Responding to child sexual exploitation in Rotherham

Working in partnership

The Council’s children’s services have been bolstered. The frontline has been strengthened, more social workers continue to be recruited and caseloads have been reduced to manageable levels.

Our response to child sexual exploitation is being delivered by strengthened, multi-agency teams and initiatives. These include:

Evolve – the multi-agency specialist team tackling child sexual exploitation

This team respond to and safeguard children who are or likely to suffer harm through child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. They aim to provide ‘wrap around’ support and protection to children and their family, with a team of people from a variety of support agencies. This includes social workers, a child sexual exploitation specialist nurse, a Barnardo’s social worker, a children’s social care operational manager, business support staff and police officers.

Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)

The strengthened Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) provides a central point of contact for people to share safeguarding concerns. Staff from children’s services, police and health work together as part of the team. This has led to better information sharing between agencies - essential to help protect vulnerable children and young people.

Call MASH on 01709 336080

Barnardo’s ReachOut Service

This service supports children and young people in Rotherham who have been, or who are, at risk of being sexually exploited. The team engage with children, young people and families to raise awareness of spotting signs of sexual exploitation. They will also work with community groups, schools, colleges and health services.

The service is funded by £3.1m from the Council, the KPMG Foundation, the Department for Education, the Communities and Local Government Department and Barnardo’s.

Read more about the ReachOut service