merseyside and in the Isle of Man.
The team also supported with British Transport Police’s Operation Kano, which was targeting potential county lines from Liverpool and Wirral to Cheshire and North Wales. The team supported with this for 2 days working with British Transport Police and Merseyside Police to identify potential victims. The team also took the chance to do some community outreach and spoke to rail staff, cleaners and shops within the stations highlighting the signs that someone might be involved in County Lines and how to respond.
Partnership and joint working continues with other Catch22 services within Merseyside:
- The team has been able to effectively link in with CLIC (Care Leavers Into Careers). This has been a great resource when working with our care experienced young people and supporting them into training and employment.
- The Pan Mersey Child Exploitation and Missing service are also closely linked with the team and often collaborate when delivering training and community sessions. An example of this was at the Wirral Big Learn Event; the team held an information and consultation stall at the annual Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership event. The event allowed professionals had the opportunity to attend presentations and gain information and knowledge about different services. The team reached over 100 professionals offering information, advice and guidance as well as raising awareness of county lines and how to spot signs and indicators that a young person might be being exploited into County Lines.
Our Service Manager also supported the St. Helens Ketamine Awareness session on Facebook Live. Members of the public were invited to ask questions around Ketamine use and county lines. Other panel members included professionals from Police, youth justice, children’s social care, drug and alcohol services, health, and education.
Voice of the young person
The service is constantly seeking out the voice of the young person in order to shape the work that we do with them.
When commencing work, the team initially focus on building positive rapport and relationships with the young person. The team are fully aware and mindful of the importance of the young person trusting professionals.
It is important to recognise that each person is an individual, and ensure that they feel heard and valued. We do this by initially completing an ‘Outcome Star’ and creating a sense of ownership with the young person. The Star allows the young person to prioritise the work that we can do. This allows the young person to shape the agenda of work, whilst also exploring risks, healthy and unhealthy relationships, county lines, and exploitation and/or grooming.
The team also utilise the other monitoring tools such as the Warwick Edinburgh Scale and service user feedback to influence the way they deliver sessions to young people and ensure that the service they receive is the best it can possibly be.
All of our young people are given the opportunity to speak and feedback to our external evaluators, Crest. This however proves to be extremely challenging for our service users. There can be many barriers to engagement as young people are often fearful and untrusting of professionals. Through exploitation, our young people sometimes live very chaotic lives. Their priority is not to give feedback to others about the work they are doing with Catch22, but in some cases their priority is simply to survive.
“You came back. I honestly thought that you would stop trying and give up. People usually give up on me. You actually care and want to help me through this.”
– Young person
Future plans
We look to provide the best possible support to our young people and their families. Over the coming year, we would like to continue to ensure that they know how to access our support, along with raising awareness around county lines and its risks.
We hope to do this by:
- revisiting previous work completed with Custody Suites across the country, in order to raise the profile of the service and increase rescue referrals,
- building on professional relationships held within each Local Authority,
- promoting our service to a range of different services who work with young people,
- delivering group work in education settings across Merseyside, particularly targeting those over-16 via sixth forms, further education colleges, and universities,
- building on professional relationships with Merseyside Police, including linking in with Operation Overlord and supporting with the safeguarding of young people identified as being exploited through county lines on transport networks,
- building trusting professional relationships with Probation Approved Premises to complete work with young people when they have come out of custody and to deliver workshops to raise awareness around County Lines,
- creating a Women and Wellbeing workshop, led by our Women and Girls Caseworker and Mental Health Worker,
- delivering quarterly webinar sessions around County Lines and the impact on mental health, led by our Mental Health Worker, and
- delivering training to professionals about county lines, to ensure they understand what it means, can identify the signs, and know what support is available.
“You believed in me when no one else did. You have helped me with so many things. Even things that aren’t your job, like opening my bank account and taking me to the hospital for appointments. I now feel that I can carry on with my life and not be scared or in debt to anyone ever again. I can and I will succeed in College.”
– Young person
