Child Sexual Exploitation: Support and Interventions Course

Lesson 1 • Prevalence and Scope of CSE

Examines data sources, reporting gaps, and global prevalence estimates. Contextualizes the scale of the problem to motivate professional urgency.

Lesson 2 • Typologies and Models of Exploitation

Maps the main exploitation models including peer-on-peer, organised networks, and online grooming. Enables practitioners to recognise diverse exploitation patterns.

Lesson 3 • Risk and Protective Factors

Identifies individual, family, and community factors that increase or reduce CSE vulnerability. Grounds later intervention planning in evidence-based risk assessment.

Lesson 4 • Defining Child Sexual Exploitation

Clarifies the legal and operational definition of CSE and distinguishes it from related abuse forms. Provides the baseline vocabulary used throughout the course.

Lesson 1 • Indicators Across Professional Contexts

Tailors indicator recognition to education, health, police, and social care settings. Reinforces that all professionals share responsibility for early identification.

Lesson 2 • Physical and Health Indicators

Identifies physical signs including injuries, sexual health presentations, and substance use. Equips health and social care professionals to connect clinical findings to CSE.

Lesson 3 • Online and Digital Indicators

Addresses digital footprints, platform behaviours, and online grooming signals. Prepares practitioners to assess risk in technology-mediated environments.

Lesson 4 • Environmental and Contextual Indicators

Examines location-based and situational cues such as missing episodes and unknown adults. Broadens recognition beyond the child to include surrounding circumstances.

Lesson 1 • Understanding Trauma and Its Effects

Explains neurobiological and psychological impacts of chronic trauma on children. Provides the scientific basis for adapting professional communication and assessment approaches.

Lesson 2 • Secondary Trauma and Practitioner Wellbeing

Addresses vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout risks for CSE practitioners. Introduces self-care strategies that sustain long-term professional effectiveness.

Lesson 3 • Core Principles of Trauma-Informed Care

Introduces the six foundational principles: safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment of marginalised groups, and cultural sensitivity. Establishes the practice standard for all course modules.

Lesson 4 • Organisational Trauma-Informed Culture

Examines how agencies embed trauma-informed principles into policies, professional social work supervision, and environment. Connects individual practice to systemic organisational change.

Lesson 1 • Immediate Safety Planning

Covers urgent risk assessment and short-term safety measures following a disclosure. Bridges the gap between first contact and formal multi-agency referral.

Lesson 2 • Receiving a Disclosure Safely

Provides step-by-step guidance on responding in the moment of disclosure without leading or contaminating accounts. Applies trauma-informed communication skills from Chapter 3.

Lesson 3 • Referral Pathways and Handover

Maps referral routes to child protection, law enforcement, and specialist services. Ensures continuity of care and information integrity during handover.

Lesson 4 • Understanding Disclosure Dynamics

Explains why children delay, retract, or partially disclose exploitation. Reduces practitioner frustration and improves response quality by contextualising disclosure behaviour.

Lesson 1 • Co-Creating Safety Plans

Teaches collaborative safety planning with children, families, and networks. Produces actionable, monitored plans that reduce immediate and ongoing risk.

Lesson 2 • Documenting and Reviewing Risk

Establishes standards for recording risk assessments and scheduling structured reviews. Ensures accountability and enables multi-agency oversight of changing risk levels.

Lesson 3 • Assessing Family and Network Risk

Extends assessment beyond the child to caregivers, peers, and wider networks. Identifies protective adults and network-level threats to safety.

Lesson 4 • Conducting a Child-Centred Assessment

Guides practitioners through age-appropriate, participatory assessment conversations with children. Ensures the child's voice is central to risk formulation.

Lesson 1 • Multi-Agency Meetings and Case Conferences

Prepares practitioners to contribute effectively to strategy meetings, case conferences, and reviews. Builds skills in presenting information clearly and advocating for the child.

Lesson 2 • Joint Investigation Protocols

Outlines the principles of joint investigative interviews and coordinated evidence gathering. Ensures practitioners understand their role without compromising criminal investigations.

Lesson 3 • Multi-Agency Structures for CSE

Describes the roles of child protection, law enforcement, health, education, and voluntary sectors in CSE response. Establishes who does what within a coordinated system.

Lesson 4 • Information Sharing Principles

Clarifies when and how to share information lawfully and proportionately across agencies. Resolves common practitioner confusion about confidentiality versus child protection duties.

Lesson 1 • Addressing Co-Occurring Needs

Covers substance use, mental health, and educational disruption as interlinked recovery challenges. Ensures practitioners coordinate holistic support rather than siloed responses.

Lesson 2 • Engaging Hard-to-Reach Young People

Addresses strategies for building therapeutic relationships with young people who resist services. Applies attachment and motivational principles to sustain engagement over time.

Lesson 3 • Supporting Families in Recovery

Examines how to involve and strengthen families as recovery resources. Addresses caregiver trauma responses that can inadvertently hinder a child's healing.

Lesson 4 • Measuring Progress and Outcomes

Introduces outcome frameworks and tools for tracking recovery progress with young people. Enables practitioners to demonstrate impact and adapt interventions based on evidence.

Lesson 1 • Primary Prevention Approaches

Examines universal programmes targeting children, families, and communities before exploitation occurs. Builds capacity to design and evaluate population-level prevention initiatives.

Lesson 2 • Workforce Development and Training Design

Equips leaders to assess training needs and design sustainable workforce development plans. Ensures organisational capacity is built and maintained beyond individual practitioners.

Lesson 3 • Leading Organisational CSE Responses

Prepares senior practitioners to audit, develop, and champion organisational CSE policies. Translates frontline learning into strategic improvement and governance accountability.

Lesson 4 • Disruption and Perpetrator-Focused Strategies

Covers law enforcement and community strategies that target perpetrators and disrupt exploitation networks. Complements child-focused interventions with demand-reduction approaches.