Conrad Townson

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) continues to present significant challenges for policing, with longstanding concerns about inconsistent recognition of risk, victim-blaming narratives, and uneven application of trauma-informed approaches. Tension around credibility, consent, and victimhood is particularly visible in policing responses to CSE, especially for children who occupy dual roles as victims and offenders in the context of criminal activity.

Objective
In recently published joint research by Queensland University of Technology and IFYS Project Paradigm exploring practitioners' views about systemic barriers and facilitators to sound responses to CSE, Rees et al revealed that practitioners working in residential care urgently need police officers and child protection practitioners to be effective collaborators to best prevent, disrupt and respond to instances of CSE.

Method
This study employed a qualitative methodology, using semi structured interviews incorporating a schedule of core and stem questions. An industry partner collaborated with academic researchers to recruit participants who were selected from approximately 800 frontline residential care practitioners employed by IFYS statewide.

Results
Notably, nearly half (46.6%) of participants ranked effective collaborative working with police as the most important facilitator to good responses to CSE. Similarly, two in five participants (40.6%) ranked challenges in working with police as the most important impediment to effective responses to CSE.

Participants recounted the benefits of relational techniques adopted by individual CPIU officers as being significant in disrupting CSE when coupled with effective multi-agency collaboration and empathetic responses to CSE.

CSE awareness training was identified as critical to disrupting problematic and pervasive victim-blaming narratives and allows officers to understand complex victimology and models of grooming in the context of CSE, shifting their focus away from seeing sexually exploited children as actively engaging in criminal/sexual activities to viewing them as children in need of protection from perpetrators.

These findings will be coupled with examples from practice, which indicate that adopting a child-centred policing approach has the potential to contribute to the effective protection of children from sexual exploitation.

Key learnings
Research reveals the importance of shifting from reactive, enforcement-led tactics to a proactive, partnership-based approach that recognises children first and foremost as children and prioritises trust, empathy, and long-term engagement with victims and their families. Trauma-Informed training is critical in recognizing the signs of trauma and how it affects behaviour, helping officers shift from asking "what is wrong with you?" to "what happened to you?"