Co-designing community resilience to online child sexual exploitation

Event details

Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre webinar

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) cases have grown in scale and severity over recent years. Its impact on victims, families and communities is significant and there is a lack of effective solutions to this problem.

This webinar will discuss the findings of a two-year study conducted by researchers from the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, which developed community quality standards to address and prevent OCSEA in one local authority.

The researchers engaged with over 50 practitioners, parents, children and young people since May 2022. As part of this work, they co-produced an animated video with local children to highlight their perceptions of this problem and effective responses to it. A co-production day with local practitioners, parents and young people then identified eleven priorities to guide effective local responses to OCSEA.

Informing this work, the researchers conducted a case file analysis of 185 Child Internet Exploitation Cases which enabled a better understanding of current law enforcement responses to this problem. With the help of local action groups, the researchers then developed six quality standards which are currently in the process of being implemented locally. Next, these quality standards will be piloted in another local authority area to test their transferability and their promise to support a national response to OCSEA which is community focused.

This project is the first of its kind to develop OCSEA quality standards and the research team hopes that this will support local communities in addressing and preventing OCSEA.

About the speakers