Decision details

This work will deliver priority interventions with young people at risk of and victim to criminal exploitation and abuse, particularly those involved in gangs and serious violence. This will contribute to harm reduction and safer neighbourhoods, as well as improving the life chances of the children themselves.
Benefits to the City include:
1.BAME children and white children experiencing poverty are most at risk of CCE. This project will help to redress the balance and make Bristol a city where equality of outcome is not just possible but expected for all our children.
2.There will be benefits for health, as the project’s focus on self-empowerment enables children to make healthy choices and reject drugs and crime.
Outcomes from this work are not just short term but provide the basis for sustainable positive relationships and community action into the future.

A grant will be made to Barnardo’s ROUTES, a project working with children involved in or at risk of serious harm from Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) established with Home Office funding in 2019. The grant funding will be for one year, from 1st April 2020 to 31st March 2021.
Barnardo’s provide an early intervention and prevention service, targeting vulnerable children and young people mostly living in East Central Bristol. ROUTES tackles the root causes of serious violence and criminal exploitation by improving resilience and safety through:
•Direct interventions for individual children/young people to prevent crime and support with evidence led prosecutions of perpetrators targeting children
•Support to strengthen the family system as a protective resource
•Involve and educate communities, improving identification and prevention
Children as young as 12 are exploited across county lines, often due to complex vulnerability: homelessness, poverty, being in-care (The Children’s Society, 2018). This service work directly with children, young people and their families to:
•overcome adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), increasing personal resilience, decreasing likelihood of participating in crime
•use effective risk management strategies to disengage safely from serious offending
In Bristol, drug-related offending is significant and linked with this serious violence to which young people are both victim and, at times, perpetrator has risen. There are different models of CCE across neighbourhoods that ROUTES aims to address.
This work aligns with the Corporate Strategy via the following themes:
1.Empowering and Caring: This project aims to prevent child criminal exploitation and prioritise community development.
2.Wellbeing: This project aims to improve the bio psychosocial health of some of our most vulnerable children, by providing diversionary activities, building trusted relationships and offering an alternative to crime.

In house delivery was considered but rejected as no pre-existing service has capacity for this work. Setting up a new service was rejected due to time and cost limitations.