Analysis and research
The Analysis and Research team work across the Hydrant Programme, with the focus of the majority of their work being to contribute to policing’s understanding of the scale and nature of the threat from non-recent child sexual abuse. Recently this work has expanded, with the team working on a project that will provide a greater understanding of the scale and nature of the threat from complex and organised group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The team is made up of analysts and researchers from a range of backgrounds in policing, safeguarding and research. Before August 2022 when Hydrant underwent a re-structure and shift in strategic focus the team spent the majority of their time involved in analysis of national police force non-recent Child Sexual Abuse data.
The team are now managing the gathering of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation data nationally within the Child Protection Abuse Investigation Database of which the first report launch will be May 2023. Working from within this data set will be the launch of the Complex and Organised Child Abuse Database (COCAD). The benefits for policing at a national, regional and local level in respect of data quality and the resource in order to obtain this type of data will be significant. This single data request to forces will additionally service the needs of the VKPP, National Crime Agency and the regional Child Sexual Exploitation analyst network.