Free St Giles Trust Learning Series – Supporting Practice in Violence & Exploitation

 This series has been developed to strengthen frontline and strategic responses to violence and exploitation affecting children and young people. It brings together practice-based insight, lived experience, and sector expertise to support professionals to better recognise, understand, and respond to harm.

Across the programme, sessions will cover key themes including:

• Gangs, County Lines and Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE)
• Gender, assumptions and hidden exploitation
• Weapon carrying and the drivers behind it
• Moments of crisis, trust and effective intervention

The sessions are designed for professionals across safeguarding, education, health, youth justice, policing and community settings, and aim to:

• Improve recognition of early signs of exploitation
• Strengthen understanding of grooming, coercion and control
• Challenge assumptions and victim-blaming
• Support more effective safeguarding and engagement responses

The series is led by Dr Junior Smart OBE, drawing on St Giles Trust's extensive frontline experience and lived-experience-informed practice.

Please use the QR code or links below to register for the sessions.

Places are free, and colleagues can attend individual sessions or the full series.

Gangs, County Lines and CCE: The Foundation Practitioners Need

The Young People We Misread: Gender, Assumptions and Hidden Exploitation

Weapon Carrying: Fear, Status and the False Promise of Safety

The Moment of Contact: Trust, Crisis and Intervention

Twenty Years of SOS: What Young People Have Taught Us About Violence, Trust and Change