A week with our CEO (aka “packing a month worth of work into a week”)

Day One.

Friday

Preparation for the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry -Localised Child Grooming, taking place at The House of Commons  on Tuesday next week and which I have been asked to attend as a witness

Had the opportunity to catch up with old friends and long time work colleagues at the Specialist  Seminar at NWG Headquarters

Everyone is doing such good work, and everyone is very overworked and stretched now the issue  of CSE is being highlight , a good time for a catch up and seeing what’s new.

Completed job descriptions for new posts to be offered in April 2013

Made last changes to the Health Report, or what I hope will be last changes to it.

Monday

Annual leave, massive clean up at home, spent time with our pygmy goats and went horse riding.

Day Two.

Tuesday

Train down to London, spent the time finalising some of the DoE agreement, juggled some appointments in my diary, travelling from St Pancras to Sanctuary Buildings  I met my first major incident on a London escalator.  My coat snagged in the escalator as I travelled upwards, my coat stayed in the same place dragging me backwards, I fell over my overnight bag on the step behind me and was caught in a pair of strong arms belonging to a gentleman standing further down the escalator.

Who ever you were thank you for rescuing me from something that could have been far worse than it was.

Met with the Department of Education team to finalise our grant agreement details, our outputs and outcomes for 2013/14,  key performance indicators are definitely not my forte , time for a coffee and quick catchup on our prep notes for the Inquiry.The Inquiry will take evidence on

• Race in relation to grooming
• Co-ordination between agencies
• Role of the Criminal Justice System
• Reporting of  sexual offences
• Assumptions about victim

Once at The Inquiry, we  listened Alyus Kilmarni and Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra (Assistant Secretary General)British Council for Muslims give evidence and heard how they believed we should tackle some of the issues.

Then came our turn, we shared a platform with our longer term colleague with a wealth of experience  in CSE form Checkpoint the Children’s Society project in Torbay.

Some of the questioning:

Keith Vas MP asked:Is there an increase in child sexual expliotation (CSE) or have we reached a plateau?

ST: no previous measurement – therefor it is difficult to draw a conclusion, more professionals can now recognise symptoms of CSE ,I personally believes it is on the  increase due to access via social media.

Keith Vas MP asked:Has the change in minister impacted on the issue of CSE ?Have the recent cuts affected the response to CSE?

S Taylor: Edward Timson MP  has a larger portfolio of responsibility to manage  that may have an impact although it must be said that the meetings are still going ahead. There are concerns that the reduction of public money for those with a duty of care having the resources they need to fully tackle CSE

Keith Vas MP asked: is there cofusion surrounding the issue of consent?

Sheila T: There is a need to look at fear and retribution that exploiters put victims under: Do we ask the right questions? Consent may be understanding the consequences of saying no! similar to Stockholm Syndrome.

There is the conflict of Gillick/Fraser competancy – a child cannot consent to their own abuse

I then had opportunity to get the bits in that I thought were important:

• There is a full list of agencies we should d be engaging with ie ambulance, paramedic. CSE coordinators are needed in EACH LSCB
• Sexual health don’t talk to A&E, who don’t talk to CAHMS. Health agencies need to be more joined up on
• We need to look at good theraputic intervention for children.
• The experience of young people  going through court is ‘horrific’. Some young people say it is worse going through court than through exploitation.
• CPS, judges, barristers all need to be trained in child sexual exploitation

Our time ended , it had gone so fast.

Then visited the Park Plaza for a well-earned cup of tea and slice of excellent cake! Sadly I lost a blueberry off my cake and Cheryl wanted to run with the three-second rule and put it back n my cake!

Whoa was my reply!

Next- moving on to catch the train from Paddington to go to Plymouth, over night stay the Holiday Inn.

It’s now 20.58 on the train and I’m just about to reach Plymouth, spent the journey catching up on today’s emails and have requests for in put into a serious case review, assistance on a police operation that has no victims identified as yet, information on a successful virtual team we’d like to highlight as effective practice, update on our children in need funding for the youth participation work, worked on revised grant agreement outcomes and outputs, read the papers for the CSEGG OCC panel mtg for Thursday.

Then took time out to email my daughter who is currently out  in Ecuador and loving it.

The train was very busy,  it was like a swam of  locus have been through the carriages, ate everything then left an almost empty train and no food!

I will have to wait until I get to the hotel to get my tea this evening and keep my fingers crossed they do food this late.

Picked a sandwich up from a spar shop, made it to room by 9.40 pm .

Miles travelled  383 by car, foot, train, tube, escalator and taxi.

Day three

Wednesday,

After arriving absolutely exhausted last night, rose quite early and took my new running shoes out for a spin!  They’re oK which is good!

I did breakfast this morning, which is a rare event for me,  then arrived at the City Collage for the Safeguarding Child Protection Conference in Plymouth at 9 am.  Where I received a very warm welcome from Natasha, Simon Tony and Bob. about 200 delegates with some very good questions following the presentation.  Questions covered peer on peer sexual exploitation, safe accommodation and therapeutic treatment of survivors, researching the offenders to understand the drivers.

Caught up with Martine from the Checkpoint project who gave evidence along side me yesterday at the Inquiry, we’d both found it a stressful event and felt the pressure to get in the things we both needed to say.  I like Checkpoint, I have met their team and spent some time with them, they do some fabulous work.

Afterwards during coffee had a lot of professionals with individual queries, covering speaking to students in universities, health issues, safe accommodation follow-up query, peer on peer follow-up on query with more details.

I left  to try to get home early only to find I hadn’t checked my ticket closely enough and I was on a specific train and had to wait 90 mins in the station for my train, had more station sandwiches ( delightful).

Spent the train journey home, catching up on emails, a report that requires finishing.  started work on a risk assessment for safeguarding boards which is proving interesting work and hopefully will result in a very useful tool.

I’m in the quiet carriage, but the person I am sat next to have a very loud voice and is driving me insane!

Travelled by foot, train, taxi and car. 269 miles today

Trying to do phone calls by text message due to dodgy signal, difficult!

Almost made it home but got stopped just short of Derby because a car had hit the bridge and the bridge had to be safety assessed before we could go under it.  Got home at 7.20 pm.

Arranged the travel for London the next day now that I have had confirmation on certain meeting times.

Worked on a report that needs to go today and finally laid work to rest at 8.20pm, time for a bath and a small whiskey!

Day four

Thursday

Another early start from home at 6.40 to get to Derby train station again, this time to London.  7.25 train

We took part in the roundtable discussions with Crown Prosecution Service this morning, a number of voluntary sector organisations dealing with a wide range of sexual violence against children came together to discuss how they might see the way prosecutions and the decision-making process behind the decision to proceed against those and those that have no further action,can be improved.

An open process that engages with professional before the public consultation document is written. A wonderful opportunity to influence decision makers to benefit those most effected.

From there I walked across London to the Office of the Children’s Commission to a panel meeting.  Leaving at 4 pm I made may way home again.

On the train I managed to catch up on a few phone calls that I had missed, I had another 8 calls from unknown or private numbers which always worry me as I cannot get back to those people.

After connecting my dongle I managed to download my days emails and answered most of them.  Even managed a little time to catch up on my back log of emails too.

Do you have a back log? I’m always looking for tips to manage loads of emails coming in each day. I almost always open them, answer the important ones and promise myself I’ll get to those others tomorrow, but of course tomorrow takes ages to come!

Returned home at 7.20.  Just have to make sure the team are paid this evening.

Travelled 286 miles by foot, car, tube and train today.

As I am in spring cleaning mode, I put the next lot of curtains in to wash and ironed the ones I did overnight last night! Then sat down.

Day five

Friday

Today saw me in the office after struggling through mountains of snow to get there.  I had to cancel my first appointment of the day at 8 am, introducing someone who is an excellent trainer to a training organisation where we felt the two would complement one anther very well. Now all I have to do is find space in my diary to slot them in again sometime soon.

I spent a while catching up on things that had come to our attention with Cheryl, then tackled some of the email requests I had received over the  week.

I finalised all the details of our health report-A report on a grass roots survey of Health Professional with regard to their experiences in dealing with Child Sexual Exploitation is being launched today by the NWG Network and sent an embargoed cope to ministerial teams for health, education and crime reduction along with our press release.

Finalised how we are sending the report out on Monday morning, the siting of it on our website. All the twiggly bits you need to do last minute to get things right.

I spoke with an officer who was looking for some similarities on his case to others and within the day I had made email introductions to one and ask another if I could pass their details along too.

I paid a range of invoices that had come in, given an update on the number of organisations that had paid their membership so Cheryl could activate their accounts.

A safeguarding nurse range to ask for some support on developing their strategy and we offered to go along to their meeting to explore ways we can assist.

We finalised the last details of our Department of Education bid, then there seemed to be nothing desperately important and had a ‘tidy Friday’ session of clearing up the office before departing for home at 2 pm as the snow situation was worsening.

Once home I took several calls and emails, including hounding Paul for a photograph for the report.

Next week:-

Monday all day in the office with no appointments.

Tuesday travel to Shropshire for a days training the new missing guidance then travel to Torquay, Devon

Wednesday assist facilitating a development day with Torbay Safeguarding Board.  When we have finished travel back to Derbyshire

Thursday appoint with a charity about governance and development.

Friday is Good Friday and a long weekend, where I intend to do no work!

I know this job would be so much harder without the team I have around me, the ability to laugh and keep each other going is what team work is all about and I feel grateful all my team are each brilliant in their individual ways. Thank you guys!

Total Miles = 938

Sheila Taylor – CEO NWG Network

The Health report can be downloaded at http://www.nwgnetwork.org

The Inquiry can be viewed at: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=12883