What is Risk in the Community (RIC)?

Risk in the Community is the Essex partnership approach to tackling exploitation of young people.

Traditionally, safeguarding young people focused on risks within the home, but it is more apparent today that young people experience risks in various contexts outside their family unit, such as:

• Parks
• High streets
• Leisure venues
• Hotels
• Public transport
• Schools
• Neighbourhoods
• Sports clubs
• Digital

Young people can become victims of Sexual and Criminal Exploitation, sometimes they might be moved around the county or outside Essex, known as Trafficking and Modern Slavery.

Some young people might be exploited digitally and may not meet their abuser, or online exploitation may form part of the grooming process and occur before they meet.

Increasing safety for young people in these contexts requires a broad group of professionals to focus on community safety, whilst also supporting the young person and their family. Traditional safeguarding professionals need to team up with other partners, including the private sector in order to create safety in our community. We need to create safety in these vulnerable areas to prevent young people becoming victims, focusing on the place and exploiter is key. This can only be achieved if partners work closely together by identifying and responding to exploited children as well as prevention and disruption activities in communities vulnerable to exploitation.

Risk in the Community is the Essex partnership approach which weaves through and across the workforce. This includes a strategic focus on tackling exploitation from the ESCB Child Exploitation & Missing Sub-Committee, which has governance over the four MACE 1 and MACE 2 partnership meetings in Essex.

The approach also includes:

• RIC pathway and RIC meetings which develop partnership plans to reduce harm from exploitation for children open to Social Care.

• District level community meetings which focus on increasing community safety and reducing exploitation harm that link to MACE. In addition, the disruption orders and responses by professionals to pursue exploiters (see Disruption Toolkit).

• A common language and application of assessing risk levels, plus key networks such as the Child Exploitation Champions - approximately 250 professionals from across the partnership in Essex who join together to tackle exploitation.

• Partnership awareness raising campaigns that take place regularly, such as Online Safety, Operation Henderson and Operation Make Safe where partners unite to prevent harm and communicate how the community can seek support. See what is exploitation for more details.