The co-ordinated whole system response to prevent serious youth violence and exploitation in Bristol
Safer Options is part of Bristol’s Violence Reduction Partnership. It is a multi-agency approach to tackling Serious Youth Violence (SYV), Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) and Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE).
Safer Options approach involves coordinating work across a spectrum of organisations to deliver services that tackle contextual safeguarding issues. As well as working closely with statutory services, Safer options also works closely with local Voluntary and Community organisations, young people and communities to create protective plans to reduce the risk to vulnerable young people and support those young people who are involved in Serious Youth Violence or Child Criminal Exploitation.
Safer Options commission a number of community organisations across the city to deliver a variety of interventions to young people to respond to their needs.
Additionally, the Safer options team and professionals in each locality are involved in developing relevant projects, procedures, practices and community initiatives to respond to the needs of the young people in their locality.
The team do not have children allocated to them but they may offer some specialist interventions to pilot new ways of working and joint work with social workers to support a specific piece of complex work. The team can offer training, consultation and advice including attending strategy and risk management meetings and systemic group supervision about situations. They offer support to Service Managers who are coordinating Complex Strategy meetings.
There are also specialist roles funded as part of Safer Options in Bristol's locality services who can be asked to be part of a response for a child or group of children. These include the Education Inclusion Managers, Youth Justice Prevention Practitioners and Senior Youth and Community Practitioners.
Safer Options Meetings are the weekly multi-agency meetings which happen in each of the three locality social work teams to coordinate our resources to reduce exploitation and serious violence. The meetings should focus on places, peer groups and prevention not planning for individual children. The meetings are chaired by the Area Deputy Service Manager in partnership with the Safer Options Manager and Area Families in Focus Manager. The meetings are attended by representatives from across the partnership.
Download the Safer Options Meeting Terms of Reference
Download Safer Options Meeting Agenda
You cannot ‘refer a child or family to’ Safer Options, but there may be resources that Safer Options Hub can broker or advice and support that can be accessed to enhance a plan for a group or individual. If you want discuss a child with Safer Options or ask them to provide a briefing or training to the service you can complete this form or email them at Safer.options@bristol.gov.uk
Bristol Safer Options practice model integrates a public health response to reducing serious violence and exploitation and contextual safeguarding. Both of these approaches seek to increase the impact of interventions by creating change in places, peer groups and community. A public health response tackles the underlying causes of exploitation and serious violence and gets the maximum benefit for the largest number of people. This means that the Safer Options partnership focus resources on preventing school exclusion, reducing weapon carrying, disrupting perpetrators of exploitation, reducing youth drug and alcohol use.
Contextual Safeguarding provides a child-welfare and assessment led, multi-agency problem solving response to places and groups of concern. Where hotspots of significant concern are identified through Safer Options meetings or complex strategy meetings, the Contextual Safeguarding Social Worker coordinates a place or peer group assessment and undertakes a targeted multi-agency intervention. Some examples of intervention include:
This approach complements work to improve the safeguarding and planning for individual children through existing safeguarding and early help approaches. Children should continue to receive planning and support from their social worker. Training, consultation and advice is available to professionals through the Safer Options Hub to improve the quality of our response to children and families who experience harm in the community (eg CCE, CSE, County Lines drug dealing, trafficking).
Safer Options was launched in 2018 as a community-led response in East/Central Bristol to increasing serious violence and child criminal exploitation involving young people. It was scaled up to a citywide response in 2019 after funding from the Home Office and introduction of an Avon and Somerset-wide Violence Reduction Unit in the police and integrated with our CSE and Missing response in October 2020.
Family members, friends and carers of young people are nearly always the first people to notice the signs that a young people is at risk of, or are, carrying knives and weapons; are being pulled into selling drugs; or are experiencing exploitation or violence in the community.
We know this can be a worrying time for everyone involved and families can be fearful of speaking out about the issues. The earlier we can get support in more chances we have to help them find safer options and achieve their full potential.
The following services for children and families are funded through or delivered by organisations involved in the Safer Options partnership.
Because communities in Bristol are so different there are lots of ways to access support and help. It can feel overwhelming knowing where to start but we’ve made sure you have options so there is no wrong place to get help.
Support Services
We understand that supporting a child impacted by exploitation can feel overwhelming, it is important to know that you are not alone.
If you think your child is being exploited, you should contact Bristol City Council’s First Assessment Service on 0117 903 6444. The team will be able to direct your query to the relevant team within Bristol City Council.
There are also many services that can provide advice and support to children and their families.
If you have information that you think the police need to know to keep people safe from drug dealing, serious violence or exploitation you can tell them about it:
What type of support are available:
Preventative interventions
Proactive interventions
Targeted and diversion interventions
Participation, Voice and Influence
Helplines
Download Bristol Safer Options Approach to Serious Youth Violence and Child Criminal Exploitation 2020–2030 This document describes the ambition to reduce Serious Youth Violence and Child Criminal Exploitation in Bristol in the coming decade, and how services, projects and communities will work together to achieve this ambition.
Download Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Unit Annual Report 2020-2021
Download Bristol Serious Youth Violence: Problem Profile (2020)
Download Bristol Serious Youth Violence: Problem Profile Data Update 2021
Watch the Safer Options Webinar Delivered by Becky Lewis, Strategic Safeguarding and Quality Assurance Service Manager at Bristol City Council & Charlene Richardson, Safer Options Manager. Recorded in December 2020.
Definition of Contextual Safeguarding (Firmin, 2017): Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding, and responding to, young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families. It recognises that the different relationships that young people form in their neighbourhoods, schools and online can feature violence and abuse. Parents and carers have little influence over these contexts, and young people’s experiences of extra-familial abuse can undermine parent-child relationships.
The Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership are taking part in the University of Bedfordshire Contextual Safeguarding Scale-Up Project. The project, which began in Bristol in April 2019, is an experimental system re-design looking to operationalise Dr Carlene Firmin’s theoretical concept of contextual safeguarding. There are two levels to Contextual Safeguarding implementation:
Level 1 – the work undertaken to strengthen assessment and planning in domains outside the family home. Contextual safeguarding at this level challenges the principle that families are able to effectively safeguard their children from harm in the community when they are adolescents and when they are exposed to exploitation and violence.
Level 2 – the development of contextual pathway, assessments, planning and interventions whereby a social work assessment approach is taken to assessing the needs of a peer group or place so that the individual needs are understood in the context in which they are occurring. The theoretical principle of this approach is that you are likely to be more effective in creating change by intervening with the context in which the harm is happening than repeatedly removing and protecting individuals from that context.
In this video 'Re-writing the rules of child protection', Dr. Carlene Firmin explains the Contextual Safeguarding approach.
Find out more about the contextual safeguarding at the Contextual Safeguarding Network website.
Children can face a range of safeguarding issues outside the family system or home, in particular related to criminality and exploitation including (but not limited to) child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, county lines drug dealing, modern slavery including trafficking, and peer-on-peer abuse/serious youth violence.
The Risk Management and Extrafamilial Abuse Guidance is intended as an aid for Children and Families practitioners working with children who may be at risk of significant harm from extra-familial factors. There is an addition guidance document for the risk management for children in care.
Download Risk Management and Extrafamilial abuse Guidelines
Download Children in Care Risk Management and Extrafamilial Abuse Guidelines
Click on the drop down arrow to see further information and resources for each extrafamilial harm related safeguarding issue.
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is a type of child sexual abuse. It happens where a person or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into sexual activity. This can be in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or for the financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology.
Free From Fear - a film designed by young people, to raise awareness of child sexual exploitation among young people.
Can you See it? - a resource about peer-on-peer sexual exploitation to raise awareness with professionals has been developed by NWG, Barnardo’s and the Met Police.
List of CSE Services for professional services responding to Child Sexual Exploitation across Bristol.
Fearless.org CSE resources - a variety of free resources and films for professionals
County lines is the police term for urban gangs supplying drugs to suburban areas and market and coastal towns. It involves child criminal exploitation (CCE) as gangs use children and vulnerable people to move drugs and money.
The Home Office published County Lines guidance in 2017 and a range of materials have been developed to help statutory and non-statutory staff identify victims and report concerns to protect those exploited through this criminal activity.
Home Office County Lines Guidance
County Lines posters and leaflets
Fearless.org have a variety of resources for professionals available on their website
Street conflict and involvement in gang activity can affect any young person, from any family, in any neighbourhood. Some young people are disproportionately affected by these issues. Many children growing up in the inner city areas of Bristol are at daily risk of experiencing street conflict and issues relating to gangs.
The document below describes the ambition to reduce Serious Youth Violence and Child Criminal Exploitation in Bristol in the coming decade, and how services, projects and communities will work together to achieve this ambition.
Bristol Safer Options Approach to Serious Youth Violence and Child Criminal Exploitation 2020–2030
