Welcome back to the P-Pod, the partnership podcast from the Sunset and Children Partnership. What we want to pick up on today is over quite a number of episodes now, we've spoken to our colleagues from the police and quite often when we think about the police, we think about our uniformed officers that we see out on the street, or we might be thinking about our detectives working in the background solving crimes, but there is much, much more to the police than just that. So I'm really pleased today to invite my guests along to talk about quite a specific area safeguarding of work they do within the police. And I have with me today, Alison and Tim from the Southern Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. Welcome along both of you. Thanks for joining me. I just wanted, could you introduce yourselves and your role just to get going? 

Yeah.Sure, so my name's Alison Jenkinson and I am the regional manager of the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit in the southern part of the force.

Hello everyone, Tim McDonald. I'm a decision maker within the Southern Lighthouse Unit.

Thank you for that and thanks for starting this off. Now, I think the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit or LSU, because we love an acronym, is possibly an area of policing that people may not be quite so aware of. You're not sort of so much there out in the foreground, we think of in terms of policing quite often. But I know you guys play a really, really vital role in terms of safeguarding, in terms of support for victims, in terms of making sure that actually policing is affecting movement and moving forward, not just about sort of detecting crimes and responding to crimes as such. So for anybody that's not heard of the LSU before, would you be able to give us bit of an overview about what you are, what you do?

Yeah, sure. So, the LSU or the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. So that's a safeguarding unit of Avin Somerset Police and we support victims of crime and safeguarding arrangements across the force area. obviously we have five local authority areas within our force area, which we work with when it comes to safeguarding arrangements. And also we support victims of crime from pre-charge right through to post-charge as well. So that's before police have charged a suspect with a crime.

We're co-located with partners across our force in three areas, Kingston, Bristol and Bridgewater. And so that means that we've got a really good local community really, we're based within our communities. But our hubs work together to ensure that we're working across the force as well. whilst we might have our hubs, we also work together to provide that support across the force. The way that we actually work is probably the easiest way to explain what we do, if that makes sense. So if a police officer is called out to an incident,

and they recognise a vulnerability, what they will do is that they will fill in what we call a risk assessment. And that could either be a brag for vulnerability or a dash when we're talking about domestic incidences. From that assessment, we will get tasked through to the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. And if there's a crime attached, it will go to our victim side. And if there isn't a crime attached, it will go to our

vulnerability side or our safeguarding side and it will be reviewed and it will be looked at and we will make decisions as to whether or not we're going to share that information with any of our safeguarding or support partners. So that is kind of like the essence really of the core function of the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. But we also do have smaller teams within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit who do more bespoke work as well, which I am go further into as well.

Yeah, no, it'd good to sort of pick into that. And just to pick up as well, the star we obviously introduced you as being from the Southern Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, obviously referring to there's also a Northern Safeguarding Unit as well. Because I know that's changed over, oh when did that change? A and a half, two years ago? I'm gonna say now. Yeah. Is there a sort of difference between the two?

And locality wise, I suppose. So within the Southern Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, we work with our partners in Somerset, but also in North Somerset. And within our Northern Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, we work with the local authority areas of Bristol, Baines and South Gloss. And we all do the same processes. We all do the same things, but obviously we've all grown in different ways and worked with our partners for our communities. we're all set up a little bit differently in each area.

Do you see much of a difference between the two areas now in terms of those needs in the different areas, the post of Somerset, North Somerset compared with say Bristol, which is quite a different geographical area. Do you see much of a difference in the sort of things that come your way or was it kind of fairly similar, fairly consistent?

I would say it's the same work they have up there that we have down here, whether you're talking about MARIC, child strategies, adult strategies, mental health risk assessments, those sort of things. all the same work. It's the workloads that maybe are slightly different and slightly nuances, but it is the same work.

That's good to know because sometimes there's a perception that things are very different in say a very urban area compared to a very rural area and some sense of funny old mix of areas in terms of rural and urban and poverty and affluence within the same county so we're a bit of a big bag of everything aren't we I think.

Absolutely. And I think, we always see spikes. So obviously, like when you talk about life crime with younger people, that is everywhere. However, we have had spikes of lot of incidences within a short period of time in Bristol. And so therefore it becomes people's perception of that it's only a Bristol thing, whilst actually life crime with youth is everywhere.

So what sort of volumes of cases are we talking about? So on an annual basis, I presume you guys are pretty busy a lot of time in terms of, yeah, already what you've talked about in terms of domestic abuse instance or serious youth violence. Is there a lot sort of coming through your doors?

Yeah, so when I say that the police go out to an incident and if they see a vulnerability, they will complete either a brag or a dash. Those occurrences are then tasked through to us at the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit and we receive nearly 80,000 incidents per year, but we're tasked more than that. So you'll be seeing over a hundred thousand tasks out of those 80,000 incidences. That's what's coming into.

our unit across the force. And that converts into around 40,000 referrals or notifications out to our partners where we're sharing that information for safeguarding purposes with our safeguarding partners.

sounds like a very busy day. Trying to do some calculations in my head, of, a hundred thousand-ish and then breaking that down to 365 days in a year. know that's, that's a massive volume. Out of that, what would you say the kind of the majority of those things that come into you?

It's very busy

It will be domestic instances, yeah. So around 42%, so around 33,000 relate to domestic instances. And it's about 67 % of those would be crimes, would have a crime attached to them. And the others would be what we call non-crimes. So it's a domestic incident, but they haven't had an actual crime identified within that incident, if that makes sense. So domestic abuse or domestic incident would be what we see the most, what comes in the most.

I think actually just something to clarify at the start here maybe might be useful. Cause I think sometimes people hear about services and they hear about different programs that taking place and they go, brilliant. Actually, I've got a family. could think that might be really useful for somebody. In terms of the work you do and kind of, guess, one of a better word, referrals, I think just to sort of make clear in terms of referrals coming into you, it's not, this is just open to anybody and anybody just refer to you.

So the LSU is an internal police system in reality. It's where the police staff, police officers have gone to something where there's a safeguarding concern or identified that there's an enhanced service required for a victim or something along those lines. Those referrals are for us and they come into us and it gets split either way, I.e. into the lighthouse side, which would be victim and its care officers, or into what we call the safeguarding side, titled the vulnerability. So it gets split slightly.

like that. Be honest because obviously we work in hubs and those hubs are all matches with each local authority. Any professional within that mash, as it were, can contact the LSU, safeguarding side of it, and have conversations with the decision makers or the safeguarding officers in order to try and maybe understand the referral or the risk or part of the risk that they're trying to view and assess themselves. And we can sometimes assist with that.

We assist with formal meetings, let's say. We don't actually have any referral mechanism into us from outside the organization.

So what you're saying is it would be more like saying internal police side of things, but then potentially disseminating that out in terms of you have specific concerns or if you identify a specific need there that somebody might be able to support with, it's then making sure that that right support is in place, I guess. If I can just take us back just for a second there, Tim, you mentioned about mash, which some people might be very familiar with. Other people might be thinking, what is he talking about? Is it talking about potatoes or something like that for a minute? Would you be able to clarify what mash is for anybody that's not aware?

MASH stands for a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, therefore the acronym again. Within a MASH, you have the partner agencies. So you have Children's Social Care, Health and the Police. We are the three core partners involved in relation to that. And depending upon where you are, we are co-located altogether, let's say, or we're not. It just depends what local authority or whereabouts you are. So the MASH generally receives referral, Children's Social Care will receive referral.

They will then contact health and us to maybe have what we call a mash meeting, a mash discussion. So that's below the level of a strategy discussion and share their concerns. We share the police information, health will share their information and then hopefully come up with a plan as to how we can then move forward with that. Does it need an assessment or does it need to go to a strategy? But it depends again with the different local authorities what happens in relation to that.

Yeah. And for anybody that's listened to any previous podcasts that we've done, we've had colleagues say from the family front door for children's services. I'm sure you'd have heard those sort of hearing over time. We're based in Bridgewater police station. And that's the aim of that actually is to get people co-located sitting together to actually have conversations and understand situations. Sometimes through mash in terms of information that comes in. Well, what does this actually look like when we join up these dots a little bit, which is we always know is so key, isn't it? When it comes to safeguarding children. So thanks for that. And we've mentioned already around.

Domestic abuse and Alison just quoted to what percentage you're on, domestic abuse. What are the sort of themes that you see coming in through your door? Do you get sort of common things other than we'll pick up around domestic abuse in a bit if that's okay. But is there anything else you kind of see coming through your door?

We absolutely do. And we will tend to find that most of our meetings that we attend are relation to safeguarding children. However, Tim, we were talking about this yesterday, Tim, weren't we, about how we've noticed an increase in relation to young people with mental health concerns over the last couple of years, especially since COVID, we absolutely see that something rising. There's all, we all often see within the incidences that we're reviewing and sharing with our partners, links to substance misuse, mental health, and also violence.

However, when it comes to mental health, we don't have a mental health referral pathway currently from police, from the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. And so a theme, I suppose, is our team's feeling frustrated that they don't have that referral pathway to share concerns with our mental health colleagues.

Is that more around parental mental health or children's mental health or both?

both. So usually when we're talking about mental health services, we're usually talking about how we can refer to adult mental health and there is no current pathway there. In relation to children's mental health, we are looking currently at pathways to send notifications to CAMHS if we know a child is open to CAMHS. So we're currently working with CAMHS colleagues across the force because what we're trying to do is we're doing it in one area, we want to do it across the force as well. So we're currently having discussion with CAMHS colleagues.

across the force area about how we can know whether or not a young person is open to CAMHS and if they are, we can then share incidences or information with CAMHS knowing that that child or that young person is open to them so that their support worker has the information that they need to safeguard that young person appropriately.

It's a real challenge. I'm really interested in you pick out around mental health, because I think it is a growing area of consideration, both in terms of nationally, in terms of statutory guidance, the changing the definition around safeguarding, including mental health for the first time, just going back to 2020 now and trying to focus on that. I, people often hear me say in training, you know, it's there, it's responsibility. think personally speaking, right the way across the country, we've still got a long way to go with this. And I imagine it must be quite difficult for officers on the

on the street, responders who are maybe dealing with incidents at three o'clock in the morning where a young person is really struggling with their mental health. They've kicked off in the home, parents go, and we can't cope with this. Officers are coming out to that. And then I imagine there would be an anticipation from parents to go, great, the police are here now. Everything's sorted. They'll sort everything out. But that expectation of like, well, hang on. Like I say, officers are not mental health specialists. They're there to support and try to prevent crime ultimately.

But then you've got this whole additional bit on there. And I guess that's quite key in terms of the role of the LSU, isn't it? It's not just the crime aspect of it, it's actually the wider aspects of how we prevent this from taking place and how we safeguard and protect victims as well.

That's really the point of information sharing. If we have an incident and we have concerns about somebody and we share that with our safeguarding colleagues, they put that with the information that they know and then they can support that vulnerable person, whether or not that's a child or an adult and hopefully then get the right support at the right time so that we don't see that young person again or that vulnerable person again. We're not going around in that circle. When it comes to police officers, and Tim used to be a police officer actually, so we might be able to talk more to this than myself, police officers when they aren't...

out and about in our communities is actually quite rightly say they're not mental health expert. And this is a bit where Right Care Right Person came in to make sure that you've got the right professional at the right time for that person, whereby I think quite a lot of the times police were looked upon. We will attend everything basically the police, know, if we're called to something, historically we would attend everything, but we're not always the right person to attend. And sometimes we're the worst person to attend because if somebody's having a mental health crisis, the last person they need turning up is a uniformed police officer.

What I was going to say was that when there's an acute episode that the officers are going to, whether that is adults or people we're talking about, so here let's say, they have the advantage that the control room, even some set of control room, has immediate access to mental health workers who are co-located with them. And so they can look quickly at records, see if there's, I'm going to say a safety plan around that individual, how we should be maybe trying to treat them or deal with them. But then...

Unfortunately, there are a lot of individuals that we're not trained to say that they have mental health issues, but we think they've got mental health issues and you then talk to our colleagues and it comes back, they're not open to mental health, there's nothing they can do. And so it's really quite difficult at that moment time for those officers to deal with that. And that's then again, where we come back in because then hours later, the next morning, the next day, we are then getting the tasks that come in about that individual. And then we need to assess them, do the risk assessment and pass it on to our partners.

If we can, but as Alison has already mentioned, there are issues regarding referrals to mental health teams, whether that's children or adults. However, there is a work in progress to try and improve that and how I imagine on the back of that, particularly again, maybe when we're talking about either domestic abuse or mental health needs, particularly in terms of mental health, we know it can fluctuate and often does fluctuate. I would guess on the back of that, do you see people repeatedly coming back? And you mentioned earlier about trying to prevent that cycle. Do you see that cycle taking place?

We see constantly it's the same individuals, children, as well as adults, but children who are, there I say it, standing on the wrong side of that barrier over a bridge over the motorway or a road or whatever. And it is always the same individuals. It's very rarely that get that referral comes in and you see it and you think, oh, that's not happened to that individual before. It nearly always has. And they will be detained as well.

Hopefully they're talked down, they get detained, and then unfortunately we can be back there within a week, two weeks, a month. And as you said, it fluctuates. The individuals can become well, but then unfortunately their health can decrease as well either. So it's a common theme with those particular individuals.

No, I can see that. And I know there is work taking place certainly within Somerset and possibly force-wide around looking at individuals, particularly around from our perspective, from the children's focus about that good effective planning around that. Where those kind of repeat customers to use one to a better phrase. It's not a very good phrase, but you know, we're actually, we collectively, we need to come up with much better contingency planning, knowing that actually these are likely to happen again. So how do we respond to that?

collectively as multi-agency partners coming together. Because I say it doesn't do anybody any good at all, just to keep on going round and round in this cycle. I think I can imagine certainly these officers feeling quite lost about where do we go with this and probably the individuals involved as well, just feeling, just going round and round and round in this system. And obviously you work with, with a lot of, well, probably all aspects of the police force. I'm just wondering in terms of sort of how.

It fits in in terms of some of the specific police operations that we've spoken to before in front of the internet child abuse team or operation Ruby.

So within our team, we work with Operation Ruby, most notably and the closest, let's say, because at the end of the day, they are our child protection team, as they were called before. But like you've just said, you've got the Internet child abuse team, you've got Operation Bluestone that deals with the sexual offences, you've got the CID that will deal with other matters that don't fit into their criteria, let's say, but also the neighborhood policing team about antisocial behavior.

that sort of stuff. all the time touching base with them about individual families. Sometimes we'll work directly with the control rooms because you could have an acute episode that's going on that's come via us. And it can be very difficult for those individuals to say, send them away and go, no, you call 101 or call 909. We'll then get hold of the control rooms ASAP as we come, can email them directly. So we've got an incident that's going on here now. We need a police officer to go there. So that will happen. Or you'll just get...

a matter whereby officers are asking for inquiries as to how to do a particular thing. How can I fill out this form out? How can I... I have an example only last week where I had an officer who was dealing with a young child who had been arrested for a matter and he was being processed, he's been interviewed, and then now then completing what they call a youth justice referral form to see how it might progress or not. And that officer was asking for help to fill it in. And they come across the trigger plan for this child.

who, when they go missing. within that trigger plan, there was quite important information that they felt should be on the referral form to the Youth Justice Panel. Yet there was a caveat within the trigger form saying this can't be used outside the police or outside of children's social care. As a result of that, I had a conversation with one of the first response team managers. I said, look, we've got this, what we want to do is share a bit of information that's on that, because it would help the Youth Panel to understand maybe

why the decision making of this child wasn't so good because of a health condition, but a health matter. And as a result, we shared that and that officer then said, well, yes, go ahead and use it. We think it's appropriate to use it. So anything from that all the way to a live incident to like say, up Ruby where there's been a section 47 joint investigation, can you go out and do that?

You guys are busy, aren't you? If we could just come back for a moment around domestic abuse as well, because I know you mentioned that earlier and that's kind one of the big sort of aspects of your work as well. What do you kind of see around domestic abuse coming into you? I guess, sorry, I've got several questions in one, I guess. And firstly, I know there was a concern going back to COVID lockdown periods that there was going to be a massive steep rise in domestic abuse incidents and...

Okay.

I don't believe, and please jump in and correct me, but I don't believe we actually saw that. in terms of domestic abuse, generally, is that something that you're seeing increasing in terms of call-outs or is that the remaining fairly steady? The reason I'm asking, I think about things like the Domestic Abuse Act coming in in 2021. And sometimes when you highlight things to people through new pieces of legislation or training, things like that, it can kind of lead to a steep rise in things. Do you see that taking place?

I would say, if I answer it this way, slightly instead of call outs to it, because I end up going to the child strategies, 90 % of my work is child strategies. mean, the other part is adult safeguarding meetings and risk assessments of mental health, let's say, but 90 % of it is child strategies. We have definitely seen a rise in child strategies where it relates to domestics between the parents or

father and girlfriend, mother and girlfriend, whoever it is as it were. And there's definitely a rise to that seeing a lot more of that I'd suggest.

Right. And in terms of those responses to domestic abuse, it's such a high figure, what sort of responses do you have around, from a wider policing view, I know it's slightly out-yawing this, around domestic abuse, but also in terms of responding to victims of domestic abuse?

We have, I would suggest, a positive arrest policy in relation to when you go to domestic, we should be seeking to safeguard the victim. generally, the safest way of doing that is to remove the individual, and that's by arresting them and then investigating the crimes that we have. But outside of that, though, when a task comes, so that's the immediate response, but then for us in the lighthouse, the task will come into the lighthouse, it will go to either

victim side of matters or down to us. And if it goes to the victim witness care officers, they then making direct contact with those victims and they can give them an enhanced support system. They can refer them to supporting agencies. And at the same time, those officers are then making referrals to children's social care, if there are children involved, or it could be adult social care. So there's a lot of practice that is not seen, but there is victim contact. Whether it be...

having what we call the Bobby Van going round and making the home safe from the perpetrator, changing the locks on the windows and the doors, helping with alarm systems, camera systems, et cetera.

Is that still going, actually? I didn't know the bobby ram was still going.

Yeah well, as far as I'm concerned the bobby's still going, yeah it's still in existence, yes. It's not called that anymore. I'm showing my age.

It just caused me different now,

Yeah.

just to add to what Tim has just said really, so that victim with its care officer will do like a needs assessment with that victim to assess and just see what supports systems they can signpost them to or refer to. We've also got Op and Compass whereby we're sending notifications through to schools so that schools know to support children who have been exposed to domestic abuse.

We're currently improving the process so that we can send notifications directly to education settings, which currently we haven't been able to do. And obviously within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, I think Tim's mentioned, we also support our MARIC arrangements across all five local authority areas as well. And we have police representatives within there. And also within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, we have our Disclosure Team as well. And our Disclosure Team also processes all of the domestic violence disclosure scheme applications. So all of those also come through the Lighthouse Safeguarding

Guarding Unit and our disclosure team will research, write disclosures, decide upon disclosures, but also deliver those disclosures as well. So there's a big response to domestic abuse, not just within Avalon and Somerset Police, but within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit as well.

Looking up on that as well, if go back to the Domestic Abuse Act, obviously sort of having a couple of really significant changes in it, one around the definition of domestic abuse, including controlling coercive behaviour for the first time, but really importantly, from a children's safeguarding perspective, recognising children as victims of that domestic abuse if they've witnessed it. Have you seen much of a change, either widely from policing or from yourselves, in terms of responding to children as victims?

Within the police, when we consider children victims of domestic abuse, whilst we're doing that for support purposes, absolutely, and they're recorded on our systems for that purpose, they're not considered victims of the crime of domestic abuse, if that makes sense.

We haven't changed our process in any way in relation to that necessary, but what I will say is that home office counting rules has really come into play recently. This is so that the national government at the end of the day knows exactly what is happening out there. And that obviously helps us as Avon & Somerset Police to understand what's going on. And it means that we are recording far greater crimes now within a domestic abuse situation.

Previously, we go to a domestic abuse incident and let's say the father has assaulted mother in front of the children, let's say, and we just record one crime. That doesn't really happen now. What happened? You might record the crime, which is the assault on the mother. But then as for the children, that will be crime, but it'll probably be crime as neglect in reality, not a domestic assault, but a neglect, but it is domestic related. I can't imagine or I don't know what figures are necessarily because I don't know them, but the amount it's gone up is huge.

So every child that's in that house who's witnessing that, there will probably be a crime for neglect. Each child is a victim, is recorded as a victim independently, albeit it's the same incident that took place.

Right, for each

So we won't be investigating it separately, if that makes sense. So whilst it's recorded as each child as a victim, we're not separately investigating it as that child being the victim, if that makes sense. If it went to court, it would be around the, as the, with the example that Tim's just said, it would be around the assault against the mother, not the neglect with the children, even though that's how it's been recorded.

It's an interesting one. Sorry for throwing that one in there, but it's an interesting one. think, cause it's, sometimes you look at a piece of legislation that passed and on the surface, looks pretty straightforward and common sense. But when you really start digging into it and thinking about it, it's massively complex. I know in terms of domestic abuse, I came in 21, but in reality it's only when it becomes case law that actually these things start actually being put into practice. And I don't think we're quite there yet. We're starting to see some things trickle through court, but I always say it raises 101 questions, which I don't.

think we collectively across the country have got answers to at the moment. And I often get questions about saying, if there was historic domestic abuse that took place and that child and say parents are split and that child is still going to go and see that parent, how is that responded to now? Yeah. In so far as if say it came to light that there'd been sexual offences taking place against children, you wouldn't say, okay, well, that's fine for that child to continue to go and stay with that parent.

So I, and I don't know the answers to those is the honest truth. And I think it will take a bit of time for this to bed out, but I know there's, there's always a lot of questions that come up from it, but it's interesting sort of hearing later in terms of recognizing children from police's perspective as, victims of a crime, but ultimately still needing to respond to it with a safeguarding hat on. obviously that's the main focus that we need to be thinking about. Yeah. It's a difficult balance. I think sometimes in looking at putting legislation, new legislation, particularly into, into practice. I think the other thing I was really keen to pick up on

today as well, if it's okay, obviously as a local safeguarding children partnership and as a network locally, we've been doing a lot of work around trauma-informed practice. And we also, for anybody listening to the podcast, you'll know we've had a series running on trauma-informed practice as well. And I was really keen if it's all right to pick up with you around that, because I know in particular from the Avon and Somerset police's perspective, Sarah Crews is driven for the whole of the police-wide force to become a trauma-informed organization, which is again, one of these things that seems fairly straightforward on the surface.

but actually is a lot to think about and a lot to implement. And from your perspective from the LSU, I know obviously working with or supporting victims and finding the right support for victims, having that trauma informed approach would be quite key. So what's that kind of looking like for you either at the moment or kind of aspiration?

where you're heading.

Yeah, absolutely. So training, training, training, I would say, but also culture. So we've got to shift into a culture of being trauma-informed and being professionally curious because they kind of go hand in hand, I think as well. And you're absolutely quite right. Even in Somerset, we're actively working to embed that trauma-informed approach across all aspects of policing and being a trauma-informed organisation. So when it comes to training across the force,

response and they've been policing teams. our cops on the street, all of their training now is trauma informed, has trauma informed aspects to it. Within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, all of our teams attend the OCHC introduction to child protection, but also the advanced, which obviously you lead on Stephen in Somerset and there's always a trauma informed.

aspect within that training as well. Our Victim of Wits Care Officers who actually speak to victims of crime, so our Safeguarding Officers who refer to Safeguarding Partners where there's no crime, don't tend to speak to or do not speak to our communities. However, our Victim of Wits Care Officers do.

they do speak to, they pick up the phone and they speak to victims of crime, they speak to witnesses when preparing them for call. And they are all trained to recognise signs of trauma and to adapt their communication whilst they're talking to that victim and to provide the appropriate support and ensuring that the victims are not re-traumatised in the conversations that they're having with them. And when the victim-based care officers are considering signposting to different services, they're not just thinking about what does that person need now.

thinking about what that person may need in the future as well. And when I'll go out and I'll do training for maybe policing teams or new PCSOs, and I always make sure that we have the content in there around being professionally curious and the importance of being professionally curious and the importance of being trauma informed as well. So not only will the police officers get that training within the training school, whenever we do top-up training as well from a safeguarding perspective, we always make sure it's included in there as well. We've also got

programs of change going on at the moment within the force.

And what we are calling Program 2 is around how we respond to victims and vulnerability. And that is all centered around how we improve our BRAG tool, our risk assessing tools, introducing of secondary risk assessment. And all of these are to prompt people to think about trauma and to think about the impact that that incident may have had on somebody and what signs can you look for to identify that and what you should do next. it's all of these prompts coming in to make sure that people are constantly thinking about being trauma-informed and professionally curious.

I'm just thinking that as you were talking now, I remember on some of the training that we're doing, had some of your officers on there. I think it was the victim support officers who, like you say, who making those phone calls. I do remember we've had some, we had some really good conversations around adapting your approach and how you say things, depending on the circumstances. I remember having some really good conversations with them where they were really trying to kind of pick this apart, kind of go, well, you know, if we pick up the phone say, hi, we're the police. You may get one response from one person, but at the same time, we've got to be open and honest about who we are and what we're there for and what have you.

So we were just kind of within the room, just sort of bouncing around, okay, well, if you have to kind of deliver this news or if you had to have this conversation, how do you think you could approach it? And they're really keen to kind of take that on board and go, yeah, what about, hang on, we could do it like this. And sort of seeing them sitting on the table, scratching their head. If we kind of said that and we kind of did this and, know, it's not about fluffing things or not being open. It's about being open and honest, but actually it's about how we phrase things and recognizing that sometimes for some people, if you phone up and go, well, hi, we've had a call from so and so this is the police that might massively trigger somebody and you'd get the barriers up. actually if you approach in a slightly different way, still being open and honest, but approaching a slightly different way, actually you may get a very, different response using a trauma informed approach.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's a real skill talking on the phone as well, then communicating with somebody on the phone. And if somebody's getting irate and stuff, keeping calm, so you bring them down and not matching their level of anxiety. So yeah, it is a real skill.

Just keying in with that as well. And Tim, you mentioned earlier in terms of working with youth justice a lot in the work you do around children, young people. I know a big focus around that is around restorative justice approaches. Is that something that you look to do within the LSU as well or sort linking in with partner agencies around that?

So within the LSU, there is an individual who works with the LSU who is part of the restorative justice team. Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on repairing the harm caused by the crime and the conflict by bringing both the affected victim and the offenders and sometimes community members in order to have a structured, safe meeting where instead of punishing the offender, it's about learning what their actions have caused. And as a result of that,

think about maybe I won't do that the next time type of thing. So it encourages accountability, understanding, allows the victims to heal and maybe even the perpetrators if really at the end of the day. It empowers the victims to give a voice and hopefully will allow them to help in the rehabilitation of the offender as well. So we have, like I said, there was one particular officer who was overseeing that within the LSU and who manages that and then helps guide it through the process.

there's any certain crimes that we can consider for it. can't consider it for all crimes. So higher crimes or high-end crimes, it's not something that we'd be able to consider. But for lower-end crimes, it's absolutely something that the victim is care officers would be advocating for in those conversations with their victims.

Yeah, and then I can see for some crimes or some circumstances, it would not be appropriate at all. if you've been a victim of a serious sexual assault coming face to face with the perpetrator of that, would not be. Yeah. And again, talking about that trauma informed approach would certainly not be a trauma informed approach from the perspective.

Yeah. And because we want to increase the way that we use restorative justice, that's one of the reasons why we've brought restorative justice officer into the Lighthouse Safeguard Unit for that onward learning with our victim care officers so they know where it is appropriate to facilitate and support a restorative justice outcome for their victims. So that's why we've brought that role into the Lighthouse Safeguard Unit to increase and use restorative justice more as an outcome.

If you don't mind, there's one other area I was really curious to explore with you today. And again, it's a question that comes up or a quandary that comes up sometimes. And I'm thinking particularly about children, young people around exploitation. And I think something that people struggle with a little bit sometimes is about responding to children, young people as victims, as well as where they may also be perpetrators of crimes as well. we sort of about child abuse. How do you kind of work with that in the wider system around supporting children and young people around exploitation as recognise them as victims but also kind of acknowledging the crime that they may have also committed.

Within the safeguarding arrangements with our partners, we are identifying people who are vulnerable or are experiencing exploitation. We have the missing persons team. They review all missing person episodes to ensure that any associated concerns around exploitation is identified and actioned accordingly. You can look at the risk outside the home in relation to that as well. There are numerous meetings across all five local authorities that

all have different names for them, as it were, but it's basically about risk outside the home and lots of different acronyms. Quite a lot of those, though, those meetings are attended by the neighborhood policing teams or the early intervention team within the police, because they're the ones who are out there on the street working, trying to work with those individuals who may be perpetrators, but at the same time, because of their vulnerabilities, we are fully aware that they are victims themselves. We also have

risks of being outside the home as identified, but the traditional child protection conferences, that's where those matters are discussed as well. And conferences will be not only attended by case conference officers, but the intervention teams or the neighbor policing teams who are working with those individuals. And then of course we have Op topaz, which is the team that are looking at sexual exploitation. We work closely with them, but not necessarily with them all the time because they are constantly having Op topaz, for example, constantly having meetings with the local authorities that they are.

the areas they cover with your own child sex exploitation teams where they meet together and talk about individuals who are maybe perpetrators, who are definitely vulnerable and definitely victims as well. And then there's the national referral mechanism in relation to children that are involved in maybe county lines, for example, and looking at that side of it and putting in the application forms in relation to a referral for that. We're a bit of a conduit, but we don't do anything along the lines of the national referral mechanism outside of us.

But I think from everything we've been talking about today, those links with partners are so key, it? I'd say, and obviously working very closely with children's services and also different operations or different aspects of police as well. And I guess, have you got really good links as well? I'm just thinking in terms of, we talked about mental health services earlier, sometimes being challenging there, but have you got good links with things like drug and alcohol services in the areas and what have you as well?

We generally don't deal with individuals, I would say, within those teams. It's the opto-paz, the neighbour teams, early intervention teams that are dealing with those particular workers. And probably, I would imagine, working with them when they're going out in the streets, walking around, they will be together doing that. Whereas we are attending the strategy meetings and then are the side assets worker is in there. And the early intervention team are also in the strategy meeting with us. We might...

meet the individuals, but we're not working with the children specifically about that. It's more of a strategic approach around the children, how to go forward with those individual children. But that collaborative work is happening out there.

Thank you, Tim. Just to kind of round things off if we can, I was just thinking in terms of Mythbusters if you want or anything you wish people knew about the LSU and the work you do or anything that you want to kind of dispel or anything like that. Is there anything, any kind of key messages you want to get out to people at all today?

I think when you're talking about like what the LSU is, is not, I think we've kind of like alluded to it a little bit as in when it comes to risk outside the home, whilst we deal with the majority of safeguarding issues where there is a subject matter expert, therefore you would have your OpRuby, your Op Bluestone, but also early intervention team when it comes to risk outside the home. So we're kind of like the generic or general safeguarding if you like, we're not necessarily the subject matter experts for those individual things.

I always find whenever I go to meet-

I would like to say,

and you're the glue that holds them together.

I find, I'm sure Tim finds as well, when you go to a meeting and somebody hears that you're from the police, they think you know everything about policing. Whilst I've never been a police officer before and my roles here within safeguarding, I've been within the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit or within that area for over 20 years. So I've got a lot of safeguarding experience. However, I'm not a police expert, if that makes sense. I'll always go and find out the answer for you. I think it's also just to...

to note that we're not a unit to report crime to. So if there is a crime that you need to report, that should be done via 101, who are set up to receive and record that information. But likewise, we're not an emergency response either. If there's an ongoing incident, then people should be dialing 999. As Tim said, we will help out and be that conduit between local authorities and our police on the street when we're considering, somebody's gone missing, we need a strategy right now, let's put that all out together.

we're in that kind of live response we are, however, there's an emergency response we're needed there and then the community, we are not the team to be calling. So I just wanted to just to point that out. And I think also we are AVEN and Somerset Police. think sometimes, especially when we first got brought together, Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, people would say, are you going to refer that into the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit?

and didn't know that we were part of Avon and Somerset Police, where we are absolutely Avon and Somerset Police through and through. Everybody who works there are either police officers or police staff working for Avon and Somerset Police. So that's just one of the couple of the things that I just wanted to myth bust there. Tim, have you got anything else that you want to add?

sure it's a necessary myth necessarily but the decision makers are not all police officers and yes I might have experiences of being a police officer but there are other colleagues of mine who have never worked for the police before, come from different departments. I can remember somebody coming from probation for example working up in the northeast and then someone came from a safeguarding environment within a school to us so never worked in the police whereas as you'll see on the minute sometimes they'll give you a

you're a police officer as it were and so on and that's not necessarily the case. The other thing that maybe people don't understand about what we do as decision makers, and I'm not talking about the victim's carers, is we are not public facing. So we don't have conversations with the public. We don't make those phone calls, get in contact with people. We are very much about working with our colleagues within A for Sunset and then our partner agencies in relation to safeguarding.

And I don't know if anybody is aware of this necessarily, but we basically work alongside the core hours that children's social care works. So it's eight to five every day for us and like Fridays, like a half four. And like it goes to EDT for social services, it then goes to the duty teams that are on, for example, late tour, Ruby or the duty DS, depending on the type of job it would be.

Well, like you say, you're not an emergency response part of the force. You're there to make sure the victims are getting the right support moving forward, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that I just wanted to reiterate really what Tim just said there about in the vulnerability side of the Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit, we're not working with our communities. We're supporting the safeguarding arrangements for our five local authority areas and we're sharing information and we're having those risk assessments and we're attending child protection conferences, American strategies, et cetera. We're not actually actively going out and working with our families.

being the glue that holds it together. you go. can use that as a strap line if you want. Well, listen, Alison, Tim, thank you so much for joining me today. I've been sitting here thinking that I've had that figure of a hundred thousand going through my head a year and thinking, God, how many have come in in this last hour or so since we've been recording? I'm feeling the stress for you, I think, as it comes through. So I will thank you very much for taking the time out today to come and join and talk to us. And yeah, wish you the best of luck moving forward with things and as Tim alluded to a little bit earlier, there is lots of change afoot, not just within the Avon and Somerset Police, not just within Somerset, but nationally at the moment in terms of how we work together, which is going to mean a lot of change for everybody moving forward. So Alice and I were saying just before we recorded this, you never know, we may well be talking again at some point in the near future about what things are looking like at that point, I think. It'll be interesting to see and exciting. Great stuff.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much then, take care of yourselves. See you later. Cheers, bye. Bye. And if you're curious there about what it was we were referring to at the end of that episode, I'd advise checking out the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently going through the House of Lords as we speak, as well as associated with that, the Families First Partnership Program, which is due to bring in some very exciting changes moving forward about how we work together as multi-entity partners.

Now, as always, if you'd to find out more details on the topics discussed in today's episode, please go to the SSCP website at somersetsafeguardingchildren.org.uk or by following any of the links in this episode description. If you enjoy listening to the Peapod, we would really appreciate it if you did take that time to follow or subscribe to us on your chosen platform or even better, leave us a review and let other people know about it and make sure to let your colleagues know about this podcast and encourage them to come and join us here as well. It really does help to spread the word.

If you have any questions or comments arising from today's episode or would be interested in being involved in future episodes, we would love you to get in touch with us at theppod@Somerset.gov.uk. Once again, I'd like to give a huge thank you to my guests today, Alison Jenkinson and Tim McDonald and the Avon & Somerset Police's Lighthouse Safeguarding Unit. As always, I'd like to thank you for listening. My name is Steve McAbee and I'm the Training Manager for the Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership. And I look forward to you joining us again next time at the P-Pod.