Service Pathways

Using a Public Health Approach to Address Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE)

A Public Health Approach provides a strategic framework that addresses exploitation at multiple levels, and offers a practical and effective way to organise services and the pathway through them. It focuses on preventing exploitation before it happens, mitigating its impact at population level, identifying risks early, and supporting children and young people who have already been harmed.

This approach recognises CCE as a complex issue influenced by multiple factors across different levels of society. It shifts the focus from crisis response to prevention, early intervention, and recovery, ensuring children and young people are safeguarded, supported, and given the opportunity to thrive. It emphasises evidence-based interventions, data driven decision making, and a focus on population-level outcomes.

A public health approach consists of four key steps:

1. Define and monitor the problem by gathering data on the nature, scope, and patterns of occurrence
2. Identify risk and protective factors by understanding the social, environmental, and individual factors that increase or reduce vulnerability
3. Develop and test prevention strategies by designing evidence-informed interventions that address root causes and build resilience
4. Ensure widespread adoption of effective strategies by scaling up effective strategies through policy, practice, and community engagement.
5. In relation to addressing CCE the operationalisation of the public health approach is demonstrated through the 4 levels, known as Hardiker levels, of the child safeguarding system in Northern Ireland, namely

Level 1 – Universal Prevention and social development services

Level 2 – Support and therapeutic intervention for children and families in need

Level 3 – Therapeutic and support services for children and families with severe difficulties

Level 4 – Intensive and long- term support and protection for children and families

For practitioners who work in the child safeguarding system, the Hardiker levels will be familiar and will frame their work, in partnership with others, associated with assessment of need undertaken through the Understanding the Needs of Children in Northern Ireland (UNOCINI) process.

However, to simplify the service pathways workflow that practitioners will navigate in order to engage with the appropriate service pathways, it has been divided into 3 stages;

Primary Prevention

Provision of universal services with the aim of preventing CCE occurring

Secondary Prevention

Provision of early intervention to support children and young people at risk of CCE and to prevent escalation

Tertiary Prevention

Activity to ensure the safety, support recovery, and provide long-term, holistic care of children and young people who have or are experiencing criminal exploitation.

Diagram 1 below depicts the service pathways that will be followed by practitioners based on assessed risk and need, to either prevent or support children and young people at risk of or experiencing CCE.

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Practitioners may access the service pathway at different stages, recognising that children and young people affected by criminal exploitation may move between levels of support – ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping down’ based on their changing risk and need.

Based on a sequential flow the following narrative describes how the service pathway is accessed and details examples of strategies that are relevant to each stage.

By capturing information across key domains, developmental needs, parenting capacity, and family/environmental factors UNOCINI enables practitioners to:

• Identify early signs of vulnerability.
• Understand the contextual factors influencing risk and resilience.
• Inform appropriate pathways, whether through Family Support, Child Protection, Looked After Child, or Leaving Care services.