How Welsh researchers are helping shape domestic and global policies to protect young people from sexual exploitation

Welsh researchers, funded by Health and Care Research Wales, are redefining the way health professionals and practitioners identify and assess young people at risk of sexual exploitation, helping to shape global policies aimed at keeping children safe.

Dr Sophie Hallett from Cardiff University and her team used their research findings to develop new legislative guidance in Wales, which aims to redefine sexual exploitation and move away from older, more outdated models of risk assessment.

Dr Hallett, who received a Social Care Grant in research funding, led a collaborative project with a local authority in Wales using a unique dataset to investigate outcomes for young people who had been sexually exploited. He also interviewed social workers, foster carers and young people, and spent three months in a residential home with young people at risk of exploitation.

That work ultimately led to the development of new Welsh Government guidance, which has subsequently been adopted by policymakers as far away as Australia, and resources have been created to support professionals involved in child protection.

Dr Hallett said the driving force behind her research was to listen to and understand young people so we could better support them.

She said: “In our research we went back to records of young people, originally assessed over a decade ago as part of an exercise to create a framework for assessing the risks of sexual exploitation across Wales.

“Essentially, it meant that we knew how those individuals were assessed ten years before we started the project, so we could go back to their records and see what their original assessment score was, what sort of things had happened to them in their lives, and where they were now in the system.

“We could see what interventions had been made, whether there was any sexual exploitation and whether the risks identified at the time might not have materialised.”

As part of her work, Dr Hallett and her team spent several months interviewing foster carers, social workers and young people to increase understanding of risks in relation to sexual exploitation. This has led to a different approach in Wales, centred around a list of indicators and a much broader, holistic assessment of care and support needs.

Among the tools Dr. Hallett subsequently created were message cards for youth health professionals and other professionals, encouraging them to rethink their approach to risk and the way they interact with young people, particularly as they focus on managing young people’s behavior.

She added: “It was about creating messages for people to think about. Our research suggests that while managing risk is an essential part of safeguarding, paying attention to the unmet care and support needs of children and young people and their wider wellbeing is also a critical part of protecting children from harm, reducing vulnerability and maintaining longer-term safety for them.”

As a result of the team’s findings, Dr. Hallett was invited to travel to Australia and work with the Australian Government to help inform the development of a home visiting assessment model based on play and the child-centred approach This is the result of her research into listening to children, identifying unmet needs early and addressing wellbeing to promote long-term resilience and safety and prevent sexual exploitation and other forms of harm.

She added:

That’s the most important thing for me: making sure that the voice of the child and their needs and well-being are central, so that we can think about how we can best support the child and ensure their long-term safety, and how we can promote their well-being.”

Sign up for our newsletter and be the first to receive information about our financing arrangements.