The Avon and Somerset Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Network Process an Introduction

The Avon and Somerset Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Network Process – an introduction

The Avon and Somerset Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Network process, which targets those who perpetrate the most serious offending across the area, starts on Wednesday 9th March 2016.

CSE is a form of child abuse. When people are worried that a child might be being abused, they should tell their local Children’s Social Care Department or police Safeguarding Coordination Unit. There will then be a process of information sharing and coordinated action will be taken to safeguard the child, ensure that their practical, emotional and health needs are met and that suspected crimes are investigated by the police. If the evidence can be found, the perpetrators will be held to account through the criminal justice system.

But we have learned that sometimes, CSE is different. Offenders work together in targeting and abusing vulnerable children, passing them around like objects and using them to access other young people to be abused. On occasions, single perpetrators abuse many children, grooming them and cynically exploiting their vulnerability for their own sexual gratification. Children are trafficked from one place to another, across force and local authority borders to be abused. Online chat rooms and social media sites are often used for this purpose, but premises like fast food outlets, hotels and places where vulnerable young people congregate also provide opportunities for abusers. We have learned that CSE perpetrators sometimes use sophisticated tactics to meet, control and abuse vulnerable children, to ensure their silence and to perpetuate their abusive activities. The consequences are devastating for the victims, who often suffer enduring physical, psychological and emotional scars that ruin their lives and those close to them.

So we have to be agile and responsive in identifying these factors and developing effective strategies for going after the perpetrators, dismantling their networks and holding them to account. When offenders can’t be prosecuted, they must be aggressively disrupted using all available measures to do this.

The CSE Network process provides a forum for these complex cases to be identified at the right level, for information to be shared between all those who can contribute and for front line police tasking processes to assess the circumstances and stimulate necessary action amongst other law enforcement priorities.

Any organisation can refer complex CSE that meets the above criteria into the CSE Network process. Only cases that are already being managed in normal child protection procedures will be considered. The Network process will consider the wider implications of complex cases, to ensure that appropriate links are established and that effective action is taken with the necessary resources being deployed proportionate to the level of threat, harm and risk. CSE Network meetings will involve all organisations with a part to play and will be held every two months in every Local Policing/Local Authority area, feeding into police tasking processes.

For more information or to refer a case for consideration, email:

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Dave McCallum

3rd March 2016