Parent newsletter – CEO update

We thought it might be helpful to have an overview of the work we do at Pace.

National Parent Support Service is our telephone based casework support to parents across England and Wales whose child is sexually exploited. We give emotional support, information and guidance, and advocacy support to help with engaging with local statutory services. We are able to offer parents additional emotional support from a handful of trained volunteer befrienders.

Parent Forum offers 24/7 online secure peer support to parents affected by CSE wanting to share, offload and offer support to each other. The Forum is currently closed but we hope to re-open in the New Year.

Parent Network Events – we offer the opportunity for parents affected by CSE to meet with each other and attend workshops looking at survival tips, understanding trauma, life beyond CSE, relaxation / creative writing, as well as sharing meals and down time together. Next year, we hope to hold a residential parent network event in June or July 2021.

Parent Participation – this is the opportunity to put something back, use your experience to inform professionals and key policy makers about what works and what doesn’t and influence change in the response to child exploitation. This could be getting involved in research, adding your voice to our audio library for use in training, or meeting with / speaking to professionals at conferences.

Commissioning Partnerships – we now have contracts with local authorities and the police in seven districts across North and West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. We provide parent liaison officers who are co-located within a local multi-agency team alongside social care, the police and other safeguarding professionals and acting as a bridge between families and services. Over the next few years we want to develop commissioning partnerships outside of the North, in the Midlands, London and the South East.

Training – we use the learning from parents and deliver foundation and advanced training courses on child sexual and criminal exploitation to professionals from social care, the police, children’s homes and schools. All courses are online currently due to Covid-19 with the intention of offering blended learning once social restrictions start to lift.

Communications / Research / Fundraising – we use social media channels to promote our work and our key messages, we are developing our website to be more mobile-friendly, and we have e-learning resources, in particular the FREE Keep Them Safe course and the Criminal Exploitation and County Lines course.

Finances 49% of our income comes from grants like the Lottery, Tudor Trust, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, etc.; 35% comes from contracts with local authorities; 12% from training fees; and 4% from donations.