Home Office awards £2.6m to support girls and young women at risk of gang-related exploitation

It is part of a broader national effort to steer at-risk young people away from violence, which has been stepped up over the school holidays, with Home Office figures showing violent crime and sexual offences tend to be higher in the summer months compared with winter.

Twenty-three local authorities will share a total of £2.64 million of funding from the Home Office for ‘young women’s workers’. Their role as support workers will be to identify and provide support to vulnerable young women and girls who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, gang-related exploitation or abuse.

This abuse could include serious violence, sexual exploitation, assault, peer on peer abuse, child criminal exploitation, or any other form of harm arising from exploitation by gangs, says the Home Office.

Minister for Safeguarding Amanda Solloway said: “The impact of gang-related harm on young women and girls should not be underestimated.

“Through the Young Women and Girls’ Fund, affected communities will have access to expert support that will protect those vulnerable to exploitation as well as providing vital support to those who have already fallen victim to the actions of these criminal gangs.”

The Home Office says support provided by its fund will depend on the circumstances of the individual in question, but may include one-to-one support, targeted group work and residential trips, as well as work in education settings and with frontline professionals to raise awareness of gang exploitation among young women and girls.

In addition to the funding, 20 Home Office-funded Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) are delivering a range of activities to support young people during the school holidays, when serious violence can often peak. The units, which bring together key local agencies, such as health, education and policing, run interventions and projects in a bid to keep young people out of dangerous situations on our streets.

Throughout the holidays, Greater Manchester VRU, for example, is using real-time data to direct resources to the areas of highest need and pinpointing young people who are on the radar of multiple agencies.

A pilot in Salford last summer saw 26 of the 27-strong cohort supported by the programme enter into education, employment or training by September 2021. Rates of crime and anti-social behaviour also fell significantly. The scheme is now being rolled out to all ten local authorities.

“Running all year round, the VRUs can provide a stabilising influence in young people’s lives,” said the Home Office.

“Combined with targeted enforcement activity, VRUs prevented more than 49,000 violent offences in their first two years of activity and supported more than 260,000 vulnerable young people in their second year alone.”

Outreach workers are also being deployed to hotspot areas for violence across South Wales, to boost targeted interventions.

In West Yorkshire, those with ‘lived experience’ are being used as ambassadors at events, where rivalries may surface. Trained to provide roving support to vulnerable young people, they are demonstrating a life away from serious violence and assisting others onto the same track, said the Home Office.

Earlier this month, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan made an extra £2 million of funding available to support children and young people at risk of being exploited by criminal gangs through his London Gang Exit Programme.

Last year, the charity YMCA DownsLink Group, which represents local YMCAs across Sussex and Surrey, launched a social media campaign WiSE Up To Exploitation after research identified Brighton and Hove as the “top target of County Lines drugs dealers”, with vulnerable children as young as ten targeted.

Part of the YMCA’s WiSE project, designed to raise awareness of child sexual and criminal exploitation, the campaign was run alongside Brighton University students.

Speaking at the time, YMCA WiSE project worker Magdalene Mill explained: “Child criminal exploitation is a type of abuse where children are targeted, often through social media platforms such as snap chat and Instagram, they are then groomed and coerced into committing criminal acts.

“On the surface it may appear that children who are criminally exploited have made a freely given choice, however, among other tactics, intimidation, violence, sexual violence, debt bondage and weapons have been used to manipulate them to commit crimes.”

The full list of local authorities receiving funding through the Young Women and Girls’ Fund is: Barking and Dagenham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Cherwell, Gateshead, Greenwich, Hampshire, Haringey, Hull, Islington, Manchester, Medway, Merton, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Northumberland, Portsmouth, Redbridge, Salford, Somerset, Sunderland and Westminster.