Agenda item

The Rescue and Response (R&R) County Lines project has been running since 2018 and covers the 32 boroughs of London. This project gives support to children and adults until the age of 25 years old that are being exploited by county lines operations, as well as analysing what areas of London young people are most vulnerable to exploitation. A synopsis of the project was presented by Edil Abdi.

·  There are two types of referrals into the project:

o  Intervention referral: When a child is referred to one R&R’s three providers for support if there is no capacity in local authorities or they do not meet criteria characteristics.

o  Intelligence referral: This referral informs the project of young people working in county lines and this information can be shared back to local authorities.

The services issued by these providers range from rescuing young people from counties and bringing them back to London for intervention services, providing support to parents for when an exploited young person returns home, housing support for young people that need to be moved quickly and gender specific and case consultations.

R&R analyst Farah Dadabhoy presented the data collected between 2020-2021 holistically with some reference to specifically to Barking and Dagenham:

·  41% of 593 R&R referrals were received and accepted across London.

·  62% of the accepted referrals engaged in R&R intervention which led to a 93% rate in positive outcomes and an 88% reduction or ceasing in county lines operations.

·  In Barking and Dagenham 29 referrals were made between 2020-2021 – this ranked the 6^th highest referrer out of London. However, the confirmed number of young people working county lines provided by police and the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre data actually place LBBD 15^th highest in London.

·  The demographics of referrals made to R&R between 2020-2021 are proportionally dominated by men at 86% and 14% females – similarly correlating to the Barking and Dagenham’s referrals demographic.

·  Over a 3-year period the wards in Barking and Dagenham that receive the most R&R referrals were: Whalebone, Village, Longbridge, Abbey, Eastbury and Gascoigne.

·  For the 2020-2021 fiscal year, Norfolk, Essex, Sussex, and South Wales were found to be the top county lines locations that exploited young people were linked too.

Martin Rolston questioned what the capacity for the team looked like moving forward into the future. Edil Abdi responded by stating that R&R is an in-between service that relays the data they have back to local authorities so that councils can then utilize the services they have or go out to tender for new providers.

Angie Fuller assured that R&R are well linked with LBBD’s strategic criminal exploitation group and the adolescent and youth offending service which has resulted in LBBD being ranked 6^th for R&R referrals.

Andy Opie questioned if there could be an extra piece of commissioning work completed within LBBD to allow for a smoother transition of support for young people transitioning into 18+. April Bald responded that the Contextual Safeguarding Strategic group do not cease support of young people going into adulthood until the board are satisfied that they have they have confidently transitioned into a new service that has oversight of their needs and can provide sufficient support. However, work can be done to improve the offer of early help services in adults commissioning.