Update on our inspection of Greater Manchester Police and its safeguarding partners’ approach to child criminal and sexual exploitation

Published on: 13 December 2024

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Letter information

From:
Michelle Skeer OBE QPM
His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary
His Majesty’s Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services

To:
Andy Burnham
Mayor of Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Sent on:
13 December 2024

Update on the commission to inspect Greater Manchester Police and its safeguarding partners’ approach to investigating allegations of child criminal and sexual exploitation

I am writing to provide an update on our progress on the work you commissioned to inspect Greater Manchester Police and its safeguarding partners’ approach to investigating allegations of child criminal and sexual exploitation, and supporting victims and survivors. And I am also writing to provide an update on our national child protection inspection of Greater Manchester Police.

The commission

As described in our terms of reference, we will address three questions in our inspection. For ease of reference, I attach a copy of these at Annex A. At the time of writing, our inspection is ongoing, and we expect to publish the final report in June 2025.

We have examined legislation, national and local practice guidance and advice in relation to investigating child criminal and sexual exploitation and supporting victims and survivors. With these in mind, we developed an inspection and evaluation methodology and assessment criteria for each element of the terms of reference.

In October 2024, we held a stakeholder meeting, where we asked Greater Manchester local victim and survivor agencies and national organisations to give their views on the services available for victims and survivors. Attendees at the meeting gave valuable insights. I intend to invite these stakeholders to another meeting in 2025 to update them on our progress.

Our national child protection inspection

We have completed our national child protection inspection of Greater Manchester Police. On 13 December 2024, we will publish the report (and this letter) on our website. We will also forward a copy of the report and this letter to the chief constable.

In summary, I am pleased with some aspects of the force’s performance in safeguarding children at risk. But there are some aspects in which it needs to improve. My graded judgments for the force are as follows:

leadership of child protection arrangements – good;
working with safeguarding partners – good;
responding to children at risk – adequate;
assessing risk to children and making appropriate referrals – adequate; and
investigating reports of abuse, neglect and exploitation of children – adequate.

We found that the force is committed to child protection and safeguarding. Chief officers and senior leaders understand and carry out their statutory child protection and safeguarding responsibilities. They have good oversight and understanding of the force’s performance and the quality of service it provides to the public.

During this inspection, I was reassured that the force responded promptly and comprehensively to our feedback. It has already put plans in place to address the areas in which it needs to improve. I will continue to monitor its progress.

The Greater Manchester complex safeguarding programme peer review process’ ability to improve the partnership approach to tackling child criminal and sexual exploitation

In relation to the work you commissioned, our progress and emerging findings are as follows.

Our national child protection inspection team will complete this commission. And specialist advisers from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are providing necessary support. I am grateful for their advice.

For this inspection, we use the term ‘GM [Greater Manchester] strategic safeguarding partners’ to include:

the Greater Manchester Combined Authority;
the ten regional local safeguarding children partnerships;
Greater Manchester Police; and
the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board.

Summary of our initial findings

We were encouraged by what we found.

The GM complex safeguarding programme peer review process is a unique regional multi‑agency collaboration. It focuses on the work of the complex safeguarding teams. Its intention, which, based on our initial work, we have found it largely meets, is for multi‑agency services to use the findings from this process to inform and improve their work to reduce risk and harm from child criminal and sexual exploitation.

The programme complements other quality assurance activities that the local safeguarding partnerships use to tackle child exploitation. It isn’t an additional or regional performance management framework.

GM strategic safeguarding partners are clearly committed to the peer review process. They use it to review and reflect on cases to identify and improve multi-agency practice. Strategic leaders and child safeguarding practitioners also support this process. We found that this is having a positive effect on how partners and child safeguarding practitioners improve multi-agency practice to reduce the risk of child exploitation.

GM strategic safeguarding partners continue to develop the programme methodology. They incorporate learning from previous reviews and national research findings. And the partners recognise the benefits of trauma-informed practice for children at risk of exploitation.

The peer reviewers combine the findings of the case audits from each GM strategic safeguarding partner. They encourage the practitioners involved with the child’s case to identify what is working well, and identify areas where changes could improve the outcomes for children. The peer reviewers then share the findings with practitioners from each agency in reflective discussion meetings.

Our initial positive findings on the peer review process

We found that GM strategic safeguarding partners generally have experienced practitioners to carry out effective peer reviews. The partners have good governance and oversight arrangements, and use the results to improve outcomes for vulnerable children.

As part of the methodology, peer reviewers analyse the contributions of all GM strategic safeguarding partners. They evaluate the outcomes of partnership work to reduce the risk of child exploitation. And they identify what is working well, as well as aspects of safeguarding practice that partners need to improve.

The peer review team presents its findings clearly to local authority children’s services, which are known as district partners. The Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Hub (GMCSH) team identifies themes from the peer reviews and publishes these to highlight and promote learning.

The peer review team analyses the outcomes of safeguarding practice, such as how practitioners use peer mapping. Child safeguarding practitioners use this process to improve their understanding of children’s connections and relationships with other children. The mapping helps practitioners identify other children who may be at risk, so they can intervene to support and protect them.

The improved practice is evidence of the peer review team’s effectiveness. Leaders and managers use peer review information alongside information from other quality assurance and performance systems.

GM strategic safeguarding partners use findings from the peer review to promote best practice. Each partner has processes to make sure they include the peer review findings in training materials. They update policy, practice guidance and staff training without delay. For example, findings from several reviews prompted them to update their training package ‘Understanding Exploitation’ to address professional development needs. They also arranged a series of four multi-agency conferences to inform practitioners about best practice approaches for tackling child exploitation, such as the use of the working to increase safety in exploitation assessment. The assessment changes the focus from professionals mainly assessing risk to understanding safety.

Our initial conclusions on how to improve the peer review process

The GMCSH team collates detailed peer review findings for each district and classifies them as ‘strengths’ or ‘areas for improvement’. It presents its evaluation in a meeting with the district multi-agency partners at the end of each peer review. The analysis of the four district cases helps to support local practice. But we found that the GMCSH didn’t include all district-level detail when presenting findings to the wider partnership. For example, it didn’t highlight a type of online exploitation risk found in one child’s review to other districts. Other district practitioners would benefit from this knowledge when considering risks of online exploitation.

We also found inconsistencies between the peer review findings in each district and the GMCSH’s analysis of these findings. The quality of peer reviews varied according to the skills of the reviewers: district peer reviewers were less experienced in this work. But we found that the GMCSH team’s case files reviews and analysis were consistently good. We also saw that children’s social care case audits and analysis were consistently better than those that the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board and police service district peer reviewers completed.

At the time of our audit, children’s social care services, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board and Greater Manchester Police used different tools to audit their case files. This meant that the peer reviewers didn’t record and evaluate sector-level information consistently. For example, Greater Manchester Police didn’t align its audit tool and practice analysis to the seven trauma-informed principles. The force has since told us that it is now piloting a new assessment tool, which all peer review partners are using.

GM strategic safeguarding partners should make their processes more consistent. This would maintain the integrity of the peer review process and improve consistency of the district peer review findings. The partners would benefit from training a cohort of multi‑agency peer reviewers and introducing quality assurance and moderation processes. A standardised case audit template would improve the way the programme collects and analyses multi-agency case file information.

Peer reviewers should improve their evaluation of the cases by including contributions from children, their families and carers. These service users can make insightful contributions to understanding the effectiveness of the GM specialist safeguarding partners’ work to tackle child exploitation. The partners told us they are developing methods of gathering this sensitive information.

The partners should also expand the programme to include other sectors, such as education. This would reflect the increasingly integrated nature of the multi-agency work to protect children from exploitation.

Peer reviewers focus on the work of the specialist complex safeguarding teams. But the findings apply equally to other practitioners and professionals who work closely with vulnerable children and their families outside the complex safeguarding teams. Their work to reduce risk and harm from child exploitation would also benefit from a peer review process.

Our ongoing inspection work

As mentioned at the start of this letter, we still have a considerable amount of work to do to complete our commission.

We will work with national policing specialists to complete our inspection activity and evidence gathering. We will include the details of our findings in our final inspection report, which we intend to publish in June 2025.

I hope you find this letter helpful and informative. If you would like me to elaborate on any of the points raised, I would be very happy to do so.

Annex A: Terms of reference

Inspection of Greater Manchester Police and its safeguarding partners’ approach to investigating allegations of child criminal and sexual exploitation

In our inspection we will examine how the force and its safeguarding partners learn lessons and make improvements from peer reviews of child exploitation investigations.

The mayor of Greater Manchester has also requested assurance that four ongoing investigations into non-recent child sexual exploitation cases are effective. These investigations cover a 12-year period between 2002 and 2014:

Operation Bernese – an investigation into the death of a child in 2003;
Operation Green Jacket – an investigation into alleged child sexual exploitation between 2004 and 2005;
Operation Sherwood – an investigation into 11 cases of child sexual exploitation in Oldham between 2011 and 2014, as identified in the 2022 independent assurance review; and
Operation Exmoor – an investigation into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

This inspection will supplement our national child protection inspection for the force. We intend to publish the national child protection inspection report before December 2024.

In this inspection, and with necessary support from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission, we will address the following questions:

How effective is the Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Programme peer review process at improving the partnership approach to child criminal and sexual exploitation?

We will consider:

the effectiveness of the peer reviews that the force and its safeguarding partners carry out;
the effectiveness of peer reviews in identifying learning (such as good practice and areas where the partnership could make improvements);
how the force and its safeguarding partners share and report learning from peer reviews;
how peer reviews contribute to other partnership scrutiny and accountability processes; and
how the force and its safeguarding partners use learning from peer reviews to improve how they approach child criminal and sexual exploitation.

How effective is the force in carrying out its investigative strategies in relation to operations Bernese, Green Jacket, Sherwood and Exmoor?

We will consider whether:

the force has allocated enough personnel with the necessary skills and experience;
the force’s strategies to support victims and survivors are consistent with national guidance (such as guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, and the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime);
the force’s strategies to manage suspects are consistent with national guidance (such as guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing) and take account of risks that suspects may pose to the public; and
the force makes victims and survivors aware of the support services available to them, regardless of whether those organisations operate independently of the criminal justice system.

How effective is the force’s approach to the 74 victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation, who were identified through the work of the independent review team (previously appointed by Greater Manchester Combined Authority)?