Gangs, County Lines & Child Knife Crime – Advanced (Zoom)

Recognising exploitation, understanding risk, and equipping professionals with the tools to safeguard vulnerable young people.

Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) and county lines drug networks represent some of the most serious safeguarding challenges facing frontline workers today. Behind every young person entangled in gang culture is a child seeking protection, belonging, identity, or survival, who was targeted and groomed through an imbalance of power.

This essential professional development course replaces an “offender-first” mindset with a trauma-informed, victim-centred safeguarding framework. It equips practitioners to decode recruitment tactics, recognise subtle warning signs, navigate complex legal duties, and overcome barriers to engagement.

Key Learning Highlights

• The Pull & Push Factors of Gang Life: Deconstruct why young people join or form gangs. Explore how poverty, school exclusion, trauma, and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) intersect with the perceived appeal of money, protection, and status.
• Mechanics of County Lines: Understand urban-to-rural drug distribution networks, debt bondage, family threats, and “cuckooing”.
• The Knife Crime & Exploitation Connection: Examine why young people carry weapons - shifting from punitive assumptions to addressing the underlying fear and territorial enforcement driving violence.
• Vulnerabilities & Indicator Mapping: Identify behavioural, physical, digital (social media/drill music), and linguistic (“road slang”) warning signs across individual, family, and community risk levels.
• Grooming & Coercion Continuums: Unpack how perpetrators groom, test boundaries, enforce compliance, and utilise internal child trafficking (Modern Slavery Act / NRM referrals).
• Overcoming Barriers to Engagement: Address fear of reprisals, normalisation of violence, and deep-seated distrust of statutory authority using relational communication frameworks like PACE (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy).
• Contextual Safeguarding & Legal Duties: Apply multi-agency referral pathways, the Serious Violence Duty, and the “Seven Golden Rules” of information sharing to protect young people in extra-familial environments.

Why Choose This Course?

A child cannot legally consent to their own exploitation. This course translates complex criminal justice trends into practical safeguarding habits, ensuring you can spot the warning signs early, handle disclosures with composure, and become a consistent, protective anchor in a young person’s life.

Who Should Attend: Teachers, Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), Social Workers, Youth Workers, Police Officers, Residential Child Care Staff, and Frontline Health Professionals.

Format: This is a live training session through Zoom. It includes taught sections, small group work, work in pairs, and whole group discussions.

Hand-outs & Certificates: Downloadable course notes and certificates of attendance are provided.