Stepping Out is a specialist health and social care provider. One of our specialisms is to ensure the safety of young females at risk of sexual exploitation and or whom have been sexually exploited, this is a short post on sexual exploitation of children.
Sexual exploitation of children is now something that we are coming across more often sadly many young people are afraid to disclose information in fear of being ignored, or worse being treated as though they are not telling the truth.
Over the years those whom sexually exploit young people have been using technology to their advantage, the likes of Facebook, Twitter and most recently Instagram are inadvertently providing a platform for these activities to occur. Although we are seeing a tightening of privacy and security systems on these social networks we are still finding that those whom seek to sexually exploit children and young adults are finding more innovative ways to do so.
Recently we worked on a case where we believed a young female was at risk of being sexually exploited via Facebook pages that portray themselves as certified modelling agencies. Many young females dream of becoming a model and therefore in order to fulfill their dreams ignore or forget the risks of communicating with such people.
Stepping Out has a vast amount of experience in working with young females at risk of sexual exploitation, we provide safe homely environment with 24 hour on-site supervision and proactive support in order to aid, monitor and ensure the safety of these clients.
Where possible we seek to closely monitor clients and their social network communication and dedicate specific 1-1 time in order to discuss online safety.
We are renowned for our monitoring skill and use common sense plus technology to ensure we are able to keep our clients safe whilst also establishing reasons that trigger negative behaviors. Those young people whom are at risk of sexual exploitation may receive visits from differing males on a regular basis. Our house rules state that visits will need to be vetted before they are able to access the provision, this usually takes 24 hours and will need to be confirmed in writing by the clients social worker, this removes the risk of us allowing residents to socialise with friends whom may be a negative influence and or may be a risk to others. Our provisions are gender specific therefore we do not allow any male visitors unless family or professionals. Our staff members are tasked with taking note of any unusual behaviors around the immediate grounds of the provision to include driveways and parking spaces in order to ensure our young people particularly females are not entering vehicles where they may be at risk, vehicle registration numbers will be noted and passed on to relevant social workers and police if deemed necessary (important to deter others from seeking to exploit/abuse our clients)
For additional information about our gender specific female only semi-independent provisions please contact us on 0208 342 7217 or contact us via email info@stepping-out.org. If you’d like to read our brochure on our semi-independent provisions click here.
