24/05/2019
Video on Child Drug Exploitation for parents
All Schools, Parents
Short video for teenagers & parents explaining how criminals are exploiting children in Oxfordshire
The Family Solutions team in Witney is made up of the Early Help team and the Statutory team. Together we support families in West Oxfordshire who are experiencing a wide range of difficulties. Over the past two years we have been increasingly concerned about a number of young people who are being exploited, or are at risk of being exploited, in connection with selling drugs. We have been working closely with schools and the Thames Valley Police neighbourhood teams to identify young people early and provide the right help. It is an area of work that we are still developing.
As part of this work we have started holding ‘get togethers’ for parents who are concerned that their children may be involved in drug exploitation. This is a chance for us to listen to their struggles, provide some advice and for them to support one another. We hope that by linking parents up they will be in a better position to keep their children safe. We have been delivering this group jointly with our colleagues in the neighbourhood police team. We put the video together as a way of explaining the issue to parents who have not been part of the group. We hope that it will also be a useful tool when working with young people who are at risk of exploitation.
We showed it to our parents group who gave good feedback; one parent said “I wish I had seen this two years ago”. Another, who we have recently started working with, acknowledged that they felt really worried for their child after watching it as it made sense of his behaviour.
A short video for teenagers and parents explaining how criminals are exploiting children in Oxfordshire to sell drugs.