Video: Steven Edwards explains how Notts County Council is trying to protect children
Hundreds Nottinghamshire children are at risk of child sexual exploitation, according to new figures.
Figures published by Nottinghamshire County Council identified 501 children as potentially at risk across the county.
There were 69 police investigations into CSE across Notts for the year 2015/16 and more than half were found to involve physical contact.
Service director for children’s social care at Nottinghamshire County Council Steven Edwards said: “Last year, the then prime minister David Cameron talked about CSE being a national threat.
“It can be through blackmail, threats and sharing of images, so I do agree that it’s really serious.
“That’s a new threat and lots of children do get exploited and abused where there’s no direct contact.”
Children can be in their bedrooms sharing images with anyone
Mr Edwards believes online child sexual exploitation is a big issue.
He said: “I think it’s a significant problem; a child can be alone in their bedroom and now they could be talking and sharing images with people around the world and have no idea who that is.
“When children start to go off the rails, we know that there’s a much higher chance of child exploitation happening.
“The consequences of being sexually exploited are absolutely horrific for children so the more that we can do and get involved at an earlier stage, the safer children will be.”
Sexting is a major issue in probably all our secondary schools
On the back of this, Nottinghamshire will be the first county to offer secondary school teachers training into ‘sexting’ in school as of tomorrow (Tuesday October 18).
Sexting is the “exchange of self-generated sexually explicit images and messages over text, social media or webcam,” says Notts county council anti-bullying co-ordinator Lorna Naylor.
She said: “From our own schools cyber survey last year, we know that many of those involved in sexting were blackmailed or pressured into doing it once or twice while some said this happened to them more often.
“We know that sexting is a major issue in probably all our secondary schools and is creeping into primary schools too, which is clearly worrying.
“Correspondingly schools need to be armed with increasingly more effective strategies for preventing and managing incidents.”
Nottinghamshire County Council is investing £1.2m into looking at ways of tackling threats to children.
Ofsted rated Nottinghamshire child protection services as ‘good’ when inspected in June 2015.
