It's not a list, it's not a hierarchy. That's why they're set out like a clock face, if you will, not a set of pillars. They overlap like petals of a flower. We often say when we're introducing the principles, you can't cherry-pick them. They are all together and all connected all of the time. 

I'm going to start at the top of the clock. That first principle there, in a sort of a tomato soup bread. The response to child exploitation and harm outside the home must put children and young people first. And when we say response, we don't only mean direct practice. One of the key points of the principles is that we very deliberately talk about what each principle asks of people in direct practice roles, but also what it asks of people in management roles, leadership, and governance roles. We really did not want to produce loads and loads of guidance for people who work directly with children, young people, and families, when we know that managers and leaders and those who oversee partnerships have such a crucial role as well. So that response is strategic as well as in practice.  

So putting children and young people first, it sounds so obvious, doesn't it? It sounds so clear. It's absolutely aligned with the child first principle, and approach that underpins youth justice. But you will know better than most because of the jobs you do, that putting children and young people first gets seemingly trickier when those children are indeed the source of harm to others. We seem, regrettably, in our country, to find it easier to treat some children as children than others. You'll be familiar with terms like adultification, which originally was very much focused on how children, particularly Black and Global Majority children, particularly Black girls, are often perceived and treated as more adult than they are, responsibilised for their harms. You'll see that in your work, I know. So non-negotiably, an effective response to child exploitation puts children and young people first. 

Moving around there to the orange petal. The response must recognise and challenge inequalities, exclusion, and discrimination. Of course. Our values are our values. They matter. They guide us. I'm not sure... no one on this call would disagree with that. But again, there's complexity. I bet you see this all the time in your work. In challenging inequalities, exclusion, discrimination, that sometimes means we have to look deep within ourselves and confront the fact that some of what we do in our professional responses can inadvertently compound discrimination. It can compound marginalisation. Not because anybody in our sector wants to do that, but because the system too often allows us to work in ways which are exclusionary.  

I know that many of you work tirelessly to try and challenge inequalities, inequity, exclusion, discrimination in all that you do.  And it's not an easy context to do that in right now, is it? Not an easy context at all. And again, I must stress, this is not just about teachers, social workers, family health workers, police officers, health colleagues doing it in direct practice. It's also about managers, leaders, strategic partnership leads, really embodying this principle in all that they do at a strategic level. We do not send our staff on DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] training. We embed and embody and role model this value whatever job we're in. 

Moving around the clock face here, that yellow one there. The response must respect the voice, experience, and expertise of children and young people. Not listen to their wishes and feelings. I mean, do that, sure. Respect their expertise. Sometimes respecting a child's expertise involves being brave and saying, ‘That's not right. I can't do that.’  

I often think there's a real nuance here. Sometimes we fall into shorthand and we say things like, 'Well, young people are experts in their own lives.' Yes, they are. Young people are experts in their own lives and only their own lives. We do not ask children to speak on behalf of all other children. We do not assume that one person's lived experience translates to everybody's lived experience. And we do not think that lived experience weighs more or less than learnt experience. But we always non-negotiably respect that expertise. And that has real implications, I think, for colleagues in senior leadership roles, in policy roles, because it means that we cannot ask practice to be participatory. We need our leadership to demonstrate that respect for children and young people's expertise, to navigate where young people's expertise doesn't chime with professional expertise or the law or research. This is much more nuanced than saying, 'I listen to children.' The response must be strengths-based and relationship-based. And I know you know this, but it bears repeating. 

To be strengths-based doesn't mean we ignore all the risks or the dangers or the harms. To be relationship-based doesn't mean we're just being everyone's mate. The work you do is so much more nuanced and complex than that. To be strengths-based in this work, sometimes I think of it as panning for gold. You or your teams might sometimes be working with a child or young person who is in a really, really frightening circumstances, where their parents or care-givers are angry, understandably so, in a state of distress themselves. And your role is to pan for gold, to find the little nuggets of hope, the bits of gold in an otherwise sometimes pretty upsetting life. To help parents see the strengths in their children, to help children see the strengths in their parents, to find the bits that can keep them going, the green shoots, the glimmers of hope. And to do that requires something, I think, extraordinary, of you as professionals.  

When we talk about being relationship-based, sometimes that is the opposite of being someone's mate. Mm-hmm. It's about using the power of relationships. I guess I would say, where relationships are not just the vehicle for an intervention. My colleagues in Haringey sometimes say, 'Relationships are the intervention.' I have to say, I don't love the word intervention myself. Sounds like something you've got to turn a big light on for, doesn't it? But no, support. Relationships are what changes lives. You know this. 

When you finish a working week and you are exhausted, that is because you have leant in deeply to the relational labour of doing the work. And if we want our professionals who are working directly with children and young people and families to be relational, so too they must have relational leadership, management, supervision. We're a system. At all levels, there's got to be congruence.  

And that strength of relationship, it's not just between professionals and children and families, it's the relationships we hold with each other. How are we being strengths-based across our partnership, knowing that we sometimes disagree, we have different priorities, but we share a goal?  Seeing the strengths in each other across... sometimes quite tricky partnership dynamics is also key here.  

At the bottom of the clock face there, the next principle. The response to child exploitation must recognise and respond to trauma. The trauma that children and young people carry as a result of these experiences. The trauma that their loved ones carry.  

I don't presume that just because we're a call full of professionals and policymakers, that none of us bring lived experience. Quite the opposite. We have no idea. We must never make those assumptions. In responding to trauma and recognising trauma, that sometimes means really checking ourselves. Some of what we do, because that's what the policy says or the protocol says or the organisational stance, that can sometimes not be very trauma-attuned. 

'Three strikes and you're out.'  

'Failed to attend.' 

'Fill in this checklist and I'll tell you how many adversities you've faced. I'll give you a score.'  

If we want our professionals across the multi-agency network to work in a way which really deeply recognises and intentionally responds to trauma, those professionals need to be led, supported, managed, and nurtured in a way that recognises their own trauma. Because to work in this field, to work with people in pain, and to do it properly, it's going to hurt some days.  

So we have to hold the people who hold the people, and we have to take into account that for some people in our communities, that trauma runs deep, generations deep. 

And I would personally want to add, from my own perspective, that trauma isn't always a thing that happened to you, a one-off event. The consequence of abuse. Racial trauma, socio-economic trauma, the trauma that comes from feeling that, 'I don't belong here. I'm not valued here. I don't fit here.' Really being curious about the multiple manifestations of trauma. It requires us, to move around the clock face there - that our response has got to be really curious, evidence-informed, knowledgeable. Really deliberately drawing on the best up-to-date and most robust research available, local data, the expertise that's born out of lived experience to children, young people, and families you serve, your own professional knowledge. Always asking, 'How can I know more?' 

'What's changed my mind?' 

'Is there new evidence now that's going to shift or help me unlearn something?' 

Really, really key to what we do.  

It was very, very important  to us, this next principle, and we've worded it quite carefully. An effective response to child exploitation is one where we approach parents and carers as partners wherever possible. We recognise it's not always possible. We recognise that for some parents and carers, they're not able to work in partnership because of the pain they are carrying. In some instances, it's not possible to say that the parents and carers are always a protective factor, although very, very often that is true in relation to harm outside the home. 

Wherever humanly possible, we approach parents and carers with respect and empathy and humility and humanity. They are partners in this, and we do not love their kids more than they do. And if we want practitioners and professionals to work in this way, we need that role modeled and enabled and invested in at a strategic level.  

And that deep magenta one there, as I close the clock face here. An effective response to child exploitation is one that creates safer spaces and places for children and young people. It's not an individualised intervention. We're just going to risk assess Elaine. We're going to talk about Raquel's decisions and choices. We might, Raquel, actually, in the break. Mm-hmm. It's one where we say, 'Hang on, what are the spaces and places where Elaine or Grace or Susan or Helen feel more or less safe? And what are we doing at the level of space and place and context?'  

And when we think like that, all of a sudden, our safeguarding partnership expands. It means that our local businesses, our night-time economy, our voluntary and community sector, our grassroots organisations, our faith-based organisations, the bloke on the door of Primark - they are all your safeguarding partners now. Because stewards of public spaces are essential in this.  

So these principles, which as I say, we set out in the full document - what is asked of practice, management, and leadership. These principles act like a compass. They're not prescriptive guidance. It's not our place to tell you what to do on a Tuesday afternoon, in what size font. You're experts in your jobs, aren't you? But they act as a compass. They remind us which way north is. With the busyness and the complexity and the challenge you work in, these principles aim to articulate what you have always known and what the children and young people you serve have always known. 

It's about how we behave and how we think, not just what protocol is followed. So I hope that's helpful as an introduction to these principles, and I hope you can see the deliberate difference between these core principles and practice guidance, which is very important but is not what these principles are trying to do.