Recommendation 35

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

Improving partnership working to prevent substance misuse is at the heart of the Drug Strategy and ensuring that local areas have robust multi-agency safeguarding responses is an important element of our approach to tackling county lines exploitation. The Government agrees that drug treatment services and exploitation services should coordinate interventions with children and young people in a way which best responds to local needs. We are already taking action to encourage local authorities to deliver joined up services in a number of ways. Firstly, supporting local areas to link up drug treatment services for children and young people with exploitation services to ensure that they receive holistic support was a key part of what we set up Combating Drugs Partnerships (CDPs) to do. In particular, in the guidance for local delivery partners on the Drug Strategy, we asked CDPs to: link with their local safeguarding children partnership; include Directors of Children’s Services as key representatives; and ensure there is effective work in place to improve early intervention, referral pathways, and support available for children involved in the use or supply of drugs. More broadly, the guidance requests that CDPs share data and co- ordinate resource allocation across services to allow practitioners to better understand the holistic needs of the children and young people they are working with. Some areas have developed effective sub-groups of their CDPs to address issues such as the links between drug misuse and exploitation – for example on whole family working, or on targeting those most at risk of exploitation (e.g. through school exclusions). The Government endorses this approach and we have established an online forum for CDPs to share challenges and promising practice. We will continue to consider ways to drive improvement in CDPs’ support for children and young people at risk of criminal exploitation as we develop milestones for the coming years. In addition to defining the ways that local partners should work together through CDPs, we are also directly funding programmes which take a local partnership approach to addressing drug use and criminal exploitation in some of the areas most affected in England and Wales. Although Project ADDER mainly focuses on services for adults, local areas have developed interventions for young people under 18 years old and young adults under 25 years old that help with access to treatment, wider needs and risks from their involvement in county lines. The focus is on safeguarding and reducing vulnerabilities. As part of the County Lines Programme, we are investing in specialist support services for victims of county lines exploitation and their families which have strong links with substance misuse services in local authorities and other charities. We recommend that the Government consider adopting a statutory definition on Child Criminal Exploitation.