Telford child sexual exploitation report under review

The Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Children Board will be in charge of ensuring recommendations made in a report into offences in the borough are put into place.

The council's children and young person scrutiny committee produced a 100-page report into child sexual exploitation following Operation Chalice, a police investigation into a child prostitution and trafficking ring in the borough.

This investigation resulted in the successful prosecution of nine men, who were jailed for a total of 49 years.

The Scrutiny Review made 38 recommendations aimed at better protecting young people in the borough.

Now a report going to the council's Cabinet on July 21 says that the Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Children Board will be responsible for monitoring the recommendations and ensuring progress is made.

An interim report will be made to the Telford & Wrekin Council Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee in December, with a full progress report being brought forward in May next year.

Partners who work together on the Safeguarding Children Board are already working to deliver the recommendations and progress includes using intelligence to target perpetrators, which has led to disrupting behaviour related to sexual exploitation

Taxi drivers have been given Driver Awareness Training. Reviews have been carried out of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Sexual Health Services have and access to support for CSE victims and their families will be improved. And supervision for professionals working with children abused through exploitation is now the same quality as social workers'.

Councillor Paul Watling, theTelford & Wrekin Council's cabinet member for children, young people and communities, said: "We very much welcomed the scrutiny review that took place as it is absolutely essential that we strive to improve how we work together and tackle this extremely serious issue.

"The review found that organisations in Telford and Wrekin have been working well to tackle and prevent child sexual exploitation."