Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and extra-familial threats response

In recent years, many local authorities have made a lot of progress in knowing how to respond to CSE but it is a complex area of safeguarding practice and remains a risk to young people as the threat has evolved. Alongside CSE there are other wide-ranging and evolving extra-familial threats facing this group which include (but are not limited to) county lines, gangs, trafficking and modern slavery of children, all of which contribute to incidents of children missing from home and care.

Very often children experience CSE and these other harms simultaneously. The challenge for local areas in addressing these multiple threats is building practitioners' expertise and in developing an appropriate multi-agency safeguarding response.

We would like to fund a service to provide advice and support to professionals in local areas, building their capacity and capability to: a) respond effectively to safeguarding challenges from particular issues and/or handling high harm cases involving CSE and other extra-familial threats b) better analyse the effectiveness of their interventions to continuously improve their practice based on evidence of what works locally. Additional information: CSE and connected extra-familial threats are not confined to any one local area or region.

The support that is required in local areas to meet a range of risks and needs will depend on the local context. The work will contribute towards: improving capability in public services at a local level to tackle multiple risks to young people; and providing targeted advice and bespoke, specialist, short-term support for local areas.

Any potential competition may commence in September 2018 and be for a three-year contract, subject to availability of funding. In line with procurement best practice, we plan to run a pre-market engagement event to help us shape requirements in terms of building local capacity, support professionals and take action to address a range of threats facing young people together.

We wish to test market views on the needs of professionals in local areas and how best to facilitate the spread of good practice in responding to multiple risks. The Department wishes to assess market capability and capacity to administer and deliver a response, as described, to help local areas tackle adolescent vulnerabilities and explore market interest in tendering for this service.

There will be a pre-market engagement event on Friday 21 September from 10.30 - 12.30pm at the Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT. This notice does not constitute a call for competition to procure any services for the Authority.

The procurement of any services will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The purpose of this PIN is to stimulate early market interest and invite interested parties to take part in preliminary market consultations, in order to improve our knowledge of the market.