Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week always brings a wave of activity across the sector — social media campaigns, awareness graphics, training sessions, and well‑intentioned reminders about the realities of harm. All of this has value. But awareness on its own doesn’t keep young people safe. What keeps them safe is clarity. What keeps them safe is practitioners who understand the dynamics of exploitation deeply enough to see beyond the surface.
This week offers us a moment to pause, recalibrate, and ground ourselves in what exploitation actually looks like today. It’s a chance to step back from the noise and reconnect with the truths that genuinely shift practice — the truths that help us see young people with compassion, context, and curiosity.
Below are the core messages and red flags that practitioners should be centring this week. Not as a checklist, but as a way of seeing. A lens. A posture.
1. Sexual exploitation is not about “choice.”
One of the most persistent and harmful myths in safeguarding is the idea that young people “choose” exploitation. In reality, their decisions are shaped by trauma, belonging, fear, survival, and the need for connection. Exploiters understand this intimately — and they use it to their advantage.

When we frame exploitation as a “choice,” we unintentionally reinforce the exploiter’s narrative. We shift responsibility onto the child instead of the systems, contexts, and individuals who created the conditions for harm.
Why this matters:

• “Choice” language hides coercion
• It blames the child for the harm done to them
• It obscures the structural conditions that make exploitation possible

A young person returning to an exploiter is not consent — it’s survival. It’s attachment. It’s fear. It’s the absence of safer alternatives.

2. Exploitation rarely looks like the stereotypes.
The familiar “older man in a car” image is outdated and often misleading. Modern exploitation is far more subtle, relational, and embedded in everyday life.
Today, exploitation is frequently:

• Peer‑on‑peer — older teens exploiting younger ones
• Online‑facilitated — grooming, sextortion, image‑based abuse
• Embedded in friendships or romantic dynamics
• Framed as loyalty, love, protection, or belonging

If we only look for the stereotype, we will miss most cases. Exploitation often looks like a relationship the young person values — and that’s precisely why it’s so powerful.

3. Vulnerability comes from systems, not “bad decisions.”
Exploitation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It thrives where systems fail and where young people are left without safety, stability, or connection.
Young people are not “risky.” Their contexts are.
Key drivers of vulnerability include:

• Poverty
• Racism and discrimination
• School exclusion
• Community violence
• Immigration precarity
• Unstable housing
• Unmet mental health needs
• Trauma and loss

When practitioners focus solely on “risky behaviour,” they miss the structural conditions that create vulnerability in the first place. We must shift from blaming young people to interrogating the environments around them.

4. Behaviour is communication.
When words feel unsafe or unavailable, behaviour becomes the language young people use to communicate distress.
Distress may show up as:

• Anger
• Withdrawal
• Hypersexualised behaviour
• Going missing
• Substance use
• Defending or protecting an exploiter

These behaviours are not the problem; they are the signal. Punitive responses silence young people and strengthen the exploiter’s hold. Curiosity, connection, and relational safety are the intervention.

5. The Red Flags That Matter Most
These indicators reflect real‑world exploitation patterns — not outdated checklists. They help practitioners tune into the relational, digital, behavioural, and environmental cues that often go unnoticed.
Relationship Red Flags

• Sudden new relationships with older peers or adults
• Someone speaking for the young person
• Rapid escalation, secrecy, or intensity
• Defending someone who is harming them (trauma bonding)​

Digital Red Flags

• Pressure to send images
• Sextortion threats
• Multiple or hidden accounts
• Sudden influx of followers or DMs
• Being added to older peer group chats

Behavioural Red Flags

• Exhaustion or falling asleep in class
• Sudden aggression or withdrawal
• Going missing in short, patterned bursts
• Unexplained money, clothes, or tech
• Hypersexualised language or behaviour

Environmental Red Flags

• Unsafe adults around schools or youth spaces
• Cars waiting outside at unusual times
• Older peers recruiting younger ones
• Community rumours about “parties,” “links,” or “mandem”

Young people often disclose risk indirectly. Coded language is usually a form of safety strategy, not a coincidence.

Final Thought
​Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week isn’t about generating noise — it’s about sharpening our lens. It’s about returning to the fundamentals that help us see young people clearly and respond with the depth they deserve.
When practitioners see clearly, young people are safer. When we move from blame to understanding, we create space for disclosure. When we centre trauma, context, and relationships, we disrupt exploitation at its roots.
This week. Every week. Clarity is safeguarding.

​Every safeguarding professional, youth worker, teacher and frontline staff member knows this feeling: You finish the term or the project. You hit the break. But you don’t feel rested.
Because real exhaustion isn’t about the hours – it’s about what the hours held.

This work asks us to hold risk, absorb trauma, navigate systems, and show up for others even when we’re running on empty.

That’s why I created this reflective series: Five critical questions to ask yourself over the summer break if you want to come back stronger. Each one grounded in real practice, shaped by lived experience, and designed to help you reset before the work restarts.
Not a checklist. Not another wellbeing slogan. Just honest reflection that helps you come back with clarity, courage and purpose.

Question 1: What part of this work is still breaking your heart – and what part is keeping it beating?
We carry stories. We carry faces. We carry the ones we couldn’t reach, the moments that left a mark. And we carry hope, too – the child who trusted us, the family who turned a corner, the time we knew we made a difference. This work breaks you and builds you. Knowing which parts are doing what is vital for survival.

In one of my early frontline roles, I worked with a young man who had been exploited into county lines activity. We got close to a breakthrough, but a systems delay meant the intervention came too late. He disappeared. That haunts me. But not long after, I worked with a girl who recognised the signs in herself and reached out early. We helped her rewrite her path. That’s what keeps me going.

Here's My Learning: Reflection isn’t indulgent. It’s data. It tells you what still matters – and what still needs healing.

I Want You to Consider: Write down one name you still carry, and why. Then write down one moment that still fuels you. That contrast will tell you more about your motivation than any job description ever could.

Question 2: Are you still working like it’s an emergency – when what’s needed is longevity?
​Crisis mode is seductive. Fast decisions. Urgency. The adrenaline rush of feeling needed. But if you’re always responding, when do you get to build?

The emergency phase of safeguarding work is important – but it’s meant to be temporary. Too many practitioners get stuck there. High-alert becomes normal. And eventually, the crash comes.

During the pandemic, many of us were in survival mode. Everything was a priority. But I noticed some colleagues didn’t switch back when the pace eased. They burned out trying to maintain crisis speed in a recovery phase. The ones who lasted were those who made room for planning, pacing and rest.

Here's My Learning: You weren’t built to live on high alert. The system might reward short bursts of heroics – but it’s the steady practitioners who change lives over the long term.

I Want You to Consider: Where in your week do you pause to think? To review? To ask whether this pace is still needed? Your impact over time depends on your ability to sustain, not just respond.

Question 3: Where are you most effective – and where are you just exhausted?Some tasks look productive.
But they’re really just draining. Some relationships look professional. But they’re quietly depleting. Some roles look impressive. But they’re not where your real value lives.
We need to distinguish between what’s emotionally loud and what’s strategically useful.

I once took on a role that was strategic and high-profile, but left me feeling disconnected from young people. I was constantly in meetings, but rarely in rooms where change was happening. I realised I was most effective when I was designing programmes and mentoring teams – not when I was firefighting other people’s agendas.

Here's My Learning: Being effective isn’t about doing the most – it’s about doing what matters most.

I Want You to Consider: List three areas of your work: one that energises you, one that drains you, and one where you’re unsure. What would it look like to spend 20% more time in the energising zone? What would have to shift?

Question 4: What’s one boundary you need to reinforce to avoid burnout after the summer break?
Let’s be honest. We’ve all let boundaries slip. The late-night email replies. The cancelled lunch breaks. The extra shift we didn’t have capacity for.
And while it’s often done with good intentions, it slowly becomes unsustainable. Worse, it sets a precedent that your needs come last.

One practitioner I trained told me she hadn’t had a full day off in months. Every weekend, she was checking in with young people because she didn’t trust that anyone else would. That’s not dedication. That’s a system failure being carried by a single human being.

Here's My Learning: Burnout doesn’t happen because you’re weak. It happens because the system expects you to be limitless. Boundaries are how you stay human inside a machine.

I Want You to Consider: What is one situation where you say "yes" out of habit, guilt or fear? What would it take to say "not right now" – and believe that the world won’t fall apart?

Question 5: Who’s holding space for you? And if the answer is “no one” – what are you going to do about it?30 Days of Reflection: Home Truths Card Set
We’re trained to hold space for others. To stay calm. To listen deeply. To carry stories. But very few people ask us how we’re doing – and even fewer of us know how to answer.

Here's My Example: In a recent training, someone said: “I don’t talk to anyone about what I see at work. My friends don’t get it. My manager’s too busy. So I just box it up.” We can’t let silence become our coping strategy. I also was asked to help out a friend with their interviews and one of the applicants said that when a work colleague was becoming upset at work because they had family issues he encouraged them to 'get stuck into the work even more as that was the only way things would get better" Needless to say my feedback to them was that it was not the best approach to take.

Here's My Learning: Even the strongest practitioners need places where they can be real. Peer support, supervision, therapy – whatever it is, find it. You can’t pour from an empty vessel.

I Want You to Consider: What would it look like to build your own version of a "holding team"? Who helps you make sense of the noise? Who offers presence, not solutions? Invest in those people – and let them in.

Final Thoughts: 
You don’t need to fix everything over summer. You just need to come back more grounded, more self-aware, and more honest about what you need.

These five questions are a starting point. Not for guilt. But for growth.

If you found this useful, share it with your team or use it in your next reflective supervision.

And if your team needs structured space to reflect, grow and reconnect with purpose, check out the 30 days of Reflection Home Truths Card Set available to download now.

The image above says everything in two lines.
On one side, a professional voice saying:
“You’re not old enough to decide.”
On the other side, the street whispering:
“You’re old enough to deliver.”

That is the brutal contradiction that defines the lives of so many young people caught up in criminal exploitation.

We tell children they’re too young to choose their subjects. Too young to vote. Too young to live on their own. Too young to make decisions about their future.

And yet, exploiters see them as exactly old enough.
Old enough to carry drugs.
Old enough to hold or use weapons.
Old enough to be sexualised
Old enough to take risks with their freedom and their lives.

Here’s the sharpest truth of all: while practitioners and society see them as children, as boys and girls, groomers see them as men and women. 

Why this Contradiction Matters
So the question isn’t just “Why did this child get involved?”
It’s “Who told them they could?”
Because children rarely step into danger alone. Someone invited them in. Someone gave them the words, the validation, the illusion of power.
And the truth is this: when the system says “wait your turn,” the streets say, “your turn is now.”

The Practitioner’s Dilemma
Let me be really honest here.
In my work with practitioners, police officers, probation workers, youth workers, teachers, social workers — I hear a pattern in how they speak to young people.
It often goes like this:

• “What you’re doing is wrong.”
• “You’ve messed things up.”
• “You need to listen to me because I’ve got the answers.”
• “No, you can’t.”

And I get it.
Those messages come from a place of care, frustration, even desperation to protect.
But here’s the tragedy: that’s the very space exploiters step into.

While professionals are saying, “No, you can’t,” exploiters are saying, “Yes, you can.”
While the system points out mistakes, exploiters point out potential.
While adults frame failure, exploiters frame possibility.
One voice says: “You’re a problem.”
The other says: “You’re unstoppable.”

Now imagine you’re 14 years old. Which voice do you lean towards?

This is the weaponisation of language that exploiters know all too well. After all, they’re masters of it.
I’ve even heard of them setting young people up with lines like this:

“I bet your mum says you can’t. I bet your dad says you won’t. I bet your teachers don’t believe in you. But me? I do.”

It’s devastatingly effective.

Not long ago, I was speaking with a young girl. She said to me:

"Mum didn’t get him. Dad didn’t get him. But he got me. And that’s why I’m down for him."

That’s how this works. Not with threats at the start. Not with force. But with words. With a promise that sounds like belief, but is really a trap.

I think of a 15-year-old boy I once worked with. On paper, he was still a child, living at home, dependent on adults for nearly everything. But the groomers around him called him “big man.” They told him he was “running things,” that he was making more money than his teachers ever would. Society still saw a boy. Exploiters convinced him he was already a man. And he bought into it, until the day he was arrested.

Suddenly, the courts agreed with the exploiters: he was treated like an adult.

Or the 14-year-old girl who told me through tears, “He called me his queen.”

To her parents, she was still a child, innocent, vulnerable, not ready to make decisions about her own life. But to the man exploiting her, she was “grown,” “mature,” “ready.”
He told her she was special, old enough for love, old enough for loyalty.
And she believed him, because he framed her as something her parents and teachers didn’t: capable.

That’s the cruel reality. Children who are still developing, still searching for identity, are recast by exploiters as adults. Not because they are — but because it makes them useful.

So, what do we do with this reality?

We have to flip the script.

Instead of telling young people what they can’t do, we need to show them what they can do.
Instead of treating them as liabilities, we need to see them as futures.
Instead of shutting them down, we need to open doors.

That doesn’t mean we ignore risks or brush over harmful behaviour. It means we learn to frame hope as strongly as exploiters frame harm.

Because here’s the truth: exploiters don’t just recruit with money or fear. They recruit with belief. False belief, yes, but belief all the same.

If we want to compete with that, we need to believe in our young people harder than anyone else does. And we need to let them hear it.

Reflection questions for every practitioner
I want to leave you with three questions to carry back into your work.

1. When I speak to a young person, do my words open possibilities, or close them?
2. Could the way I frame their behaviour be making the exploiter’s voice louder in their head?
3. If the only message they remembered from me was one sentence, would it build hope or build shame?

Final thought:
That image — “You’re not old enough to decide. You’re old enough to deliver.” 
is the tug-of-war every child caught in exploitation feels.

And here’s the reality: whichever voice feels louder is the one they’ll follow.

It is our responsibility to make sure it isn’t the voice that says: “You’re old enough to deliver.”

Children aren’t commodities. They’re futures. And every future is worth protecting.

Every choice matters. Every word counts. Every child deserves hope.

If you want to approach things in a different way, you are in the right place, check out our awareness and consultancy services right here.

I found out about the 'Family Sharing' feature when I was conducting a recent interview with a father about how he kept his young children safe online. Prior to that I must admit I knew nothing about it. Being involved in designing interventions that combat youth crime I always get asked by practitioners and parents for ways they can help monitor and support young people more effectively. Let's be honest, technology is moving at an incredible pace. The internet is a space that is so unregulated and un-policed that there is rarely a day that goes by without me being informed of some image or video being circulated of a young person being chased or stabbed or some young girl being pushed into some equally horrendous act. You can't blame parents for being concerned about what their children are exposed to. How are they actually supposed to keep up with what is going on in their young children's lives when new apps are being launched almost every day.

Given that the Family Sharing feature promises so much I decided to take it for a bit of a test run. I have to be honest iPhones are not really my thing but supporting young people in the physical, mental and online spaces definitely is and in many ways the fact that I am not a huge fan of their product makes me the best guinea pig.

What it is and what the benefits are
The 'Family Sharing' feature was made available to the users of the iPhone 8 onwards. Once activated, essentially what it provides is an 'Admin approval level' to the phones in the same way that an employer would to a worker's mobile phone or laptop. With it you can set age restrictions barring certain sites, keywords, apps, content and purchases. Should the person with the sharing feature enabled try to download something deemed 'questionable' then the adult who activated the feature on the child's phone will be alerted for their approval for which they can choose to either accept or deny. The same thing applies to purchases for which adults can share their purchases with children. It is also possible for the adult to check a child's browsing history with the click of a button.

The new iOS (iphone operating system) upgrade was launched recently and with it screen time can also be monitored, giving parents a better understanding of how much time their kids spend using apps or  visit websites or being on their devices overall. A parent can set time limits for specific apps and they can also nominate another family member as a parent/guardian, This enables parents or caregivers to always on the same page.
​
Using Family Sharing, locations can be shared with the rest of the family automatically. Want to know where your son or daughter is? Just check the app, Need them to know you are running late? Get them to check the app. Need to find your lost or stolen phone? Check the app and call the police. Plus, all of Apple products - the phone, the watch and even the Macbook are all interconnected through the app.

These are without a doubt unique features and in my opinion demonstrate how well Apple thought through what they were doing as they knew their gear would be highly desirable by young people and wanted to really remove concerns that parents might have.

But...there are some drawbacks...
​Firstly, it has to be said that one of the biggest drawbacks is that this is an Apple only product. If your son wants the iPhone and your daughter say wants the Samsung S52 (or whatever the latest model is) and you have the Huawei Pro then you are screwed. There is no cross platform functionality. At all.

Secondly, I know this sounds obvious but the location functionality can be abused. Lets be honest, we were all kids once and...well,...lets just say we knew how to get around things. If you know your family member can monitor your location there is nothing to say that you couldn't leave your phone where you are expected to be and go off and do something else. Want to look like you are at school, give the phone to your friend while you disappear for a little bit, no biggie.

Another key thing is the apps and how much does the average parent know about the apps that their children enjoy? I had it set up with a couple of family members checking out apps for me. A few hours later a couple of apps flashed up on my phone for approval. I did a quick Google check on them and then typed in the name of the app followed by the words 'parental concern' just so that I could see what other parents had to say and low and behold the truth was in front of me. But I am IT literate, what average parent cooking dinner with a child screaming at them to accept the app because all their friends have it will really do that kind of digging? I honestly think many apps will be accepted by parents because they simply don't know enough about them.

Another thing I quickly realised is that I could not shield purchases from the rest of those in the Family Sharing group (tracks with questionable lyrics for example). In order to hide it from the 'Purchased tab' so they couldn't download it you actually have to do it through your computer through iTunes rather than your phone. There was at least a heart-stopping hour whilst I sought to get to a machine log in and made the changes, If they had already downloaded the app or song before I hid it, the song or app or movie stays on their device and can’t be hidden or undone.

Finally, the set up time does take a while, especially for newbies. Now I'm going to be straight with you, I'm pretty good when it comes to computers and apps and for me it was a little bit testing. The best way I would describe is it took about the same level of understanding as setting up a kids account on a Kindle Fire. That said, for the average parent or caregiver who knows nothing other than how to log into their work computer or do general surfing its better to call up Apple and get them to lead you through the process and what is needed otherwise you could end up in problems later on down the line. 

Overall...
The Family Sharing feature can be an advantageous one providing parents and guardians with a whole host of features that they can use to limit and monitor their children's activity online. Whilst it may not be perfect the key thing I noted was it is a tool to keep young people safe but it can only be used as that; a tool. Even with the App, it does not replace good ol fashioned care and attention.