The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has approved £85,269-worth of funding to extend the contract of a Barnardos worker.
The worker is co-located with the Cleveland Police Complex Exploitation Team (CET.) Funding wlll extend the role until 31 March 2027 at 29.6 hours per week.
Barnardos already has close partnership working arrangements with community safety and criminal justice services operating around the exploitation of children in Cleveland. This isthrough local authority-funded exploitation workers.
As an organisation, Barnardos is uniquely placed to focus on child exploitation as it has significant expertise in this area.
The aim of the CET role is to support and enhance existing Barnardos exploitation services by:
- Working closely with the CET team, providing support in submitting safer referrals;
- Linking with Barnardos’ exploitation services across the Tees Valley. This is in order to promote cross boundary working. It also allows workers to share information about hotspots/places of interest, persons of interest and exploitation case work;
- Creating closer working relationships with social care services and other agencies. This promotes working together to disrupt exploitation;
- Assisting the CET team during home visits. This helps to build trusted working relationships with children, young people and carers during investigations linked to grooming/CSE/CCE/abuse;
- Ensuring the CET Team are informed in Relationship Based Practice;
- Giving information, support and guidance to parents, carers and professionals on grooming and exploitation.
- Providing 1-2-1 support sessions to children and young people being worked with by the CET team.
- Supporting Police Operations as and when requested. This is to ensure children and young people are effectively supported through the process and the best evidence is obtained.
- Facilitating access to safe and trusted therapeutic services
- Seeking service user views to inform training needs, gaps in service, service development and quality assurance.
Effective Support
The post ensures that children, young people and their parents/carers are supported as effectively as possible through the process of an exploitation investigation.
It also makes sure that agencies work together as cohesively as possible to maximise the disruption and penalties for those who exploit children and young people in Cleveland.
DRF 2025/2026 – 006: Extension of Funding for Barnardos CET worker (application, 167kB)