Dudley Exploitation Hub are running a competition for children of all ages to design a logo for the Exploitation Hub, known as DEx. 

Entries should be sent to Neal Balfour at dsppb@dudley.gov.uk by the end of March 2022.  The winner should be notified by Easter and will receive a book token from Dudley Safeguarding People Partnership.

Below is some information on the Exploitation Hub which may help young people with their designs.

Dudley Exploitation Hub is part of Dudley Children’s Services. It is a multi-agency team consisting of 3, but currently, 2 social workers, 3 family support workers, 1 senior practitioner working with 2 intensive family support workers working on aspects of children and young people who go missing providing Return Home Interviews. There are two police officers on the team, 1 supports the team with issues of child criminal exploitation and the other one with child sexual exploitation.

The Social Workers (SWs) and Family Support Workers (FSWs) work directly with young people and their families to work through issues that have been identified. The aim is to help the young people and sometimes, their family members, to understand and appreciate what is going on in terms of the young people being used by adults or peers to undertaken criminal activities on their behalf. In most cases, the parents/carers are already worried about the young people, however, in some cases, the adults are also unaware of the exploitation concerns. The role of the SW and FSW as well as professionals from other agencies is to help the young people work through these issues.

The social worker encourages the young people to be part of the process and Dudley Exploitation Team has created a ‘My Safety Plan’ that they work through with the young people. The ‘My Safety Plan’ allows young people to understand why the adults are worried about them. Through the plan, they can discuss how they can work with the professionals to help reduce the worries. The plan also asks the young person to identify what they can do if they are feeling unsafe, who they can contact and also to identify the professional, among all professionals working with them, that they feel able to contact easily should they feel unsafe. This is usually dependant on the relationships the young people have formed with the different workers involved with them.

Young people are encouraged to attend their meetings, especially the MACE meetings, so that they can hear the worries that professionals have about them. By attending MACE meetings, this also means that they are able to contribute to the recommended actions that can help their situation.

Dudley Exploitation Team also works indirectly with young people who are involved in anti-social behaviour and low level criminal behaviour as part of group. Through this process, a meeting, called Disruption Meeting, takes place. All professionals working with the different young people identified as part of the group come up with a different recommendations on how they can work with the young people to help in interrupting the unwanted behaviour and find alternative activities that are more appropriate for the young people.

Dudley Exploitation Team is seeking to work closely with education professionals so that young people stay in school rather than be excluded as not being in school increases the risk to young people, of being asked to undertake criminal activities on behalf of others or simply getting involved in criminal activity on their own because they have nothing else to do during the day.