Police and partners work with local businesses to tackle child exploitation in the city centre

‘The more you share with us, the more children we can help.’

Police and partners are working with local businesses to spot the signs of exploitation and encourage reporting so that we can safeguard vulnerable people at the earliest opportunity. 

Child protection is one of the most complex areas of policing, owing to many vulnerabilities being hidden or taking place behind closed doors. Training days like this enable us to speak to professionals from a variety of industries and backgrounds and raise awareness of what to look for. By having more eyes and ears on the ground, it increases our chances of safeguarding young people. 

The session was delivered by police and professionals from our Manchester Complex Safeguarding Hub. We know that child exploitation cannot be solved by policing alone which is why our multi-agency response and co-location of key agencies is so crucial to our success. It enables us to create a bespoke, wrap around response as soon as a child is reported to us.

Those in attendance included taxi licensees, local hoteliers, licenced premises, security officials, business owners, and their employees. They are likely to see signs of exploitation in their place of work, if we equip them with the knowledge of what the signs are, and make sure they are confident reporting incidents to us; we can strengthen our intelligence picture of exploitation in the city centre and potentially make a huge difference for a child.

Detective Inspector Chris Chadderton from Manchester Complex Safeguarding Hub said: “We want to encourage people to be vigilant and alive to the signs of exploitation. If people don’t feel confident, and want to further develop their knowledge of exploitation, support and additional training sessions are available.

“Our message is, and always will be, if something doesn’t look or feel right; trust your instinct and report it.

“Something which may appear inconsequential could very well be the missing piece to one of our investigations, or it could be first pivotal step to us safeguarding a child.”