Faith in Community CSE Champion Service

Faith and Communities CSE Champion Service is one of the thirteen work streams within the Strategic Partnership Development Fund (SPDF) CSE Project. The CSE Project encompasses a range of initiatives that intend to build capacity, capability and improve the effectiveness of the partnership in preventing, identifying and tackling CSE. The overall goal is to create an environment where CSE is prevented, identified and challenged within all communities across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and to ensure that all partners work proactively together to keep children and young people safe from CSE.

There is concern that there may be a local under-reporting of CSE in relation to children and young people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds (NB. Within this specification the term BME is considered to be inclusive of all minority ethnic groups). They are underrepresented in referral figures compared to numbers in the local population. National research suggests that this is linked to issues such as a lack of trust and confidence in reporting to statutory agencies, honour-based violence, shame, fear of reprisal, forced marriage and gender-based issues. The complexity of the issue is reflective of the diverse local population. Nationally there has been a dual focus in the media in relation to suspects and perpetrators from specific BME communities and the group model of exploitation alongside a focus on historic abuse within established faith communities. Local data on suspects and perpetrators is currently subject to review therefore no firm conclusions about the local picture can be determined at this stage. In the interim it is proposed that the local response is developed based on national evidence-based research and best practice.