Provision of Missing Children Team Debrief Service

Description

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent may soon be seeking a replacement contract to provide an independent Missing Children Team Debrief Service. There is a significant drive, both nationally and locally, towards developing collaborative safeguarding approaches that prioritise early intervention and prevention to aid in safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults. This is reflected in national policy such as the Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2014, the Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 as well as the Wales Safeguarding Procedures. Lot 1: Gwent Police missing children team brings together a partnership of public sector and voluntary organisations that work within the Gwent Police force area. The collaboration aims to continue to streamline services and activities, ensuring sharing of information in a meaningful way for missing children/young people as a group recognised as vulnerable. The Commissioner is seeking a Contractor to provide a high quality, independent service to provide a senior social worker, support worker/youth workers, debrief workers and a mediation worker specialising in missing behaviours, child sexual exploitation, modern day slavery, and a de-briefing and mediation service for children and young people who have been returned home, following been reported as ‘missing’ to the team. The Contractor will be required to expand and develop on the current Gwent missing children team. The independent element of the service is to ensure the service user has an independent debrief(s) with a youth worker following a missing episode. Following this debrief, onward referrals for preventative services may be required, for example mental health support, additional support in education, including a specialist mediation worker to undertake family mediation when relationships are fragmented resulting in missing episodes. The Commissioner requires a specialist senior social worker to identify children vulnerable to child sexual exploitation (“CSE”), modern day slavery and trafficking and to ensure the correct assessments, for example, Sexual Exploitation Risk Assessment Framework) (“SARAF”) and National Referral Mechanism (“NRM”) are undertaken. The Commissioner is leading this tender process; however, the following are members of the partnership agreement, all of whom shall be entitled to receive the service. Gwent Police Aneurin Bevan Health Board Newport City Council Caerphilly Borough Council Torfaen County Borough Council Blaenau Gwent Borough Council Monmouthshire County Council