Partnership hub
The Partnerships hub, is part of the Hydrant Programme and engages with stakeholders and partners from across the child protection and child abuse sector. This engagement both strengthens our relationship with our key partners, facilitates the process of information sharing and provides a pathway for complex referrals to be made into policing.
The Partnership Hub recognises that multiagency working is the cornerstone of effective child safeguarding, and further acknowledges the role of the third sector in this multi-agency context, regarding its expertise, knowledge, services, and intervention in cases of child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation.
The Partnership Hub offers three core areas of partnership support, engagement, and collaboration:
- Complex case referrals via a documented Memorandum of Understanding.
- Partnership engagement and activity for and with the third sector.
- Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce – Partnership Approaches.
No partnership working, nor child centered approach, can be effective without actively engaging with and learning from those with lived experience. The Partnership Hub therefore collaborates with several partners who support, represent and advocate for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation. The Partnership Hub recognises the importance of restoring victim and survivor trust and confidence by dealing with complex safeguarding cases in a prompt equitable and transparent manner for those most closely effected.
The process of information sharing and reporting concerns with local policing can be seen as challenging for organisations, particularly where there are multiple offence locations and perpetrators. The Hydrant Programme assists in making this process more accessible ensuring that referrals sent to us by organisations are then received by local police force safeguarding teams.
The Hydrant Programme does not have an investigative remit. It is the responsibility of the home force to investigate any identified offences and address any safeguarding concerns.
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Referrals
The Hydrant Programme acts as the conduit between referring partner organisations and national policing concerning complex safeguarding referrals and disseminates them to relevant police forces for action.
Accepted referrals are for those for complex cases of non-recent or recent child abuse and exploitation where one or more the following applies:
- Complex by number of victims;
- Complex by number of suspects;
- Complex by number of force areas impacted;
- Complex by nature of the investigation itself.
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Partnership Engagement
The Partnership Hub provides an opportunity to interact, collaborate, and build more active relationships with its third sector partners.
Its aim is to provide strength-based and relationship-based approaches to partnership working and engagement. In collaboration it shall create conditions in which partners and professionals can navigate complexity and uncertainty with relevant police forces, with particular focus on complex and organised child sexual abuse and exploitation.
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Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce
The Partnership Hub is the partnership thematic lead for the Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce. Its role is to deliver, with partners, improvements on how we
- prepare our response to threat
- protect children from exploitation and abuse
- prevent group-based child sexual exploitation
- pursue those that perpetrate crimes and bring more offenders to justice.